Today, an increasing number of companies are shifting their marketing budgets from traditional marketing towards performance-based marketing. Performance marketing is just what the name implies: marketing based on performance. In other words, you only pay when your ad performs or when a specific desired action is completed. Performance marketing is an excellent alternative to the more traditional marketing methods because it generally involves little to no risk for the advertiser, low costs, and a high return on investment (ROI).

There are numerous forms of performance-based marketing (sometimes called “affiliate marketing”), including: email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, pay-per-click, and pay-per-call. Today, we’re diving into how to choose the best performance marketing strategy for your business, and why pay-per-call may be right for you.

Steps for Choosing the Right Performance Marketing Strategy

Identify Your Target Market

Creating a successful marketing campaign is near-impossible without accurately defining your target market. To identify the best performance marketing strategies for your business, you must first ask yourself, “Who do I want to reach?”

Determine specific factors that define your target market such as  age, geographic location, gender, interests, industry, and so on. These factors will play a role in which performance marketing strategy you choose to use.

Also consider what motivates your target consumer and where they are in their consumer journey. Your consumer will respond to different marketing tactics depending on if  they are ready to buy, wanting to learn more about your product or service, or have never heard of your brand or solution.

Test Different Strategies

Once you’ve defined your market, it’s time to pick a few marketing channels that are relevant to who you want to target and what you are selling. For example, if your target market includes primarily people aged 13-25, social media marketing might be the way to go. If you’re trying to reach a particular industry, email marketing is an excellent option. If you provide a service, try marketing with pay-per-call.

As you start out with performance marketing, select 1-2 channels that are most relevant to your audience, and test for user engagement.

Identify the Best Strategy

Once your campaigns are up and running, track user engagement with your ads. The best part about performance-based marketing is that you only pay when the desired action is completed. For example, in a pay-per-click campaign, you only pay for your advertisement when someone clicks on your ad.

If your campaign isn’t getting the results you’d like, you can always pause or permanently end it. Additionally, you can test other marketing channels to see if they are more successful. Once you’ve identified the channel(s) that work best, stick with it and optimize your campaigns for maximum results.

Why Choose Pay-Per-Call Over Other Performance Marketing Mediums

The great thing about pay-per-call is that callers typically have the highest intent of making a purchase out of all other inbound leads. The Harvard Business Review found that 61% of mobile users prefer to call a business when they’re in the purchase phase of the buying cycle, so pay-per-call campaigns often have much higher conversion rates than other forms of performance marketing.

If your target market is likely to call for assistance when making a purchase, pay-per-call will be a good fit.  Insurance, dental, appliance repair, home services, home improvement, automotive services, and any other vertical that requires a consultation or scheduling an appointment are well-suited for a successful pay-per-call campaign.

Pay-per-call campaigns deliver high-quality, call-based leads straight to your business. The best part? You only pay for calls that meet your specified duration, location, and category, so there is little risk of spending your budget on ineffective advertising and sub-par leads. . Additionally, higher conversion rates for pay-per-call campaigns result in a higher ROI.