Marketing 101: A MarsDevs Guide to Performance VS Digital Marketing.‍

Published on:
September 5, 2022

The first step to creating a business plan is understanding the market and framing a marketing path. You have a service or a product to sell. You made the best one to exist. Now, how would people know? You need to let the word out. The marketing strategy helps you get there. It also enables you to understand your consumers' needs. 

Marketing allows you to create an identity for your brand, and with millions of businesses trying to make a name for themselves, you need to be unique to stand out.

Performance marketing vs Digital Marketing
Performance marketing vs Digital Marketing

There are several ways to market your product. You can distribute leaflets, use your customers' testimonials, or even use the free internet. With the advancement of digitalization, reaching people is more accessible and cheaper, but 'creating a brand' needs innovations through unique expressions.

Then, how would you stand out from the crowd? To do that, you need to know all the approaches. There are several ways to reach out. While digital marketing involves using online channels, you only pay after you get a specific outcome for performance marketing.

What is Digital Marketing?

Now, you can use your electronic devices to structure a campaign, promote the message on social media channels, and measure its impact. Typically, any promotion you come across on a phone, tablet, computer, or any other electronic device, is through digital media and thus is known as Digital Marketing. 

It can be of any form, short reels on Instagram, social media posts on Facebook, or long explanatory videos on YouTube.

Statistics reveal the number of internet users worldwide to be around 4.88 billion, and it keeps increasing by 600,000 new users daily. In the past twelve months, the number increased by about 222 million. People are "almost constantly" active on the internet. Thus, a marketer's building a brand online with a digital strategy is one of the most critical steps.

Then, what is Performance Marketing?

Performance marketing
Performance marketing

If you want to pay only when you reach a specific goal, you can choose performance marketing as the preferable option. This approach can get you oscillating between the lower level of the conversion funnel by generating a sale, click, or a lead and the higher end with objectives like impressions or views.

As an advertiser, you dictate this model's cost based on a pay-per-click, cost-per-acquisition, or cost-per-lead basis. This performance-based business model would include registrations, demos, sales, and leads. It is also a form of digital marketing and is more specific yet flexible. You can easily use this model on any platform, including social media and blogs.

So, what is the difference between Digital Marketing and Performance Marketing?

Marketing as a whole

While digital marketing involves every marketing action on an electronic device, performance marketing focuses on the key performance indicators instead. You do not pay for impressions; you can specify your hard-earned dollars on actual results like leads, conversions, and sales.

The difference between digital and performance marketing comes from the difference in approach. Digital channels like social or display ads, and paid search ads are part of a performance marketing-based business strategy. Traditional digital marketing often focuses on more comprehensive metrics, such as reaches, impressions, etc.

What are the benefits of creating a brand using a Digital Marketing strategy?

Digital marketing strategy
Digital marketing strategy

Digital Marketing has earned the position of one of the most significant industries today with the change it brought to the world of marketing and brands. Digital channels and the internet are the simplest ways for your products or services to catch your customers' eyes.

Businesses grow through different marketing activities, including Search Engine Optimization, Content Creation, Email Marketing, etc. Most free activities depend on your creative skills as a marketing strategist.

So, digital marketing can skyrocket your growth in a short time and build your brand presence eventually. You would come across several other benefits as you work with digital channels.

  • Digital marketing is affordable. It also opens up doors for foreign people and explores possibilities with customers
    living miles away by making them aware of your service. Marketing to them is possible with just a click.
  • You can target a particular niche and reach out to just your potential customers without wasting time or effort elsewhere. Filter out the audience and advertise to people who care.
  • You can track results and thus know if a strategy is working out or not. You can figure out the gaps then and change the plans over time.

Then, what are the benefits you get from a Performance-based Marketing model?

Performance marketing model
Performance marketing model

While in an ideal world, you exactly pay for what you get, that is not how it works in reality. How much you pay for an ad varies from campaign to campaign. Generating leads takes a lot away from a growing business. 

