6 Core Performance Marketing Strategies to Use in 2024

A performance marketing strategy is all about small wins that, over time, contribute significantly to a brand’s success. Building your brand’s social presence and establishing ongoing engagement from your customers and prospects is at the core of performance marketing.

This form of digital marketing presents an affordable and scalable solution for businesses of all sizes and niches. Continue reading below for the key points of performance marketing as well as the best strategies you can implement in 2024.

What Is Performance Marketing?

Performance marketing uses tangible metrics to track the success of a marketing campaign. Tangible metrics refer to KPIs with clearly defined goals and outcomes, such as CPC (cost per click) or CPI (cost per impression), which show the exact number of people who’ve clicked or engaged with your ad.

Unlike brand marketing, performance marketing doesn’t aim for long-term growth but focuses on smaller, quickly achievable results, such as increased Instagram followers or a boost in sales.

Performance marketing offers plenty of benefits for businesses, such as automation and scalability. As AI advances, marketing is becoming much more accessible – even business owners themselves can do it with the right knowledge and tools. For example, performance marketing software can set up and run your marketing strategy from start to finish, with minimal input from your side.

Running a Performance Marketing Strategy: What to Consider

Running a performance marketing strategy can be made easier if you follow some key steps:

• Define your goals – This is the first step in every marketing strategy. Think about what you want to gain, such as more followers, clicks, or conversions.

• Set KPIs – Once you’ve defined your marketing goals, it’s time to choose KPIs. For example, if you want to measure clicks, you should use PPC or pay-per-click; if you want to track conversions, you should use CVR or conversion rate, and so on.

• Decide on a budget – You can set your budget according to your KPIs. For example, you may pay up to $1 for a single click on a campaign; from here, your calculation would look something like this: number of clicks x average cost per click = potential PPC budget.

• Choose your tools – Performance marketing can be fully automated using marketing software like a tracking and analytics tool. These tools help you identify and deliver content to the right people, monitor their engagement with your ads, and measure their commitment (such as filling out a form, signing up for a newsletter, or making a purchase).

• Create your content – This may include writing blog posts, ads, video scripts, etc. Always have a content idea appropriate for the marketing campaign you’re planning to launch. Pro tip: the better your content is, the higher it will rank on SERPs for less cost.

• Monitor your campaign – The beauty of performance marketing is that you can monitor and tweak your strategy every step of the way. Track the changes that are happening to understand which direction your strategy should go. Incorporate marketing automation software for a deeper insight into your audience and how it’s behaving.

6 Effective Performance Marketing Strategies

Performance marketing is a set of marketing strategies used to boost a brand’s visibility:

1. Email Marketing:

   Email marketing is a must for every business looking to grow and nurture leads. This strategy can be completely automated thanks to AI – 43% of marketers who use generative AI claim it’s best for email creation.

   However, email marketing is also tricky because it only gives you a split second to catch the recipient’s attention. In fact, 47% of recipients click on an email because of the subject line, and 69% report emails as spam based on how it sounds.

   If done the right way, emai l marketing can help you facilitate a meaningful connection between your customers and your brand. Here are some email marketing best practices:

   • Send follow-up emails to prospects who were near-ready to buy from your site but never converted. You can do this by offering a discount on a particular product or recommending products similar to it.

   • Avoid being spammy by providing value to your readers through your content. This can mean creating newsletters featuring the latest products or any news regarding your business.

   • Use CTAs to reach as many email subscribers as possible. For example, you can use pop-ups on your website asking visitors to provide their email addresses for discounts and exclusive offers.

   • Implement A/B testing to establish the right voice that moves your audience. Test everything from subject lines to send times to create emails that convert.

   
   

2. Performance Marketing and AI

   Integrating AI into your performance marketing strategy can streamline your operations so you can focus on more strategic tasks. AI can track and analyze clicks, sales, and any type of conversion for you.

   Depending on the AI model, you may use it to:

   • Conduct customer research

   • Analyze and segment target audiences

   • Build buyer personas

   • Create written, visual, and video content

   • Schedule ads, social media posts, email campaigns, and much more.

   
   

3. Social Media Marketing

   Did you know that 75% of B2B buyers use social media to make buying decisions? This is called social selling, where brands form meaningful relationships with prospective customers, with conversion as the end goal. The fact that 78% of social sellers have better sales numbers than those who don’t use social media attests to its importance.

   Social media marketing can come in many forms:

   • Influencer marketing (by reaching out to influencers in your niche to make paid ads for your brand)

   • Content marketing (blogs, discussion forums, stories, carousels)

   • Video marketing (TikToks, YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, podcasts), etc.

   The top social media platforms to advertise on are Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Don’t focus on the number of users as much as your target demographic, as all these platforms invite different audiences.

   
   

Retargeting

Retargeting is a strategy that involves reaching out to prospects who have shown initial interest in your brand but did not complete a desired action, such as a purchase. By identifying these prospects and re-engaging them with targeted content or offers, you can take measures to reintroduce these people and increase the likelihood of conversion.

For example, you can segment users who visited your site and clicked on a product but backed out of the purchase at the last minute (also called cart abandonment). You could send them promotional emails with discount codes, related products, or announcements to re-engage them.

Retargeting isn’t limited to your site visitors – you can also do it on:

• Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram by customizing ads according to those who’ve already visited your socials but haven’t gone further down the sales funnel

• Search queries by showing ads to people who’ve interacted with your ads before without commitment

• Emails by reaching out to people who’ve visited your site but haven’t taken action, etc.

Focus especially on dynamic retargeting, which involves showing a user a product or service they previously viewed, usually in the form of a native ad. This is a more natural way to promote yourself without being disruptive to the user, making them more likely to click on your ad.




4. Amazon Marketing

   Amazon is a robust marketing platform offering many advertising options for businesses. And the best part? You don’t have to sell on Amazon to have your products featured on their page.

   Sponsored Display provides you with the necessary base to get started on display ads. There are no budget requirements or specific niches that would benefit more than others – everyone gets an equal chance. Once you’ve provided your business logo, an image, and a headline, leave it to Amazon to target the right people and optimize your ad.

   Another option is Sponsored Brands, which seamlessly embeds a banner of your brand within shopping results. It can appear at the top of a search query or among products on desktop and mobile.

   Finally, Sponsored Products are CPC (cost per click) ads that aim to convert your target audience through strategically placed product listings. Your products will appear alongside other Amazon products for related search queries, maximizing your presence and conversion rate.

   
   

5. Omnichannel Marketing

   This performance marketing strategy aims to maximize your social presence. An omnichannel approach combines all the strategies presented above to ensure that prospects can find and interact with your brand regardless of the platforms they use.

   Don’t know where to get started? Linktree is a great tool for creating a menu with your brand socials so your followers can reach you on all platforms with one click. Make sure to include only crucial info, such as your website and social media platforms.

Final Words

We presented 6 effective performance marketing strategies to drive your audience further down the sales funnel. Explore plenty of untapped opportunities, from email marketing to generative AI and retargeting. Want to propel your strategy further? Keep track of your affiliates, analyze data from your online shop, and boost engagement using Offer18’s turnkey software. Get a Free trial here – no card required.