Performance marketing has completely changed the way companies advertise and sell products. It has also impacted the way we measure the success of marketing campaigns. In the past, attribution was nearly impossible.

Today, performance marketing campaigns give you the ability to measure everything from brand reach to conversion rate down to a single ad. This new age of data-driven marketing has given advertisers valuable insight into their performance, which has helped them optimize their campaigns according to the best cost per acquisition.

As advertising becomes more transparent, advertisers are looking beyond branding to build marketing strategies with proven ROI. Performance marketing was born from a need to decrease cost per acquisition and increase ROI.

With performance marketing campaigns, advertisers pay when a specific action is completed, rather than for impressions or clicks. This article helps you see different ways you can make money from performance marketing.

• What is Performance Marketing?
• What is the Difference Between Brand and Performance Marketing?
• How do I Start a Marketing Performance?
• Is SEO Part of Performance Marketing?
• Top 10 Online Course On Digital Marketing
• How to Earn Money from Digital Marketing?

What is Performance Marketing?

While major corporations can spend millions of dollars on branding, most businesses need to focus on the bottom line to stay profitable. Performance marketing puts the power back in the hands of the advertiser. You determine the action, then pay when that action has been completed – whether it’s a sale, lead, or click.

Read Also: Make Easy Money Online Marketing CPA Offers

There are many benefits to running performance marketing campaigns, including:

• Easy-to-track performance
• Low risk
• ROI-focused

The main benefit to performance marketing is that it’s 100% measurable. Thanks to new technology and advanced ad platforms, all your campaign metrics are tracked and reported for your convenience.

In addition to better tracking, performance marketing is ROI-focused, which means less risk for the advertiser. With less risk, quicker launch times are possible. No more pushing for approvals.

In most traditional forms of advertising, the advertiser pays a fee up front for ad space independent of performance. That could mean hundreds to thousands of dollars spent without ever seeing a conversion.

With performance marketing, advertisers only pay for successful transactions.

What is the Difference Between Brand and Performance Marketing?

Brand marketing defines a company’s reputation, its values, the quality of its offerings, its trustworthiness, and more. It seeks to enhance credibility, prompt an emotional response from the consumer, increase customer loyalty, and motivate buyers.

Performance marketing, on the other hand, deals in the realm of concrete data, such as lead generation and conversions (i.e., email sign-ups or the number of purchases).

So brand marketing vs performance marketing? Many marketers are masters of one type, but very few excel at the two simultaneously. It is challenging to go deep into both. However, the best marketers must and do understand the art and science of marketing and are able to bring forward foundational brand elements into communication with the consumer across every channel.

Brand marketing and performance marketing are becoming increasingly interdependent in a world where personalization and building relationships with your consumers are of paramount importance.

We’ve all seen what happens when the focus is too brand-heavy. This occurs all too often with luxury retailers who maintain a strong focus on aesthetics and art and fail to give the same attention to measurable growth marketing strategies and tactics.

We’ve seen the gorgeous websites with beautiful editorial style pictures, long page load speeds, a lack of content that fosters organic traffic, and impossible-to-navigate webpages.

The focus is on the creative aspects. The thought process is that by wowing the consumer with aesthetic and creative approaches, one can stand out from the crowd and make an impact. However, this alone is not a recipe for success in a modern age where the reach equates to ad spend and organic traffic searches.

Without strong SEO, UX, affiliate marketing, or PPC strategies, these gorgeous campaigns end up like the Prada store in Marfa, Texas. A beautiful piece of art that draws attraction here and there but confines itself to a desolate landscape. 

We’ve also seen what happens when marketers go too far on the other side of the spectrum. Content has a heavier optimization focusing on performance and little regard for branding or image. It is dry, robotic, or too sales-y and seems more like the byproduct of a content farm than a brand looking to make a strong and lasting impression on its audience.

The thought process is a short-term strategy founded on the principle that when one focuses on the methodical aspects of marketing – the concrete numbers, every single conversion, and data point – then an emotional connection or a strong brand image and voice almost become a moot point.

