December 14th, 2022
Author: Jake Matzanke
Strategy

Performance Marketing Vs. Digital Marketing

Name: Advertising
Brand: Consultus Digital
Rating: 4.8 (86 reviews)

The Benefits of Performance Marketing and How it Compares to Other Strategies

When it comes to generating more leads and revenue for your business, a strong online presence and robust marketing strategy are essential. In today’s digital world, the most effective strategies revolve around both performance marketing and digital marketing. Both options have a lot of similarities; however, there are some key differences to consider as well.

While both options can help generate results, choosing which option will work best for your business is all dependent on what your goals and objectives are, both short and long-term.

Keep reading to learn more about digital and performance marketing, how they differ from one another, and which one will work best for you, depending on your unique goals.

What is Performance Marketing?

Performance marketing is a growth strategy (not to be mistaken for performance-based marketing, where you only pay when there are measurable results). It is a form of digital marketing that focuses on growing your business through results-driven strategies. The goal of performance marketing is to achieve clicks by implementing inbound digital marketing campaigns designed to help you meet your specific business goals. These clicks then turn into leads which ultimately become sales.

Performance marketing campaigns typically include:

Key Advantages of Performance Marketing

As previously mentioned, one of the biggest advantages of performance marketing is that your strategy is focused on achieving results. This means you won’t end up wasting thousands of dollars on a strategy that produces minimal to no results. With other digital marketing strategies, you may focus purely on the top of the funnel (e.g. brand awareness), even if they do not produce any immediate monetary results. This means that although the cost of performance marketing may seem higher at first, it produces a stronger Return on Investment (ROI) and ultimately gets you faster results compared to other digital marketing strategies.

Additional benefits include:

Growth – Performance marketing is focused on growing your business revenue
Better Leads – Drive qualified leads to your website and generate sellable opportunities
Optimization – Tracking and optimizing your strategy performance enables you to constantly monitor your metrics and modify them for peak performance
Results – Performance marketing strategies can produce incredible results for your business

How Performance is Measured

As previously mentioned, performance marketing is all about performance. Performance is incredibly trackable, and everything from the cost of acquisition to average order value is highly measurable. ROI is also incredibly important and a key metric used to determine how well your performance strategy is doing.

Two digital marketers reviewing performance strategy metrics on a tablet.

When you work with a performance marketing agency, how well your campaigns are performing will be constantly monitored using certain Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) depending on your specific goals. ROI is an incredibly important metric used in performance marketing, along with the following:

CTR (Clickthrough rate)
CPC (Cost Per Click)
CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)
Conversion Rate
Number of sales and leads
Number of clicks
Goal Completion Rate
Search engine ranking
Organic/Direct traffic
And more.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing is a blanket term that refers to a variety of marketing strategies that utilize online channels to help generate leads, clicks, and sales.

A digital marketing campaign can include any of the following types of strategies:

The Main Benefits of Digital Marketing

There are numerous benefits to implementing a digital marketing strategy. With the right combination of strategies, digital marketing can help increase website traffic, improve visibility in search engines, boost leads and conversions, improve brand awareness, and more.

Additional benefits of digital marketing include:

It’s cost-effective
You can combine strategies depending on your goals
It helps generate leads and clicks
It gives you a leg up against your competition
It’s highly measurable
It enables you to reach customers at all stages of the buyer’s journey

How Performance is Measured

Like performance marketing, digital marketing tracks campaign performance using a variety of metrics and KPIs.

The most popular metrics and KPIs for digital marketers include:

Leads
Conversion Rate
Revenue
Page Views
Click-Through Rate
Customer Acquisition Cost
Customer Lifetime Value
Cost Per Lead
Web Traffic Sources
Returning Visitors
Goal Completion Rate

The Key Differences Between Digital and Performance Marketing

While Performance Marketing falls under the Digital Marketing Umbrella, there are some key distinctions between the two. Some of the biggest differences include:

Digital marketing is often used as a long-term strategy, with performance marketing as a key element that focuses on achieving short-term goals
Performance marketing is more results-driven than standard digital marketing strategies
With performance marketing, the focus is on the results: converting customers and generating more revenue for your business. With any other digital marketing strategy, you may be focusing on areas that won’t have an immediate impact on business revenue.
Performance marketing tends to produce stronger results for a higher cost

How to Choose the Right Strategy

There’s no right or wrong answer when it comes to choosing a marketing strategy for your business. Ultimately, the strategy that gives you the best results will depend on your business goals and the industry you’re competing in. If you are looking for specific results right away and are willing to pay for them, performance marketing is the way to go. If you are looking to improve your visibility while also generating leads long-term, digital marketing may be what you are looking for.

Whichever option you choose, it’s important to consider the following before implementing any marketing strategy:

Your short and long-term business goals
What specific results you are hoping to attain
Your budget
Who is your target audience

Continuing Our Track Record

At Consultus Digital, our focus is producing tangible results for our clients by developing and implementing well-thought-out performance marketing strategies. We have a proven track record of excellence when it comes to achieving our clients’ desired results, and we firmly believe that performance marketing is the best way to take your business to the next level. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you reach and exceed your business goals.