And, what if you still do not get 'good' leads? To run a business, you need to take risks. But, taking uncalculated ones doesn't get you anywhere.

Say you focus on the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) now. You spend your hard-earned money on business results like leads, conversions, sales, etc., and be sure of the outcome. This is what Performance marketing does.

  • You can track and measure and then pay only for successful transactions. There would be a defined action that serves as a basis for every transaction; thus, you do not lose money.
  • This model extends your reach. As the website publishers promote and market your brand and its product or service, they would target a niche and go all in. So, you can get in your target zone and still reach more than general consumers.
  • You can use performance-based marketing to diversify your revenue stream. Simply relying on the already existing sales might not be enough.

Why should brands go for these services?

The days of working hard for long hours and distributing leaflets in the sun are gone. It is time to be intelligent and creative to stand out from the crowd. Marketing, in general, helps you analyze the market, know your competitors, devise a plan for yourself, use social media, websites, blogs, etc., to execute the same, track the progress to check if it worked out, and then rework the existing plan.

A data-driven approach helps you be analytical and set the correct KPIs. Performance marketing is more data-driven than digital marketing. But, you can use both hands in hand — the former to generate leads and the digital model to create a brand presence.

What are the different types of Performance Marketing?

Performance marketing types
Performance marketing types

According to the nature of the marketing approach, you can categorize the performance-based marketing model into four effective types.

Advertising Through Social Media 
On average, internet users spend almost seven hours online a day. With around 4.5 billion social media users today, that sums up to about 57.6% worldwide. Thus, the best way to reach potential customers is through social media.  

While Pinterest acts as a niche-based discovery platform, Linkedin keeps you engaged professionally, and Facebook gets you targeted leads. The metrics for social media based on performance are engagement-driven, and thus, you can check your progress through the number of likes, shares, comments, clicks, sales, etc.

Native Advertising 
No one likes interruption. You will probably get a click if you can get an ad without interrupting your consumers' activity. Native ads adapt to the form of the site or page they are on. So, they do not look like typical ads. That is one of the plus points of native advertising. They are relevant and camouflage themselves to fit right with the content the user reads.

Sponsored Content. 
Sponsored content, also known as branded content, adds value to the marketing strategy if you get the process right. You can collaborate with an expert in your niche and create valuable content. You can then use the content to get the reach you need.

Performance Partnership. 
With increasing awareness, the market demands transparency. Thus, brands have moved on to affiliate marketing programs. You can easily track the customer's path through social networks and use this to benefit the retailers and the influencers. Influencers can leverage media to link the product directly with their posts and increase conversion rates.

What are the different types of Digital marketing?

Digital marketing types
Digital marketing types

Digital Marketing is the name of the game. But, it is vast. One of the ways to market your service is through content. You can use creative content to talk about your product or service. Promoting the content on your website, social media, blog, etc., can help you get your consumers' attention over time. But there are other ways too.

How do you know which channels you should be on? Are there any disadvantages that you should keep in mind? To know that, you need to know what the different ways are. 

There are different types of Digital marketing.

  • Content Marketing.
  • Search Engine Marketing. (SEM)
  • Mobile Marketing.
  • Display advertising.
  • Social Media Marketing.
  • Email Marketing.
  • Influencer Marketing.
  • Affiliate Marketing.
  • Video Marketing.
  • Audio Marketing.

But, which is the better choice for you?

You need to analyze and then decide on the strategy. The better choice depends on the situation. If you want to focus on your niche and generate leads or sales, you should go for performance marketing specifically. To build an online presence for your brand, you need social media sites and blogs and thus create an excellent digital marketing plan. 

While both approaches are crucial, you must understand which way to go.

Business is all about people. You work with people to create something for people. And marketing is a way to reach people who need your product. So, a strong strategy will develop the roadmap to your success. To create a good plan, you need to know and work with all the approaches.

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