You can be optimized to the T, and your performance channels can be solid, but without leveraging brand learnings, your organization will never achieve the growth and success that it can when these two realms are combined.

The consumer insight is your truth – the “WHY” behind all that you do. The question to ask is: What are you doing on your owned or organic channels that you can leverage for paid?

How to Succeed

Needless to say, there are serious costs when a company focuses too heavily on the brand or performance aspect. Top of funnel branding efforts with no clear path-to-purchase can impact conversion. Solely focusing only on the bottom of the funnel will impact your ability to grow your business over the long-term.

The solution entails finding the right, delicate balance between the two in order to achieve the highest level of effectiveness and growth.

This means making sure that brand marketers understand the more concrete and measurable realm of performance marketing. In turn, performance marketers should understand that every moment is an opportunity to tell your story and connect with audiences on a more personal, individual level.

Brand channels are now more measurable than ever before. Capabilities such as programmatic advertising and performance media can be optimized for branding through tactics like sequential storytelling and a stronger desire to appeal to consumers through traditional branding methods.

Teams of all backgrounds must learn to leverage the insight that data from omnichannel consumer behavior can provide and how it can facilitate more effective results. Establish clear objectives for every single channel. They should all fit seamlessly within the overall business strategy, especially considering the need for executive buy-in.

Laura Joukovski, CMO of TechStyle Fashion Group has embraced this philosophy and explains it this way. “We don’t think of marketing as brand vs performance. We believe a brand is built on advertising, experience with the website and the merchandise.

Our strategy is comprehensive and nuanced based on the needs of the channel to ensure we deliver content that is of interest to our consumers. Ultimately, all advertising is evaluated on a performance basis.”

The goal is to combine the worlds of brand marketing and performance marketing. We use this amalgamation to deliver a holistic presence across multiple distribution channels that marry their common principles.

But this cannot happen without the cooperation and a strong focus on a long-term strategy of unification versus one crafted for short-term gain from siloed schools of thought.

How do I Start a Marketing Performance?

First things first – you need some clients. Broadly speaking, you can either source these clients entirely by yourself or you can join up with a network, such as Partnerize (or others you can find by referral or Internet search).

The advantage of using a network is that it can be easier to get started with your first clients, and it can carry a certain status or gravitas to be approaching clients with the name value of a big network behind you. The obvious downside is that the network is going to take a cut, but that’s a trade-off you’ll have to decide on.

Next – and this is a really important piece of advice – instead of attempting to start from scratch with your marketing ideas and your marketing copy, why not make use of what’s already freely available?

Facebook can be a great place to start. According to Facebook’s earnings report, their ad revenue for the final quarter of 2018 was $16.6 billion. That’s a phenomenal amount of ad revenue, making Facebook one of your best sources for reaching new leads. Even better, Facebook’s built-in tools make it easy to see which of your advertisements are actually working.

As part of their push to improve page transparency following the various data scandals of the past year or so, Facebook has introduced the “Info and Ads” tab, which shows the ads that a page is running on Facebook:

Using Software for Performance Marketing

Even if you’ve checked Facebook for a starting point, you probably still want a bit more information. The next thing you can do is use an online marketing tool like SEMrush, which allows you to enter your competitors’ URLs and find detailed breakdowns of their paid and organic traffic sources, their advertising keywords and more.

Measure, Measure, Measure

In terms of measuring the success of your campaign, you need to have appropriate strategies and measurement tools in place in order to highlight the impact of your marketing efforts, both for your own peace of mind and to justify your fee to your client.

With performance marketing, this will consist of two important elements: the ROI of your campaign and attribution.

Measuring ROI

Return on investment, or ROI, can be measured in a number of ways, including conversion rate, cost per lead, lead close rate, cost per acquisition and average order value.

Another metric that’s important for businesses is the lifetime value of the customer, though typically, if you’re doing performance marketing on behalf of a company, you’re unlikely to have access to the kind of long-term data required to realize the full picture of the customer’s lifetime value.

