AVENUES : Implementing a new performance marketing strategy? 10 ways to ensure ROI

As with several other aspects of business, implementing a new performance marketing strategy can often feel like a precarious endeavour. Especially if you are new or have limited experience in business ownership, experimenting new tactics and investing money in projects and initiatives that may or may not fail can make it experience like wastage of money and resources.

While performance marketing happens to be an excellent way of obtaining metric outcomes quickly, several factors need to be considered including appropriate channels, goals, target audience, advertisement style and of course an ad that not only resonates but also addresses the pain point of your customers. Return on Investment (ROI) in performance marketing is a crucial business indicator.

Interestingly there’s no way to fully ever guarantee that a strategy will work. However, designing and implementing a smart performance marketing strategy can always ensure that you obtain returns on your investments.

Explained below are 10 ways to ensure returns on investments (ROI)
1. North star metric
Performance marketing is essential in today’s marketplace; however businesses cannot afford to waste money by flinging it at the next best thing. While designing a new performance marketing campaign, you need to establish key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs are significant when it comes measuring the progression of your goals; they should be specific and number based.

2. Research your target customer

Understanding consumer behaviour is of utmost importance while it comes to marketing. Hence a proper research for your target customer is essential. And research is the most important way to ensure return. You should exactly understand who all you are targeting. In recent years it has become critical to understand your customers’ online behaviour. It is only proper research that can make you aware about your customers’ behaviour.

3. Identifying the marketing channels where your target audience is active
Without establishing ROI targets, a performance-based marketing plan in useless. Setting goals is critical for firms and once they are properly established, it becomes easier for marketers to ensure better ROIs.

4. Opt for a balanced and holistic approach

A well-researched and well-rounded performance marketing strategy with clear metrics and objectives is more likely to show returns. One way to ensure that a marketing strategy will ensure ROI is to develop a balanced plan that covers multiple channels. This will enable you to measure and compare results across channels to see which ones are performing well thereby adjust your budget and approach accordingly.

5. Create value by adding quality content

Since performance marketing happens to be an integral part of digital marketing, efforts in the latter will always work. And creating high-quality content that adds value to users’ lives can do wonders for ROI. However, in order to achieve that you have to have a sound understanding of the market and your users’ demands and needs. When you know that, you can create content that will not only satisfy their needs but also satisfy their problems.

6. Automate manual tasks faster

In order to achieve better ROI, it’s important to focus on automating marketing processes. In this regard, automation tools come in handy that help by managing and executing campaigns, analysing customer data and providing insights thus helping businesses make better-informed decisions. this helps in improving the efficiency and allows  you to focus on strategic tasks and make impact on your marketing campaigns. When used effectively, automation tools can take your performance marketing efforts to the next level and help you achieve much better ROI.

7. Implement A/B testing

A major key to get returns on your marketing efforts is to implement A/B testing whenever possible. It is a method of drawing a comparison between two-versions of a piece of content to understand which one performs better.  

8. Incorporate affiliate marketing

Implementing affiliate marketing can be a good option to guarantee ROI for marketing campaigns. Many digital marketers often charge only for the “conversion” rather than traffic. Further, many customers often prefer a referral or endorsement from an affiliate than a paid ad run by companies directly. Having an affiliate business model the risk is substantially reduced and you pay only upon acquiring a new customer.

9. Understand what is currently working

Always remember to identify what’s currently driving your sales growth and double down on those initiatives. Whether its email marketing, SEO or PPC — determine what is yielding you maximum money right now and prepare a budget accordingly. In time, you might find that your business is making more money and from thereon you can explore other avenues for growth.

10.  Seek customers’ feedback

If you want to see a noticeable ROI for your new performance marketing strategy, seek your customers’ feedback along the way. People will be happy to share what they like and do not like about your marketing. Asking for customer feedback on a regular basis will help you know your pain points and work on them accordingly. Make sure to implement the feedback given to you.

Measuring ROIs is an integral part of marketing, even when it comes to performance marketing. However, implementing the best and unique strategies are essential in order to ensure ROI and when proper strategies are in place, obtaining and measuring ROI becomes much easier.

The writer, Manu Gupta, is VP, Business Innovations,
ET Medialabs.