Performance marketing is one of the most preferred tools brands use to drive the growth of their e-commerce businesses.  As the name suggests, in this form of marketing, the advertisers only pay based on the performance of their campaigns and how many people have actually seen the advertisement. It allows brands the flexibility and surety to only pay for the desired outcomes. But to get the most out of your performance marketing initiatives, marketers need to choose the correct channels which can maximize the reach of their campaigns. One size fits all approach doesn’t work here. In this blog, we will look at the most popular performance marketing channels that can significantly improve the ROI of brands.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate or partner marketing is one of the most productive performance marketing methods that significantly improves brand customer acquisition and sales while being cost-effective. In addition, this channel allows brands and marketers to generate additional sales outside of their customer channels.  Here, the brands collaborate with partners, who promote the company’s products on their websites and other media. A partner earns a commission whenever a sale is made through their referrals. Moreover, it is one of the few forms of advertising where you pay for marketing spending only after the sale. This feature makes it an attractive proposition for e-commerce businesses to use this performance marketing strategy to reach many new customers, who otherwise are not approachable, with a minimal investment. According to a leading research report, brands make 15%-30% additional sales while working with partners.

Social media marketing

What makes social media marketing the most effective performance marketing channel is the massive number of daily active users who logs into one or the other social media platforms every day. The number stands at a staggering over 4.5 billion, with Facebook leading the pack. Hence, social media has become the top content distribution channel for performance marketers as each social media has a highly engaged niche audience, and brands see it as an opportunity to scale their campaigns rapidly or reach and acquire new users. In addition, it is also a better channel to increase brand awareness and educate the users of a brand’s products and services. As a result, brands and advertisers have significantly raised their investments in social media advertising on popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, seeing the effectiveness of this performance marketing channel.

Native advertising

The best part about native advertisements is that they do not appear as paid ads. Why? Because these advertisements blend effortlessly with the websites where they are displayed by replicating their design, content, and tone. Hence, this performance marketing channel performs exceptionally well compared to traditional advertising, which is very intrusive and a major put-off for customers. In addition, according to reports, native ads get more than 50% more views than standard banner ads, significantly improving the ROI of the brand. In fact, native advertising is expected to grow to $400 billion globally by 2025, according to a report published in The Drum. Native ad often appears as a suggested article at the bottom of the website or the news article, based on the interests and viewing history of the consumers. Experts suggest that a meticulously designed native ad will inform and educate users rather than trying to sell hard.

Search engine marketing

Brands use search engine marketing to showcase their advertisements on the top of search engines like Google and Yahoo, using certain specific terms to acquire more consumers and increase sales. One of the crucial channels in performance marketing, advertisers in this form of marketing pay when a target consumer clicks on the advertisement. It is also known as paid search advertising or PPC and produces excellent results when combined with native advertising and SEO. With a carefully designed and executed SEM strategy, brands can increase their ROI.

Programmatic Display Advertising

Programmatic display advertising is a well-known performance marketing channel where the advertiser leverages the audience segmentation data to help brands deliver ads strategically to their consumers using contextual targeting. For example, if you are a home furniture brand, then a home décor website and blogs would be the best fit to display ads about your products and services because there is a high chance of conversion as people reading or visiting those pages will exhibit some form of interest in your brand. The benefit of this form of advertising for brands is that they can continuously access the same audience throughout the web and be in front of the relevant audience. Unfortunately, while advertisers use programmatic display ads very frequently, this approach’s average click-through rate is a mere 0.05%.