Performance marketing is the optimal online strategy for business-to-business (B2B) and technology marketers who are focused on lead generation and demand creation. The Performance Model allows marketers the ability to derive extra value from their online marketing dollars and eliminates the risk associated with traditional pay-for-play advertising. Key benefits are minimal risk, payment only upon performance, real-time results with highly qualified leads, and measurable response.
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HOW B2B MARKETERS CAN BENEFIT FROM A NEW PERFORMANCE-BASED
1. Performance Advertising
HOW BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETERS
CAN BENEFIT FROM A NEW
PAY-FOR-PERFORMANCE STRATEGY
TW
NETWORKS
2. PERFORMANCE ADVERTISING 1
In brief
Performance advertising is a new
online marketing strategy based on
an innovative pay-for-performance
model. For business-to-business
(B2B) and technology marketers
who are focused on lead generation
and demand creation, this strategy
exceeds the capabilities of traditional
space advertising models.
Key benefits are minimal risk,
payment only upon performance,
real-time results with highly qualified
leads, and measurable response.
3. PERFORMANCE ADVERTISING 2
Seeking an attractive alternative to traditional advertising
For decades, the most visible component of message delivery for most B2B and technology marketers has
been space advertising — first in print, and in recent years also online. Marketers pay publishers of trade
magazines, technical journals, and Web sites or portals to run ads in their space.
This model still represents a successful part of the marketing mix for advertisers desiring brand building.
However, space advertising has become ineffective for successful lead generation. It requires advertisers to
pay well in advance for results.Yet marketers receive few responses to these ads, often discover many of
the responses they do receive to be of low quality, and find it difficult to calculate their return on
investment (ROI).
In this era of increasingly scarce resources, many marketers — and their management teams — demand
more.They require quantitative measurements of predictable returns on their marketing investment.They
want more and better-qualified leads.
They demand a new form of advertising that can cut their risk
and ensure profits through sales growth.
Introducing performance advertising
In performance advertising, a marketer runs advertising content on a publisher’s Web site or portal under
an innovative new model.
In this model, the marketer relinquishes control of ad location and frequency to the publisher. In return, the
publisher agrees to forego payment in advance. Instead, the advertiser pays only after a validated lead or other
action of value — such as a click, a download, or a registration by a prospect who meets agreed-upon quality
criteria — is generated.
In other words, payment comes only upon proven performance.
Performance advertising changes the whole dynamic of online advertising. Instead of purchasing space
based upon desired locations and ad frequency, then hoping for results — marketers can now just buy
actual results.
This new strategy is highly measurable. Performance advertising provides marketers with insights that
surpass traditional Web metrics such as page views and click-through rates.A performance advertising
model instead allows such measurements as qualified lead generation and prospect conversion rates.These
permit marketers to perform real-time campaign customization and more accurate calculation of ROI.
True results-based performance advertising (also called performance marketing or affiliate marketing) is
new to the B2B space.Yet its revolutionary potential has been demonstrated in another, even larger, arena.
4. PERFORMANCE ADVERTISING 3
It’s already a proven success in online consumer and retail marketing for companies such as Amazon, eBay,
Staples, Marriott, and Target. In fact, it’s currently a $6 billion channel to market — with a 13% annual
growth rate.
Performance advertising now is proving to be a natural fit for B2B and technology marketers as well.As in
the consumer realm, B2B advertisers have products and services they wish to sell on the Internet, and
new customers they wish to access. Publishers have advertising space on their online sites for which they
seek new advertisers. Performance marketing brings them together. It can forge a mutually beneficial
relationship based on this new pay-for-performance model.
Benefits and results How Performance Advertising Performs
This new results-based strategy is already proving an effective
way for B2B marketers to maximize the value of their online
Case 1: Introducing
advertising dollars, while eliminating hazards associated with
Industrial Technology
On a tight budget, an industrial supplier
traditional pay-for-play advertising. needed a hard-hitting introduction for its
latest technology.The company’s marketers
chose a 60-day performance advertising
Several key benefits have become apparent: campaign. Online ads carried by two Web
publishers offered a free white paper
Low or no risk. As one practitioner put it succinctly,“With explaining how the technology could be
performance advertising, marketers can stop buying eyeballs — applied in the target market.
and start buying actions.” This strategy eliminates the risk of
spending large sums to purchase impressions that may or may
Results
> Impressions 62,871
> Click-throughs 2,084
not translate into prospect interest, let alone prospect action > Qualified leads 289
or actual customer sales. > Cost per lead $60
> Lead conversion rate 14%
Advertisers can be sure a performance advertising lead is an > Total cost $17,340
interested prospect. Because that prospect has already expressed Performance advertising generated strong
interest through an action such as downloading a white paper brand recognition, excellent lead quality
and qualification, and numerous quotations
or registering for a Webinar. If the advertiser has designed that upon sales follow-up.
action properly, the action itself draws the prospect well down
the path toward becoming a paying customer.
The marketer’s budget is never at risk. If a given message doesn’t reach or resonate with an interested
audience, and no actions result, the advertiser simply doesn’t pay for it. Instead, the marketer can devote
his or her funds to running another message or trying another publisher.
Payment only upon performance. Here is where performance advertising most directly meets
modern marketers’ — and management’s — demands for maximum cost-effectiveness.
Publishers have become highly creative in offering advertisers performance-based products.These have
included Webinars or seminars with pay-per-registration agreements, videos with pay-per-view
arrangements, e-newsletter sponsorships, and e-mail blasts.
Advertisers who purchase participation in products like these agree with the publisher beforehand on
what parameters will constitute a qualified lead.As a campaign runs and site visitors begin to take actions
5. PERFORMANCE ADVERTISING 4
that tentatively identify them as leads, their information is instantly compared against given lead
parameters. Nonvalid leads are weeded out, and advertisers are not charged for them.
