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How Performance Marketing Works: 9 Tools You Can Use

Vlad Kovalskiy
August 31, 2023
Last updated: March 11, 2024
Many companies use employee programs as a way to attract individuals and create a sense of engagement among their current employees. These programs encourage employees to refer candidates for job openings, which can lead to good cultural fit and higher retention rates. In return for their efforts, employees are often rewarded with cash bonuses or other incentives, motivating them to participate in the process.

This concept is similar to performance marketing, where marketers set goals or key performance indicators (KPIs) and reward partners or individuals based on achieving those objectives. Performance marketing focuses on results such as driving conversions, sales leads, or other desired actions. By paying for outcomes, advertisers can ensure that their marketing budgets are allocated efficiently and yield a higher return on investment (ROI).

How performance marketing works: To create a performance marketing strategy, businesses must first clearly define their objectives. Whether it's boosting sales, acquiring customers, or increasing brand awareness, setting achievable goals is crucial. After setting these objectives it then becomes crucial to select the right partners or channels. This might include teaming up with influencers, publishers, or other online platforms that have a connection with the desired audience and can generate interaction.

The effectiveness of performance marketing greatly depends on tracking and attributing conversions to the partners involved. By utilizing tracking tools and software, businesses ensure that each partner's contribution is duly acknowledged and rewarded. These tools offer real-time data and insights that empower marketers to assess campaign performance, optimize strategies, and make data-driven decisions. Let’s get straight to the topic and find out exactly how this offer will come in handy for your company.


What is performance marketing?

Performance marketing strategy focuses on achieving results, distinguishing it from advertising campaigns that offer no guarantee of return on investment. With performance marketing, advertisers only pay when specific goals are accomplished, such as a customer making a purchase or filling out a form on a landing page. It's important to highlight that experienced media buyers may face challenges if there is a disconnect between the campaign and the intended audience.

Affiliate marketing is one form of performance marketing. You should know that commissions there are earned after each sale or targeted conversion. At the same time, performance marketing extends beyond affiliate marketing.

So don't miss this opportunity where you can optimize your marketing issues and establish performance standards. Let’s take a look at various methods aimed at enhancing overall company performance and how executing performance marketing works.


Different Types of Performance Marketing

When it comes to your campaigns there are performance marketing partners and channels you should consider that work executing performance marketing:

  1. Affiliate marketing: This involves a partner using a code or link to promote an advertiser's offerings to their audience. They get paid based on the conversions tracked through their link.

  2. Influencer marketing: Brands collaborate with creators and influencers who promote their offers to their audiences, encouraging them to take action.

  3. Paid advertising: Businesses team up with publishers to display ads (e.g. on web pages) and compensate the publishers for actions such as clicks, purchases made after clicking or the number of impressions where the ad is featured.

  4. Search engine marketing (SEM): Advertisers showcase ads in search results for terms related to their business and pay the publisher when their ad is clicked.

  5. Native advertising: Advertisers create ads that seamlessly blend in with the channels they appear on, compensating affiliates or influencers based on achieving conversion goals.

  6. Social media marketing: Creators and influencers advertise on social media platforms on behalf of partners.

How Performance Marketing Works

First Define your goals

When it comes to marketing campaigns, it's crucial to have objectives in mind. What are you aiming to achieve? How to create a performance marketing strategy? It could be building brand awareness, boosting sales, for a product line, generating leads, or something else entirely. For instance, if your focus is on attracting leads, you may set a performance marketing target of acquiring 500 leads. Once you have your goals defined you can choose the publisher or partner that aligns best with helping you to reach them. You also need to know how to measure performance marketing.

Second, Identify your partners

Finding the right publisher or partner requires research as it is a crucial step in motivating people to take action. Nowadays influencers have gained popularity as partners due to the bond of trust they share with their audience. An influencer could be a YouTuber who includes an affiliate link in their video description or a blogger who adds a backlink to your landing page within their written content. Once you have identified your partner or preferred channel, you can also establish a payment structure. Imagine a situation in which you opt for Search Engine Marketing; you might develop a program with a Google payment system based on impressions or clicks. At the same time, with an influencer partnership, you would determine the payment terms and amount once your desired objectives are achieved.

Third, Generate and assign IDs

So let’s go further right now and understand how to create a performance marketing strategy! You should prepare distinct tracking links or URLs with codes. This step is really very important, as it allows you to accurately attribute any actions to your partner or publisher using a code, URL or UTM parameter. To be honest, many individuals opt for automated tracking systems to ensure the assignment of conversions. Fewer and fewer of them handle this manually.


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Tools You Can Use in Digital Marketing Software

1. PartnerStack

Price: Contact for pricing.

If you're operating a SaaS company and interested in building a partner program, specialists recommend considering PartnerStack. It is one of the top performance marketing software.

Why It Is Useful?

PartnerStack offers the option to select from a network of partners or recruit your preferred partners. They provide a customized partner automated onboarding process to effortlessly share training resources. Additionally, their campaign tracking feature allows you to gain insights into performance metrics and initiate payments accordingly.

2. LeadDyno

Price: $50/month (Starter), $130/mo (Plus), more advanced pricing for businesses with more than 15,000 unique site visitors per month.