So in terms of a good ROI, there isn’t a black-and-white answer, unfortunately. What’s more, you have to consider the ROI for both your client and yourself.

Advice varies on what a good ROI is, though some experts believe that companies should aim for at least a ratio of 5:1 of income gained from a lead compared to the expense of generating the lead:

You won’t necessarily know how each lead you deliver goes on to perform, but there are metrics you can control on your end.

To get an idea of a benchmark for conversion rates, research from Larry Kim found that the average conversion rate of Ads accounts in the top tenth percentile was 11.45%, while the average conversion rate across all Ads accounts was 2.45% (this isn’t a hard and fast target to measure the performance of your campaigns against, but it’s nice to have some context).

Whether or not you choose to focus on conversion rate as your preferred ROI metric, what’s most important is that you choose a performance KPI for your own campaign investments, and then arrange to both test and track your results.

If, as an example, you’re generating leads at a cost of $200 and selling them for $1,000 each, that’s a nice ROI ratio of 5:1. But let’s say that, after some A/B testing or trial campaigning, you find that you’re spending twice as much on advertisements as you’d thought you would.

If all you’re doing is guessing what your costs are, you won’t be able to determine whether or not you’re achieving the ROI that’s necessary to create a sustainable, profitable business.

Is SEO Part of Performance Marketing?

The future of Performance Marketing has branched out and now encompasses any marketing approach that will improve your brand. However, the main areas of focus include: email marketing, search marketing (SEO and PPC), conversion rate optimisation, content marketing and many more.

Performance Marketing allows for greater opportunities to track real-time measurement and optimisation through readily available digital technology.

When all is said and done, Performance Marketing still revolves around managing campaigns through data, once an action has been completed, whether it’s from email to search or mobile & social platforms.

The requirements for a Performance Marketing campaign come down to four areas. First is to drive consumer action rather than favouring awareness. The second is the cause and effect between the advertising and consumer action that can be clearly measured. Third, its that the campaign can be can optimised in real-time or near real-time based on the measurement and data.

Benefits of Online Performance Marketing

• Performance Marketing is growing at an exponential rate and will continue to make its mark. From big name brands to smaller enterprises, everyone is taking notice and making it a key component to their marketing strategy. In an independent survey done by Rakuten Affiliate Network, it was estimated to become a $6.8 billion dollar industry by 2020.
• The opportunities for advertisers have expanded across a range of different channels such as mobile, social, display, search and email to name a few. Because of this, you are able to broaden your opportunities for a higher return.
• Say goodbye to investing budget without knowing the results. This method of marketing is a low investment and low risk approach, that gives you a clearer ROI over time.
• With this method, you are able to measure and track your action down “to a T” in real-time. You receive information immediately, which allows you to determine, if you need to make adjustments to your campaign to ensure a positive ROI.

Disadvantages of Performance Marketing

• Performance Marketing can be quite complex. To see a high return, it is imperative that you chose your performance marketing agency wisely. Find an agency who understands the complexities and will provide optimal results. Payment on results may not be the best model, especially if it incentivises the wrong metric or behaviour.

What Does the Future Hold?

It is without a doubt that the majority of business measure their success based upon their ROI and with Performance Marketing booming, evidence is in place that it is here to stay – changing the way we view digital marketing.

Digital marketing agencies have long used the measurability of digital as a sales tool, but very few actually follow through. As clients, you should demand full transparency on your data as well as understand what you are measuring your agency on and how they are performing.

They should be able to tell you exactly how much a lead is costing, or what your cost per sale is across all channels. They should be advising you on which channels to pursue based on data, if things are working, open the taps and if the results are not there, move your hard-earned budget into something that is performing.

Over time, with technology advancements, we will find that all campaigns will result in Performance Marketing strategies, where we will be able to easily and effectively measure performance and track returns in every “nook and cranny” related to a consumer action.

In short, make sure that your digital campaign is being run with a Performance Marketing strategy and mindset, you can’t afford to.

Top 10 Online Course On Digital Marketing

1. Google Digital Marketing Courses

Google has an online course platform (Digital Garage) offering free courses on a number of subjects related to career or business development.

