Table of contents

    Today, digital marketing is an integral part of business – companies worldwide spend more and more money on online advertising. However, in order to achieve its full potential, a meticulous strategy must be developed. In this article, we will discuss the key steps you need to take to create an effective performance marketing strategy.

    performance marketing

    What is Performance Marketing? 

    Simply put, performance marketing is a form of paid advertising that aims to achieve a specific marketing goal or metric, such as increasing brand visibility, intensifying website traffic, generating leads or conversions.

    What are the benefits of Performance Marketing?

    The main benefits that can be gained by implementing a performance marketing strategy are:

    1. Pay for results 

    In performance marketing, advertisers pay only for specific, measurable results, such as successful transactions, lead generation, sales, or clicks. This model eliminates the need to pay for advertising campaigns that do not produce the desired results. As a result, companies achieve a much higher return on investment because they pay only for actual customer actions, leading to more efficient use of the marketing budget.

    2. Real-time tracking

    Performance marketing enables real-time campaign tracking. Advertisers can use analytics tools to monitor and optimize campaigns in real-time, adjusting them accordingly to improve performance.

    Performance marketing can be used to monitor and optimize campaigns in real-time.

    3. Specific actions 

    Performance marketing campaigns can be highly targeted to reach specific audiences based on demographics, interests, location and behaviour, increasing their effectiveness.

    4. Broad reach 

    Companies can reach potential customers through performance marketing across multiple platforms, such as social media, search engines, email and mobile apps.

    5. Transparent return on investment 

    Because every action is tracked, companies can easily calculate the return on investment (or ROI – return on investment) and properly evaluate the effectiveness of their campaigns.

    6. Increased brand visibility 

    Even if the user does not perform the desired action, performance marketing still clearly increases brand exposure.

    7. Low risk of loss 

    Because payment is made only for actions performed (such as clicking on an ad, making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter), the level of risk of loss is low compared to traditional marketing methods, where payment is made regardless of the result.

    8. Scalability 

    Performance marketing campaigns can be scaled up or down, allowing companies to manage their marketing efforts according to their current needs and budget.

    How to create an effective performance marketing strategy?


    To maximize your return on investment in online advertising, it’s a good idea to draft a corporate document that is your brand’s performance marketing strategy. Here are some of the most important steps: 

    1. Identify the goals of your efforts 

    The foundation of any strategy is a clear definition of goals, so the first step in building an effective performance marketing strategy should be to define clear business objectives and key performance indicators (i.e. KPI – Key Performance Indicators). Before beginning marketing efforts, think about what you want to achieve. Do you want to increase your brand’s reach, increase sales, or perhaps attract new customers? By identifying specific goals, you can adjust your marketing efforts on an ongoing basis to focus on achieving these results.

    2. Know your target 

    Understanding your target audience is crucial to a successful performance marketing strategy. You need to know who your potential customers are and what their needs, preferences, behaviours and buying habits are. To do this, conduct market research and collect and regularly analyze demographic, psychographic and behavioral data. The better you know your audience, the easier it will be to tailor your marketing campaigns to hit their expectations! 

    3. Determine the message of your efforts

    Depending on your established goals, define your campaign message accordingly. Tailor it to your brand’s style, using language and images that resonate with your target audience, and create short, strong and specific calls to action (i.e. CTA – pronounced Call to Action).

    4. Use valuable content

    For your campaigns, use content that is interesting, engaging and useful to your target audience. This can be blog articles, tutorials, infographics, videos or webinars. The more valuable your content is, the better the user engagement and conversion chances. You don’t have to create them all over again – it’s a good idea to use content you’ve created before, possibly tailoring it to your current needs. 

    5. Personalize messages 

    Use the data you collect on your customer’s buying behaviour to deliver the most tailored and compelling marketing content possible. The more personalized your communications, the higher the chances of increasing engagement and conversions. 

    6. Plan your brand positioning 

    Brand positioning refers to how you want your audience to perceive your brand. Once you’ve determined your campaign message, decide how to position yourself. For example, you may choose to emphasize great customer service, affordable prices or how you can help customers solve their problems. Determine what sets you apart from the competition, and don’t be afraid to capitalize on it! 

