Demystifying The Downsides Of Performance Marketing

Vatsal Rajgor Jan 29, 2021

In the simplest terms, performance marketing is understood as marketing optimised to drive business revenue through ads. It is an online advertising strategy that is a combination of paid advertising and brand marketing together. However, there are many common misconceptions to believe that performance marketing is a model where an advertiser pays only for a result of a business transaction. While this is true in principle there is a whole lot more to Performance Marketing than just this.

Performance Marketing includes media buys on Self-served and managed platforms with continuous monitoring of how the different platforms and channels are working to bring out the results for the advertiser. Performance marketing campaigns are designed to drive better ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) and are flexible to work on any budget scale, all brands swear by performance marketing as a big part of their overall marketing spends.

While it looks all great in theory, performance marketing is a specialised skill, and agencies or advertisers often fall prey to many pitfalls of performance marketing. Over-expectations from the campaigns, lack of understanding of audiences, lack of knowledge of the platforms, or unclear/ unreasonable expectations often brings disappointment instead of the results the advertiser expects from its performance marketing campaigns. This often leads to stress, arguments and creates a reactive approach rather than a strong thought-out strategy.

Most times the downside is due to an unclear plan, strategy, or a lack of knowledge which can be easily remedied. Let us look at some of the common complaints on performance marketing and see if we can bust some of the myths around us.

Round The Clock Attention Required

Digital marketing as an industry requires extra hours, and performance marketing is no exception. According to a poll by the Search Engine Journal, 33% of digital marketers work 9-12 hours on a daily basis, with around 15% of the digital marketing pros claim that “If I’m awake, I’m working.”

Although work-life balance is always a topic of discussion for the marketing profession, however, to blame performance marketing as the major reason for the stress would be unfair. There is no denying the fact that performance marketing requires a lot of attention to the campaigns and how different platforms are working together to deliver the overall results, it also requires a lot of mathematical calculations to arrive at the right media mix with the correct attribution to truly deliver the results. With that said this is often done without a proper POA and which is almost all times the major reason for the stress.

Often a clear plan for the campaigns and a clear expectation setting can go a long way in reducing the stress that comes with managing a performance marketing campaign.

Bigger Is Better

There is a common saying “Money makes money” but with Performance marketing, this is not the case, where a higher budget dictates a completely different strategy and whole different campaign structure, as long as the agency knows what they’re doing of course.

Performance marketing and other digital marketing models is the reason smaller businesses can compete directly with larger ones. It all falls onto the shoulder of the team responsible for the account.

Through proper planning and execution, performance marketing can grow a small business into a big one.

Quick In Terms Of Showing A Result

Performance marketing has a bad misconception that it will start showing results almost immediately and in some cases it does. However different industries and products have their own learning curve when it comes to performance marketing. Any marketing activity needs to start with a strong understanding of the brand, product, and the users, it requires analysing the campaigns and taking proper course corrections wherever required and this requires time. Setting expectations from the campaigns with proper time-bound KPIs could go long way in reducing the wrong expectations from the team.

Performance marketing will continue to evolve as time progresses, but there is one thing for certain: Brands NEED to go digital, especially with how quickly the internet gains its users. Hence, it is always best to connect with experts to scale up one’s brand and boost growth.