One topic that is covered in detail is Digital Marketing training. In particular, Google offers the following online marketing training courses:

• Fundamentals of Digital Marketing (includes a digital marketing certification)
• How to start an online business
• How to make sure customers find you online
• How to promote a business with online advertising (Google Ads)
• How to expand a business to other countries
• Mobile Marketing
• Promote a business with content marketing
• Social Media Advertising
• YouTube Course (Includes certification)

All courses include both video and text materials and some can be completed in 3 hours while others can take up to 40 hours. The digital marketing fundamentals certification is accredited by Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe and The Open University.

Why enroll in this course?

If you are new to digital marketing and want to get a good idea of what is digital marketing and how the different components work together, then this is a good course to follow. The certification is also globally recognized which is a great way to boost your career.

2. Reliablesoft Academy (Paid with Certification)

The Digital Marketing Full Course is offered by Reliablesoft (that’s us). Reliablesoft is a full-service digital marketing agency providing SEO and digital marketing services since 2002.

The digital marketing course bundle has eight courses covering all major aspects of digital marketing. In particular, it includes the following courses:

• Digital marketing basics
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Keyword research
• Content marketing
• Email marketing
• Google analytics
• Social media marketing
• eCommerce SEO

Upon completion of the course and required exams, you get a digital marketing certification to showcase on your CV and open up new career opportunities.

Why enroll in this course?

We designed this digital marketing course based on our experience working with clients in various industries and from the feedback we received from our students.

What differentiates this course from the rest is that it will not only teach you the theory, but it will show you step-by-step how to use digital marketing to boost your online presence.

As an active digital marketing agency, we continually optimize our processes by testing different theories and techniques, and our findings are transferred to our online courses.

For you, this means that you can focus on digital marketing practices and procedures that are proven to work and not only useful in theory.

Each course covers a digital marketing channel in detail with checklists and actionable tips you can apply to your digital marketing campaigns.

It is suitable for beginners and anyone that wants to learn digital marketing in the fastest possible way. The course content is updated regularly to take into account the latest digital marketing techniques and practices.

3. SEMRUSH Academy (Free with Certification)

SEMRUSH is the company behind one of the most successful digital marketing tools. To serve their users and audience better, they have created an academy with a number of free digital marketing courses.

Their courses cover all digital marketing disciplines including:

• SEO
• Content Marketing
• PPC
• Affiliate Marketing
• Social Media Marketing

The course’s main language is English but many of the courses are also available in Spanish. Registration is free and upon completion of the course and the exams, you get a certification.

The course material includes both Video and text and all courses are taught by reputable digital marketing professionals.

They cover both basic and advanced concepts and while some courses are specific on how to use SEMRUSH, there are courses that cover general concepts like SEO fundamentals, PPC fundamentals, technical SEO, and social media marketing.

Why enroll in this course?

The nice thing about these courses is that they are taught by industry experts and besides explaining the different concepts, they also teach you how these can be applied in practice.

In addition, you’ll get to learn how to use SEMRUSH correctly and this can increase your chances of running successful digital marketing campaigns.

4. ClickMinded Digital Marketing Course (Free and Paid with Certification)

ClickMinded is a company co-founded by Tommy Griffith. Tommy is an experienced SEO expert and SEO trainer. He has done SEO work for companies like Paypal and Airbnb.

They offer a number of online marketing courses covering various marketing channels and a digital marketing course bundle that includes everything you need to know to become a digital marketing specialist.

In particular, their digital marketing training covers 7 topics:

• Social Media Marketing
• Content Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Paid Advertising
• Sales Funnels
• Google Analytics
• Search Engine Optimization

The nice thing about the Click Minded bundle is that each course is taught by professionals who are actively working in the industry in big organizations.

You can register for free to their Digital marketing framework masterclass but to gain full access to the bundle, you have to pay $1997 (once-off fee). All courses come with a certificate and a 14-day money-back guarantee.