LeadDyno provides brands with the tools to develop an affiliate program that effectively aligns rewards with your desired actions. It is another good option from one of the top performance marketing software.

Why It Is Useful?

Establishes links, codes or assigns URLs to each partner and utilizes an affiliate dashboard to guarantee attribution of conversions. Tailors a payment structure according to your metrics and effortlessly sends out payments.

3. Partnerize

Price: Contact for pricing

Partnerize provides a user dashboard that simplifies partner management. It is one of the top performance marketing software.

Why It Is Useful?

Creates a network of partners by invitation in performance marketing software. Receive automated partner suggestions, from their extensive partner network.

Gain access to up-to-date campaign data to keep track of partner performance effectively.

Tailor commission structures for partners. Streamline the payment and reward process through automation.

4. AnyTrack.io

Price: 2 weeks free trial; $50/month (Basic), $150/month (Personal), $300/month (Advanced)

Using AnyTrack makes attribution reporting a breeze.

Why It Is Useful?

Simply assign a tag to each of your partners and AnyTrack will automatically track, attribute, and synchronize your conversions in performance marketing software.

Gain insights, by tracking every engagement and sale to better understand performance.

You can also seamlessly integrate your custom affiliate network for functionality.

5. Everflow

Price: $750/month (Core plan), contact for custom pricing

It is one of the top performance marketing software. Everflow aims to simplify the management of partnerships making sure that you achieve your desired outcomes.

Why It Is Useful?

The developers created a platform for users' usability, which allows them to bring partners on board without the hard work. It also helps handle partnerships effectively by understanding how to measure performance marketing.

Users have an opportunity to keep track of every referral and lead, every day. And ensure attribution of conversion events to each partner at the same time. 

It is easy to design a payout system; it compensates partners for your needs and goals. But you should remember that dealing with affiliates can be sometimes quite challenging. When it comes to situations where you need to manage links, it is one of the hardest things in this area, but you can use special tools to simplify your work in performance marketing software.

6. Impact

Price: Contact for pricing

The Impact tool simplifies the process of forming partnerships starting from the initial contact until the final payment is made.

Why It Is Useful?

The concept is similar to performance marketing, where marketers establish a goal related to conversions and provide incentives to the individuals or partners who assist in achieving those conversions.

7. Refersion

Price: $90/month (Starter), $200/month (Professional), Custom pricing available for higher plans

This is another useful option from one of the top performance marketing software. Refersion has gained popularity as a go-to affiliate tracking platform providing businesses with the tools they need to manage and expand their affiliate programs.

Why It Is Useful?

Easily track affiliate sales and conversions using tracking parameters.

A user-friendly dashboard allows affiliates to keep an eye on their performance, commissions, and payments.

Get analytics and reports to measure performance marketing, the success of your campaigns, and identify the performing partners.

8. Post Affiliate Pro

Price: $98/month (Pro plan), $198/month (Ultimate plan), Custom pricing available for Enterprise plan

Post Affiliate Pro is a software designed for tracking affiliate activities, providing a plethora of tools and functionalities to effectively manage and measure performance marketing and affiliate marketing initiatives.

Why It Is Useful?

The platform seamlessly integrates with e-commerce platforms and third-party applications, making it easy for you to connect and manage your business. They also offer support for level digital marketing, allowing you to create intricate affiliate structures and reward tiers that suit your needs. With their affiliate link generator coupon tracking feature and customizable commission options, you can efficiently manage your campaigns and maximize their effectiveness.

9. ClickMeter

Price: $30/month (Medium), $100/month (Large), $350/month (X-Large)

ClickMeter is a platform for tracking affiliate activities and managing links enabling you to monitor, compare, and optimize all your digital marketing links, from a single location.

Why It Is Useful?

You have an opportunity to generate special links. It helps keep track of clicks, conversions, and other important performance marketing details. It is easy to get real-time reports and analytics, and using the results you get, it is really possible to take a look at how your campaigns perform. 

Take advantage of geo-targeting and link rotation features to manage your links and target audiences efficiently, and enable you to enhance your marketing software features in this way. It allows you to effectively handle and optimize your partner programs. Also, you can monitor conversions and achieve outcomes with affiliate campaigns.

To wrap it up

Performance marketing is a strategy with a focus on achieved results. Unlike ad campaigns, advertisers only pay for the actions or goals that are successfully accomplished. This approach brings a level of accountability and efficiency to the table. Within performance marketing, there's a subset called affiliate marketing, where partners promote an advertiser's products or services and receive compensation based on the conversions they generate.

Every person who is related to this field should know that performance marketing goes beyond affiliate marketing. It encompasses many different channels, including influencer marketing, paid marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), native advertising, and social media marketing. Each of these channels presents essential opportunities for reaching and engaging with target audiences effectively.

For performance marketing strategy establishment, companies must clearly outline their needs and goals. So it could be anything you want, from boosting sales, enhancing brand visibility, or generating leads. The key feature of a campaign is in setting measurable targets. The subsequent step involves finding partners or channels through research that can and will resonate with your target audience.

In order to accurately attribute conversions to partners, it is imperative to leverage tracking tools and software within performance marketing. These tools enable businesses to closely monitor campaign performance, efficiently manage partnerships, and optimize marketing efforts using real-time data and valuable insights.



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