Learn how a performance marketing strategy can help you reach your target audience through search engine optimization, influencers, and social media.
Does the quality of your content and distribution matter when you use a performance marketing strategy? Do you get the same bang for your buck from mindless marketing as you do with data-driven tactics if you only pay for the clicks you get?
Your content and distribution capabilities define your online marketing success. Performance marketing is no exception.
Although the main benefit of performance marketing is financial – you only pay when users take a specific action – your return on investment can vary. And when your goal is sales, you don’t want to sacrifice potential customers with a misguided strategy that forgets how important content and distribution really are.
At First Media, we take performance marketing to new heights. Utilizing a strategy that fits your budget and business, we can increase the success you see from performance marketing with the power of quality content and high-scale distribution.
Performance Marketing Basics
Before we begin, here’s a quick refresher on performance marketing and why it’s an excellent choice for DTC companies.
Performance marketing practices will look different depending on the brand, but the main design is that you only pay once a specific action occurs. In many cases, that looks like your brand creating an ad and giving it to a media platform that distributes it to potential customers.
Your brand then pays the media platform for the interactions with that ad based on pre-defined key performance indicators (KPIs). Those KPIs may include clicks earned (cost-per-click/CPC), actions that lead to a conversion (cost-per-acquisition/CPA), clickthrough rates (CTR), or another metric.
Not all performance marketing strategies rely on this process alone – some marketing companies like First Media also take care of the content creation component. If your brand doesn’t have exceptional content creation capabilities or an understanding of effective distribution, performance marketing is most impactful when you partner with content experts. More on that later.
Types of performance marketing:
- Native advertising: Native ads in online publications are pieces of content that closely resemble the site’s editorial content. You can check out our brand channels, So Yummy and Blossom, to see examples of native ads in action.
- Affiliate marketing: Affiliate marketing allows you to pay affiliates (bloggers, YouTubers, or even current customers) to advertise your product or service for a profit on each sale.
- Search engine marketing: Also known as pay-per-click advertising (PPC), in SEM, your brand pays a search engine like Google or Bing to show ads on the platform (think: Google Ads). When it comes to organic SEM, SEO becomes a primary focus, as does reliance on compelling content marketing.
- Social media advertising: Social media marketing on platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok has become a staple in online retailers’ digital strategy, whether through influencer marketing or paid advertising.
You’ll also hear mentions of other forms of performance marketing, like influencer and email marketing. Great performance marketing combines multiple methods to offer a comprehensive solution.
Why do so many brands turn to performance-based marketing?
Instead of wasting money on advertising that may or may not pay off for your brand, performance marketing ensures that you only pay per click, conversions, customers, etc… any brand – regardless of budget – can appreciate that tactical use of budgeting spend. And performance marketing is an incredibly data-informed practice – it depends wholly on the agency or brand’s ability to uncover where clicks come from and how to improve them.
But performance marketing can benefit your brand on more than just your digital marketing budget. When you work with a marketing agency specializing in high-quality content and distribution, your dollars go further. New customers, more sales, enhanced brand position – your opportunities are as substantial as your partner’s ability to build.
First Media’s Approach to Performance Marketing
Marketing companies often make promises of significant growth without the channels, reach, and content-creation abilities to back it up. Because First Media leverages high-quality custom content, social media advertising, and the strength of our brands, our partners get access to the most effective toolkit for the e-commerce DTC world.
Creative custom content
Content is how we talk to audiences. In digital advertising, it’s how you build brand awareness, gain brand trust, and get new loyal customers.
Your customers are inundated with content every moment of every day. It’s not enough to follow trends. You need content that stands out and inspires users as they sift through endless media streams.
We execute action-driven content that we know users will identify and engage with. Understanding what drives consumers, we overlay specific messaging and calls to action within a paid approach. Incorporating top visual storytelling formats and industry-leading production capabilities, we create content that converts to get measurable results for your specific goals.
By targeting users we know are already aware and interested in custom action-driven content that intrigues and excites, we address your lower funnel metrics, earning you huge views, massive engagement, and substantial conversions.
Superior distribution capabilities
Content is only as good as its distribution partner – you need both to function well to impact your audience. We take the custom-crafted content for our partners and ensure it reaches your users’ eyes through our highly populated brand channels, So Yummy, Blossom, Blusher, and BabyFirst. Distributing your content on brand channels that already engage mass viewership ensures that it gets in front of your potential customers and target audience.
Our channels get reach that shows: So Yummy earned twice the number of views with five times less post volume than the nearest competitor in food and drink content. Blossom, our home and DIY publishing channel, has similar social value, outperforming all other publishers in its Facebook niche with fewer posts.
Engaging that volume of consumers on social media ensures your brand’s presence in the minds of your target audience. On top of that, our content is translated for distribution in 17 countries and adapted for geotargeting, giving you all the benefits of a laser-focused audience reach: increased engagement, informed strategy, and more.
Influencer and social media marketing
Affiliate marketing and influencer marketing on social media have taken the spotlight in performance marketing solutions. Because of how effectively they get users to take desired actions, brands turn to partnerships with social media stars, micro-influencers, and current customers. And when it comes to performance marketing, those extra clicks from an influencer can make all the difference.
We understand the strength of social suggestion, so we focus on influencer marketing within our performance marketing work, giving you a broad reach. This, paired with our social publishing channels, communicates to your audience via social proof that your brand is trusted, empowering them to convert.
Data and analytics
When you attack your marketing from a qualified performance perspective, you get detailed insight into which performance marketing campaigns earned the most clicks, downloads, or highest conversion rate. Because this type of digital marketing is inherently focused on tracking attribution, you always know which display ads give you the desired actions, which influencer campaigns sent the most users to your landing page, and more. You can use that information to adapt future marketing efforts to merge any gaps in your performance marketing channels.
First Media’s data-driven strategy centralizes that data to give you real-time reporting that offers valuable insight into your campaigns. Employing powerful analytics and proprietary AI technology, our partners get actionable detail and transparency into our performance strategy.
Benefits of Performance Marketing with First Media
Performance marketing solutions are a versatile tool for DTC brands, but partnering with the right content creation agency can make or break your brand’s success.
Take a look at our partnership with Factor75 as an example of the strength of a data-driven approach to performance-based marketing and digital content creation:
We set out to unlock new scale and growth for Factor75. In focusing our content marketing strategy on driving the challenging lower-funnel conversion metrics from ad discovery, our goal was to build higher-funnel awareness and consideration simultaneously. By publishing a series of 700 ads on our brand channel So Yummy, we ensured Factor stood out among its competitors. Factor’s First Media content proved functional and profitable when placed in a torrent of skippable content on TikTok and Instagram Reels. Factor75 unlocked new audiences, helping it to become the number one ready-to-eat meal kit company in 2021.
First Media’s performance marketing delivers unparalleled scale with our in-house production, media purchasing efficiencies, and real-time reporting. Compared to industry benchmarks, we offer:
- Lower cost-per-mille (CPM): Pricing is important. Our strategies ensure that your brand’s marketing budget goes toward content that will get you the impressions you want.
- Lower bounce rate: Keep your users on your website for longer. The level of engagement our brands get from high-quality content helps encourage users to explore your site further.
- Better add-to-cart rate: Get the sales your brand strives for. With the right content and distribution, you can propel customers down the marketing funnel to add items to their carts.
Your Perfect Performance Marketing Partner
Are you looking for a partner to match the performance of your brand? First Media can help you expand on your current approach, develop new marketing strategies, and get valuable insight into optimizing your brand’s presence, sales, and reach. Join First Media to see how far superior performance marketing can take your brand.