Here is a tip for you: While the courses are offered at a discount (normal price is listed as $6,979), you can get it with a further discount by registering for their masterclass course. After you register for the free course, you will get emails with better discounts on the paid courses.

Why enroll in this course?

Obviously, this is not a course for all individuals. The price is high for a freelancer or a solo professional but not a problem if you work for a big company.

If you are willing to spend the amount, there is definitely value to be gained from this course. If you already know the basics and worked through Google Garage and SEMRUSH courses, you can use this course to go deeper and explore all bits and pieces of digital marketing.

5. HubSpot Online Marketing Courses (Free with Certification)

Another option to learn digital marketing online and get certified from a renowned company is Hubspot Digital Academy.

Hubspot is one of the leading companies in the digital marketing industry with a range of tools including CRM, SEO tools, content marketing, and sales.

Hubspot’s Online Digital Marketing Courses cover the following topics:

• Inbound Marketing
• Content Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Contextual Marketing

Registration is Free and you get a recognized certification upon completion of the course.

Besides the above courses, they also offer a number of courses (without a certification) that cover Search engine optimization, blogging, Facebook ads, and other online marketing channels.

Why enroll in this course?

Even if you don’t plan to use HubSpot’s tools in your marketing campaigns, they did a very good job with their online courses. You can allocate some time and go through the ones that interest you.

All courses are taught by experts like Sujan Patel and Matthew Barby, who are recognized digital marketing professionals with years of experience in the industry. The learning environment is easy to use and the courses are free.

6. Udemy Digital Marketing Course (Paid with Certification)

Udemy is one of the biggest online learning platforms. They offer courses on a number of subjects covering all areas of marketing from SEO to Google Ads and Sales.

One of the courses that cover Digital Marketing in detail is the Complete Digital Marketing Course Bundle that includes 12 courses. Topics include:

• Market Research
• WordPress Setup
• SEO
• SEO Writing
• YouTube Marketing
• Google Ads
• LinkedIn Marketing
• App Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Google Analytics
• Social Media Marketing
• Facebook Ads

The course comes with a digital marketing certification but it’s not free. The price is $199 but you can get it at a lower price if you are patient enough. Sign up with Udemy, add the course to your wish list and wait for the discount period.

Why enroll in this course?

If you can get this course for a reasonable price and not $199, it’s worth the money. If you are a beginner you can get a very good idea of how the different marketing components work since it covers everything from website marketing to social media promotion.

7. Simplilearn Digital Marketing Specialist (Paid with Certification)

This Digital marketing course is offered by SimpliLearn and covers a number of Digital Marketing disciplines and tools.

It’s a course for beginners and includes:

• SEO
• Social Media
• Pay-Per-Click (Facebook and Google Ads)
• Conversion Optimization
• Web Analytics
• Content Marketing
• Email Marketing and Mobile Marketing

The Digital Marketing Specialist course is a premium course and comes with a premium price of $1,499.

Why enroll in this course?

The nice thing about this course is that it includes walkthroughs of more than 40 digital marketing tools so by the time you complete this course, you’ll have a very good idea of what tools to use in your digital marketing campaigns.

Also, besides getting certified for this course, it prepares you to pass and get certified for Google Ads, Facebook, Google Analytics, and YouTube.

If you are working for a company and want to convince your boss to invest in a Digital Marketing Course, then this is a very good option from a trusted company.

8. Copyblogger Online Marketing Course (Free)

One of the most successful websites on Internet Marketing, especially when it comes to content writing is Copyblogger. Brian Clark is the author behind copyblogger and the creator of the most successful WordPress framework, Genesis.

Although copyblogger, studiopress, and Genesis are now part of WPEngine, Brian’s free Internet Marketing course is still a great resource to learn how to write great content.

This course is delivered through email and downloaded ebooks and it’s free. All you have to do is register using your email address.

Why enroll in this course?

Writing great content is essential for the success of any digital marketing campaign. Whether it’s ad copy, articles, or landing page copy, you need to learn how to write engaging content and this course is a great place to start.

It is suitable for both beginners and advanced users.

