4 Steps to Master Lead Generation Marketing with Performance Marketing

During this time of COVID-19, marketers are looking to digital tactics to supplement the lead generation efforts that would have taken other forms under normal circumstances. Performance marketing is an efficient way to increase lead generation, especially for marketers in the education, personal finance and insurance verticals, whose offerings are in demand now more than ever. We know that performance marketing might be uncharted territory for some marketers with lead generation responsibilities, but the team at Perform[cb] has been helping marketers do just that for decades, and we’re here to help guide you through the necessary steps to launch and maintain a successful lead generation campaign:

1. Target Audience and Measurable Goals
2. Compliance and Brand Standards
3. Recruiting and Sustaining Long-Term Partnerships
4. Optimizations and Technology
   
   

Defining Target Audience and Measurable Goals

It’s pertinent to have a clear idea of your ideal client and the KPIs and goals of your campaign.  To define your ideal client or customer, look to your current customers to determine who to target: what are some of the characteristics that your best qualified leads have in common? What types of leads have had the highest conversion rates? By answering questions like these, the beginnings of your strategy are born and become clear. Once an advertiser understands who their target audience is, it’s time to start considering what measurable goals or KPIs should be. What is your brand looking to capture? Email addresses for a newsletter, phone numbers to schedule a meeting, an immediate conversion or sale? In understanding what the end result should look like, brands can enable themselves to create a campaign centered around achieving that goal.

For example, as covered in Perform[cb]’s whitepaper Pivoting in a Pandemic, personal finance has remained one of the strongest verticals in the performance marketing space, despite the recession that’s being felt nationwide. Investment apps and platforms have experienced an upswing during this time of economic downturn; historically these brands have been known to pull back on marketing spend during periods of weak markets, but that has not been the case as of late. The personal finance vertical saw an 89% increase in ad spend in the time since the pandemic started compared to the months before. In knowing their services are in high demand, investment apps have been able to capitalize on their target audiences and expand their lead gen reach. Given the opportunity and increased interest from consumers, these investment companies have experienced an influx in user acquisition and high engagement in spite of the market’s recent downward trend.

Compliance and Brand Standards 

With the target audience and measurable goals in mind, marketers should next consider their compliance terms and how to go about maintaining brand safety. Compliance standards are crucial to ensuring the health and safety of the campaign prior to recruiting affiliate partners. In addition to compliance standards, brand standards and messaging need to be ironed out and finalized to provide affiliate partners with the proper guidelines to promote the campaign and brand as a whole. If not done or done incorrectly, the campaign can be vulnerable to fraud or incurring the wrong users due to lack of brand awareness and compliance guidelines. Brands who are new to the performance space or who are seeking expertise should strongly consider working with a Network to take the heavy lifting off of their own plates. 

The Perform[cb] Network Compliance team provides the highest level of anti-fraud monitoring and reporting 24/7 for active marketers and campaigns. In doing so, Perform[cb] advertisers can maintain the expectation that their campaigns are acquiring the right users without the concern of fraud.

Recruiting and Nurturing Sustainable Partnerships

The next important step in devising a lead gen strategy is to recruit the right publishing partners and affiliates to promote the campaign, and then nurturing and growing those relationships. Within the performance marketing space, it is not uncommon for 80% of a campaign’s success to be driven by 20% of the affiliate partners promoting the offer. This means quality is the name of the game when it comes to recruiting affiliate partners to join the campaign. It can be tempting to approve every affiliate application that comes through, however, too many affiliate partners can over-saturate the campaign and make it difficult to maintain. For foolproof vetting, work with a Network that specializes in affiliate partner curation to hone in on quality publishers who will deliver results and drive high quality leads to your offer. 

Launch, Evaluate, Optimize

Once meaningful relationships have been formed, the final steps in launching a lead gen campaign are evaluation and optimization. Now that the campaign is off the ground and running, take a step back to see what has been accomplished, where faults may lie, and how the campaign can be strengthened even further. Since performance marketing efforts are tracked in real-time, optimizations can be easily applied on a regular basis. For those marketers working with a Network, optimizations are typically made by the account manager in accordance with the marketer’s desired KPIs, which takes the weight of constantly monitoring the campaign off of the marketer. As leads start to enter a marketer’s pipeline, it’s important to continue to nurture those leads with creative campaigns and relevant content; Networks are able to nurture such leads on behalf of the marketer to ensure the user converts. By staying on top of leads and distributing relevant content, marketers may see higher conversion rates in addition to inserting themselves as thought leaders within their respective industries. 

Although this time of uncertainty can be jarring and discouraging, there is still plenty of opportunity for growth within the marketing realm. Now more than ever, consumers are looking for distraction, comfort, and security. Marketers have the chance to insert themselves into unprecedented marketplaces where lead generation can play an even more essential role in the livelihood of businesses. So, how will your brand respond?

Sources:
Forbes

Read our case study to learn how Quotewizard increased lead generation by 92,000% (no, that’s not a typo)!

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