No matter the product or service you offer, any brand worth their salt knows good marketing is the key. Whether you are looking for growth, sales or generating leads, there can be no results without a strong marketing strategy. Approach any marketing agency, and you will receive a comprehensive plan with multiple campaigns and performance branding tactics directed toward your goals. But how do you know what is working and what isn’t?

What is performance marketing?

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Performance marketing is a measure of the performance of each of your active campaigns. This means you pay only for the results you need. For instance, if your campaign goal is to improve sales, you only pay for an increase in sales, nothing more, nothing less. It is efficient, organized and highly goal-directed. This also means you get a better ROI.

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But how does it work? What is an example of performance marketing?

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A performance marketing campaign involves two key players: you as a business and an affiliate or a publisher. Your brand comes forth with a goal, and maybe, you’re looking for a way to endorse your products. Your affiliate will then promote the product on websites, blogs, social media and other multimedia platforms. In this scenario, the affiliate will get paid based on the number of clicks they generate. Tracking and analytical tools can be used to give you a precise measure of performance.

So now, how do you get into performance marketing? The easiest route you can take is with a performance marketing platform.

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What is a performance marketing platform?

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Whether you have an in-house team or you approach a marketing agency, a goal-oriented marketing strategy needs to be tweaked and updated. So, a performance marketing platform is a smart investment.

A performance marketing platform can help you analyze your strategy and give you clear data points to work with. The data can be the number of leads generated, clicks, bounce rate and even conversion rates. It organizes all the data efficiently, which can help you make informed decisions. Depending on the platform you pick, you have access to features that can track your progress. Whether you need specialized B2B marketing or B2C affiliate marketing, it is essential to choose the right platform.

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How do you know which performance marketing platform suits you?

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Performance marketing involves many different subsets and tactics determined by your campaign goal. Combined with performance branding, this can result in dramatic growth. So naturally, the first thing you need to do is define your goal. Each campaign you run needs to have a clear endgame with quantifiable measures. Once you do, find a dedicated platform for the campaign. Every platform offers a list of key features that can help you customize it to suit your needs.

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What are the best performance marketing platforms?

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As mentioned before, every performance marketing platform has its own features that can serve your brand’s needs. For anyone looking to make the investment, here is a list of highly recommended platforms for 2022-23.

Affise

• This platform is optimized and customizable, with over 50 different kinds of data reports and breakdowns.
• It is user-friendly, with a customizable dashboard and easy integration with third-party platforms.
• Affise is versatile and is usable in a variety of fields and industries.
• It offers a robust list of additional features like fraus detection, AI smart links, multicurrency payouts and more.
• It provides a 30-day free trial with 24*7 customer support.

Impact

• This performance marketing platform is focused on partnership management and makes managing partners and affiliates easier.
• It offers partner discovery, recruitment, tracking engagement and management tools.
• This platform is highly scalable and grows as you grow.
• It helps you draw up contracts and comes with inbuilt fraud detection and security measures.
• The impact is highly customizable with a strong customer support system.
• This platform does not offer free trials.

Click Meter

• This platform is highly recommended for campaigns that need link tracking and conversions.
• With a range of tools, this performance marketing platform helps you track, analyze and optimize all your links and ads.
• Track your pay-per-click (PPC), cost per click (CPC), metrics for better conversion rates.
• Click Meter also offers advanced tools like geolocation, browser and device type that help you strategize and optimize.
• It provides multiple integrations, specialized reporting options and security measures like fraud detection.
• Although it offers no free trial, it has a 30-day money-back guarantee with flexible and customizable pricing plans.

Refersion

• An excellent choice for first-time users, Refersion is designed to make performance marketing easy and accessible.
• It is a highly customizable platform that is user-friendly, with a quick onboarding process.
• It is easy to integrate with e-commerce platforms and can help track all your sales.
• It has a personalized affiliate portal that can make commission payouts flexible, transparent and automated.
• It offers a free demo trial but comes with a fixed pricing plan.

AffiliateWP

• Another affiliate marketing platform, Affiliate WP is built for WordPress.
• It works as a plugin that is fully integrated with WordPress.
• You can use it to track and analyze unlimited affiliates with a fully automated payout system. This platform offers no free trial but does come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Voluum

• Voluum is a cloud-based, AI-powered platform built to maximize your ads' effectiveness.
• This performance marketing platform has highly specialized features that help you create auto-rules, change and manage bids, and streamline every action in your campaign.
• It offers real-time data that makes it suitable for any business.
• It comes with robust security features based on the pricing model you pick.
• This platform gives you no free trial.

Tapfiliate

• A comprehensive affiliate marketing platform, Tapfiliate is designed for e-commerce and SaaS companies.
• It has a simple onboarding process with an automated payout system.
• In fact, the whole platform is fully customizable, with advanced tools like paying recurring commissions or bonuses.
• It offers 30+ plug-and-play integrations and a personalized dashboard.
• This performance marketing platform makes it easy to create and share tracking links, even for first-time users.
• You can opt for a 14-day free trial.

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Recent years have seen an increase in the popularity of performance marketing. It has clear advantages of being entirely transparent and easy to track. More importantly, this low-risk, low-expense marketing style is far more accessible to newer entrepreneurs. With user-friendly performance marketing platforms available at your fingertips, you can now build a marketing strategy that suits your brand needs.

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