Advertisers pay only for proven performance and real results.That’s why proponents declare that
performance advertising takes advertiser ROI to a whole new level.
Real-time results. Unlike print-based media, performance advertising generates leads in real time.
Demand can be created for a product or service almost immediately.
Example: in less than 2 weeks, one life sciences software firm acquired almost 100 qualified leads
through a single performance-based ad placed on one Web site.
Measurable response. Since performance advertising is
conducted online, it’s possible to measure almost everything How Performance Advertising Performs
about it, as it occurs.
For instance, whether or not a given lead meets preset criteria
Case 2: Capturing
for validity can be determined immediately — not weeks or
Life Sciences Leads
A life sciences company decided to test
months after a media placement. In addition, the advertiser performance advertising to support its
lead generation program.A 30-day
knows what ad and publisher generated the lead, and what campaign run with one Web publisher
incentive the lead responded to. offered a free scientific paper on FDA
compliance for a specific type of laboratory
testing.The company’s marketers accepted
A well-designed performance advertising measurement system only North American leads.
can efficiently capture full prospect data and provide
comprehensive metrics on campaign performance. It can also Results
> Impressions 12,029
share this data with the advertiser’s customer relationship > Click-throughs 409
management (CRM) database. Precise CRM data will be vital > Qualified leads 68
> Cost per lead $60
for future marketing campaigns, as well as for increasingly > Lead conversion rate 17%
valuable lead nurturing efforts. > Total cost $4,080
Performance advertising achieved a cost
As one industrial advertiser said,“I was amazed that each
per lead significantly lower than the
morning, a number of leads were deposited with full prospect company’s traditional advertising program.
data in my CRM database, ready for immediate follow-up. The marketers determined to mainstream
this strategy for future lead generation.
The leads were extremely high-quality and produced
many quotations.”
This immediacy and wide prospect information bandwidth make it easier for
advertisers to justify a given marketing expenditure.
Tracking and reporting
Ensuring that the predetermined criteria for lead qualification are met and performing subsequent
campaign analyses are important components of any successful performance advertising campaign.
B2B publishers offering this strategy must employ full-fledged performance marketing infrastructures,
such as TW Solutions’ LinkShadowTM system, to perform these functions.
The infrastructure monitors and logs visitor activities, tracking actions such as click-throughs and
conversions. It provides Web landing pages and registration forms that interface seamlessly with the
6. PERFORMANCE ADVERTISING 5
advertiser’s Web site. It captures full prospect data (minimally name, job title, organization, phone, and e-mail),
answers to lead qualification questions, and survey responses in real time to populate lead and CRM
databases, while also closely tracking costs — all across multiple campaigns and Web sites.
Advertisers receive comprehensive campaign performance reports.These enable them to calculate real-time
metrics from cost per lead through full campaign ROI, for continual measurement and efficient optimization.
Values and costs
In the current economic climate, advertisers are almost universally cutting budgets. So ROI, conversion rates,
and cost per acquisition are more critical than ever — as is the avoidance of risk.
With performance advertising, payment for ads and links that a publisher carries on its site or portal is made
only for performance, according to rates the advertiser negotiates with the publisher.These rates are based
on variables such as the value of the offered product or service, lead qualification parameters, site traffic, or
the circulation of a given e-newsletter.The accompanying chart shows the underlying value driving these
costs.The higher the degree of interaction with a given message, the more valuable the action becomes to
the advertiser.
Higher-value interactions
between your site and visitors
demand greater prices
$$$$$ PPS (sales)
Perceived $$$$ PPL (lead conversions)
value by
advertiser $$$ PPA (actions – downloads, views, site interaction)
$$ PPC (clicks)
$ CPM (page views and impressions)
Revenue potential
Revenue potential
t t l
Costs for campaign startup and creative are the same as with traditional online advertising. In addition,
performance advertising all but eliminates the inevitable waste accompanying traditional campaigns —
campaigns that attract both qualified and unqualified eyeballs alike, and generate unwelcome percentages
of off-target leads.
Performance-based payment is made only after the advertisement has performed its task of motivating a
specified action by a validated prospect responding to a specific offer or incentive. So lead streams are
certain to be of the very highest quality.
7. PERFORMANCE ADVERTISING 6
The result: for the right messages delivered to the right prospect in the right environment, performance
advertising excels. It achieves significantly lower costs and higher values than with traditional models.
Using this scorecard, performance gaps and successes in the marketing program are revealed quickly,
and the company can adjust accordingly.
Messages and incentives
Since they are paid only when results are produced, publishers tend to give more prominence and frequency
to offers and messages that they’re convinced will attract strong responses. If a particular message or
campaign doesn’t possess or can’t be given impactful creative and a strong incentive, it’s unlikely to succeed
with this model.
Thus well-crafted creative messages plus high-value offers and incentives are essential to making performance
advertising a success. Strong attractors are required to motivate the click-throughs, actions, and registrations
that are keys to performance-based strategies.
In B2B, knowledge-based content and offers have proven especially effective.
That includes incentives such as these:
> White papers
> Case studies
> Management or application briefs
> Webinars and seminars
> Downloads of free software
> Videos and podcasts
> Online cost calculators and configurators
Summary
Performance advertising represents a powerful new tool for B2B and technology marketers. It shows proven
superiority as a lead generation channel when compared to traditional space advertising. It demonstrates
advantages such as minimal risk, pay-on-performance value, real-time results, and efficient measurement and
tracking. Performance-based advertisers combine targeted messages with strong incentives to achieve
unprecedented sales growth and success.
TW Networks can provide further details on performance marketing methods and results.Visit
www.twnetworks.com or call 781-793-9389 for more information on this innovative marketing strategy.