    7. Choose the right channels and tools 

    Performance marketing includes a number of different channels and tools, such as Google Ads, Google Display Network, social media ads, smart programmatic campaigns, affiliate marketing, and even email marketing. Choose the ones that best suit both your business goals and the preferences and behaviours of your target audience. 

    8. Continually test and optimize 

    Remember to use analytical tools to track and measure the effectiveness of your campaigns. Performance marketing is the process of constantly testing, analyzing and optimizing your marketing campaigns. Conduct A/B testing (i.e. comparing two or more versions of the same message) and experiment with different content, offers and graphic elements to identify those that generate the best results. Test various variations of ads, offers or landing pages to find out which are the most optimal for your business. Regular analysis will allow you to react quickly and make the necessary changes to achieve better results. Also monitor performance metrics, such as click-through rate (or CTR – Click-Through Rate), conversion rate or customer acquisition cost (or CAC – Customer Acquisition Cost), and adjust your efforts on an ongoing basis based on the data obtained, as well as compare your results to your goals and identify areas that need improvement.

    9. Prepare your website 

    After running a performance-based marketing campaign, you will likely see an increase in traffic to your website. Therefore, ensure it is ready for this increase and in line with the campaign’s message. Remember that an improper website can discourage customers from using your company’s services! Even if you manage to increase traffic to your website/shop, you may still lose potential customers, for example, due to poor UX (i.e. user experience – User Experience).

    Performance Marketing Limitations

    Performance marketing is a sort of successor to a much older field – direct advertising, usually involving delivering advertising materials directly to a potential customer. Thinking of performance marketing as „digital direct advertising” can help you understand its limitations, such as:

    • Lack of focus on brand-building

    Performance marketing is highly goal-oriented and conversion-focused. It means identifying the market segment most likely to convert and nurturing it through multiple touchpoints. In other words, if you want to introduce your brand to a large number of people, this is not the best strategy.

    • Risk of brand dilution 

    Performance marketing is driven by actions that trigger a response (usually via the aforementioned CTA). This means that almost every online ad asks the recipient to perform some action, such as a purchase. So, if you want to build brand value or increase publicity for your brand, too many performance activities can dilute your brand’s message and cause audiences to stop paying attention.

    • False revenue attribution

    Performance marketing specialists are still unable to say with certainty exactly how much revenue their ads have generated. This is partly due to recent changes in privacy policies: Many browsers restrict advertisers’ ability to track user actions (such as conversions). Marketers increasingly use holistic reporting models to make the right campaign decisions, relying on CAC and CLTV (Customer Lifetime Value) metrics such as MER (Marketing Efficiency Ratio).

    Effective Performance Marketing Strategy-Examples-of-Inspiration 

    If you want to expand your knowledge on how to build good online marketing strategies, we can recommend you: 

    Effective Performance Marketing Strategy-Summary 

    An effective performance marketing strategy requires clear goals, a deep understanding of the target audience, selecting the right channels and tools, personalising content, and continuous data monitoring, testing and optimization. Building such a strategy can be a challenge, but with a consistent approach and systematic data analysis, you can achieve significant increases in the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, sales and profits for your business. If you need help building a marketing strategy, contact Up&More – a performance marketing agency

    We encourage you to invest in building a solid strategy while emphasizing that the first version of the strategy is not always immediately successful. Therefore, don’t be discouraged if your investment in performance marketing doesn’t pay you back right away – it often requires a lot of time spent observing, analyzing, comparing, drawing conclusions, brainstorming, creating the right creatives or… learning from your mistakes, so you don’t repeat them in the future! We wish you good luck 🙂 

    Let's talk!

    Tomasz Starzyński
    Tomasz Starzyński

    CEO and managing partner at Up&More. He is responsible for the development of the agency and coordinates the work of the SEM/SEO and paid social departments. He oversees the introduction of new products and advertising tools in the company and the automation of processes.