Key Channels Used in Performance Marketing
Performance marketing is a highly data-driven digital marketing strategy. Businesses pay for every click, lead, and sale they get. Here, the focus is on the results of these metrics.
There are around seven to eight core channels in performance marketing. Although they have different names and functions, they all have the same goal. Measurable, trackable, and ROI focused campaigns.
A channel is selected based on the driving traffic, leads, or sales. Selecting the right one is important as it significantly impacts a campaign’s performance-driven growth.
This blog is about key channels in performance marketing. Continue reading, and by the end, you will get to know which channel is worth your marketing budget investments. As an experienced Digital Marketing Agency in Kerala, we focus on six performance marketing channels.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
This is a core performance marketing channel that brings businesses to the top of search engine result pages through paid advertisements. The channel runs ads through paid search campaigns. There, users are actively shown ads relative to the service or product they have searched for. Conversions happen through PPC (Pay-Per-Click) or a similar action. Advertisers can have full control over the budget by setting the daily limits and bid amounts. SEO activity and platforms like Google Ads and Bing Ads are the most widely used for SEM. These work as a bridge between brands and high-intent audiences.
Social Media Advertising
Just like the name, it promotes brands, products, and services through social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. On these platforms, paid ads are displayed to the audience. On the platforms, these ads appear in feeds, stories, reels, and videos to increase visibility and awareness.
This broad channel offers targeting options: age, gender, location, interests, behaviour, job role, and even past interactions. Looking out for these options ensures your ads reach the right audience. They don’t just target; they also retarget.
Metrics like impressions, clicks, leads, conversions, and sales are used for real-time performance tracking. Measuring these will help you do a data-driven optimisation. The performance insights you get from the metrics will help you refine targeting, creatives, and budgets to improve ROI (Return on Investment) and improve results.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate means partner. Here, partners mean individuals or businesses that collaborate with a brand. In this channel, partners promote a company’s products or services and earn a commission for every sale, lead, or action generated.
Affiliate links and promo codes are the routes for performance tracking. They allow businesses to identify the particular affiliate that drove the traffic or conversion. The affiliates include bloggers, content creators, social media influencers, and website owners.
Email Marketing
This is a corporate-style performance marketing channel. Here, emails are sent to certain audiences. They are sent based on interests, behaviour, or past interactions. This way, relevance can bring in enquiries and purchases as conversions.
Open rates (how many opened the mail), click-through rates (how many clicked the mail), and conversions (how many acted) are the metrics for measuring ROI.
Emails are made with a personal touch. Recipient’s name, preferences, or past activity increases relevance and engagement. Adding strong and visible CTAs, such as ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Contact Us’, at the end is important.
One optimisation at the beginning isn’t enough. Consistently, trying different types of subject lines, content, and timing improves email performance and overall campaign success.
Display Advertising
This is one of the key channels in performance marketing. Attractive visual ads, such as banner ads, image ads, video ads, and pop-ups, are the ones used in this channel.
Since they are displayed on social media platforms, these ads work on pay-per-click (PPC) or pay-per-impression, a.k.a cost-per-mile (CPM). Google Display Network (GDN) is a popular platform for displaying ads, allowing businesses to display ads on websites, social media, and mobile apps.
Influencer Marketing
It is a trendy performance-focused strategy. Brands promote their products and strategies by collaborating with influencers or content creators. This creates an increase in sales, leads, or website traffic.
Results are tracked through custom tracking links, unique promo codes, UTM parameters, or affiliate-style commissions. The results from these metrics make it easy to calculate the ROI.
Collaborating with influencers creates credibility among audiences. This results in higher click-through rates, conversions, and qualified leads.
A successful real-life example is Daniel Wellington’s influencer strategy. Influencers worldwide were given unique discount codes and tracking links. This strategy raised the global brand and directly increased sales.
Conclusion
Seven performance marketing channels promote brands and increase conversions in seven ways. Although different brands offer different services and products, all seven channels work effectively for the desired growth. The factors to consider while choosing are the goals and audience.
Dinero, a performance marketing service in Kochi, has an expert team that can identify the best channel for your growth. Let’s talk!
Neeraj Lal
Neeraj is an expert content writer with 3 years of experience. As a content writer at Dinero, he is passionate about storytelling and has experience in writing blogs, articles, ad copies, case studies, etc. He is dedicated to producing high-quality content that resonates with audiences and helps brands communicate their message effectively.