9. Udacity Digital Marketing Course (Paid with Certification)

Another premium digital marketing training course is Udacity’s Digital Marketing Nanodegree program.

It covers everything you need to know to become a digital marketer including:

• Online Marketing Fundamentals
• Content Strategy
• Social Media Marketing
• Social Media Advertising with Facebook Blueprint
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Search Engine Marketing with Google Ads
• Display Advertising
• Email Marketing
• Measure and Optimize with Google Analytics

Why enroll in this course?

What is different about this course compared to other online courses is that besides getting access to the course material, you also get access to a technical mentor and a personal career coach and career services.

This is particularly useful if you are a beginner to digital marketing and want to have someone to talk to about technical issues and need advice on how to build your digital marketing career.

Of course, you don’t get the above services for Free. To maintain your access to the course material and services, you have to pay a premium price of $399 per month. It is estimated that you will need at least 3 months to go through the material.

This is definitely a good course for beginners but it’s not for everyone. Paying $399 per month for a course subscription is a lot for freelancers or self-employed so this is more suited to marketers working with big companies that can afford it.

10. Optinmonster Digital Marketing Training (Free)

Optinmonster is one of the most successful tools for increasing website conversions. To educate their users, they created a number of free courses covering topics related to email marketing and conversion optimization.

Why enroll in this course?

Although the optinmonster digital academy does not include courses on all digital marketing topics, it is worth taking a look because once you manage to get traffic to a website, you will need conversions and this is exactly what you’ll learn in these courses.

Registration is free and the courses are easy to follow, suitable for both beginners and advanced users.

How to Earn Money from Digital Marketing?

1. Content Marketing

Content marketing is nothing but the process of creating content that would advertise the product and publishing it for free online. The content acts as information for the customer and bridges the gap between the customer and the seller. 

Content Marketing is mainly used for SEO purposes. If you have a good knack for writing, then this is one of how you can earn money through digital marketing.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

As the name suggests, the main aim of doing SEO for a website is to increase the visibility of the site in popular search engines like Google and Yahoo. The visibility of a site depends upon the keywords and key phrases used in the content of the website.

Read Also: How to Generate Instant Leads Through Online Marketing?

The keywords are some of the most common and relevant words, and the advantage of using this is that the site would stay on top of results even when google analytics change itself from time to time. You can easily make money by writing SEO content for a website company.

3. Social Media Marketing

Social media is a popular platform when it comes to connecting people worldwide. Social media marketing is nothing but advertising a company and its products through these social media platforms. By creating exciting content and posting it on the platform to reach out to potential customers and create a discussion, the product also becomes popular.

Every page has its own analytics as well which can be learned through the dedicated social media marketing courses. With features like boosting posting, one can see the outreach of the business. Social media managers have a high demand in the marketing field today to build strategies and manage accounts.

4. Mobile Marketing

While mobile marketing has been there in the past as well, the demand for it has tremendously increased with the advancement of technology like QR codes and mobile apps. Today it’s rare to find people without mobile, and this acts as an advantage when it comes to mobile marketing. There are various ways of mobile marketing. Some include:

• Mobile App: One can make mobile apps from scratch now a day. Mobile apps help in connecting with the audience more widely. The developers further improve the app to gain visibility in the app store.
• QR Code: These codes can be scanned with a mobile camera, and it would directly take you to the link of the website. In this way, there is no navigation required, and it is more interactive as well.
• Push Notifications: Push notification is nothing but a message that comes in the mobile screen or notification bar which takes the customer to the website in just one click.

5. Email Marketing :

One must be familiar with newsletters and emails that you get from various companies. Email marketing is nothing but where the company sends their potential customers about the different products and services they have to offer, to convey the information.

The content can be written as well as graphic, but it is easy advertising in just one click. It takes real talent to make engaging content for email marketing, and there is a high demand for them.

Finally

There is a wide variety of opportunities available for doing an online digital marketing course. It makes you a specialist in not just one field but various niches regarding digital marketing. The best part, all of these fields have a high demand currently. An advanced digital marketing course will help you to grab a job while sitting at home.