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Who doesn’t love to save? No matter what you’re buying, everyone appreciates being able to cut the cost of something. However, when it comes to business, certain operating costs necessitate paying high premiums you just can’t get around. Marketing costs typically fall under that category because a brand’s success is hinged upon its ability to market itself and move through the funnel from awareness to conversion.
While industry behemoths spend their disposable capital on things like impressions that land them at the top of the funnel, smaller businesses with tighter budgets don’t have that same flexibility with their funds and are left bleeding money to keep their brand awareness up to par. In recent years, performance marketing channels like affiliate marketing have emerged as powerful tools for driving results while keeping expenses in check. In this article, we will unpack the ways performance marketing channels open up a world of opportunities for brands that want–or desperately need to–shave down their marketing costs.
Marketing Struggles for Brand Owners
Lack of budget for marketing costs is a recurring challenge faced by a plethora of business owners. Marketing is one of those unavoidable costs of doing business. If you ever plan to grow your business, having a marketing channel that produces the type of revenue that will allow you to scale is kind of a big deal. While other brand giants can make it rain on mainstream ad channels, your startup or microbrand might be strapped for cash and unable to afford high-converting display ads and high-ticket brand ambassadors. When you can’t afford the cost of not marketing your business but you can’t quite afford the marketing costs, are you doomed? Enter performance marketing.
Understanding Performance Marketing
Performance marketing is a results-driven approach where advertisers only have to pay for specific consumer actions, such as clicks, leads, or sales. Unlike traditional advertising methods that rely on upfront payments with uncertain outcomes, performance marketing allows businesses to track the effectiveness of their campaigns in real time while keeping their expenditure at bay. Cost-per-acquisition, or CPA, is the savviest way to cut your marketing costs without losing the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
This marketing model ensures brands can optimize their marketing dollars and maximize their return on ad spend (ROAS). While most traditional marketing methods usually average about a 4:1 ROAS, performance marketing channels like affiliate marketing have an average ROAS of 12:1. Simply put, this is a no-brainer for brands, particularly the financially challenged brands, to put their funds towards marketing channels that will yield a much higher return on their investment.
How Partnerships Optimize Your Marketing Budget
Clearly, we’re a fan of partnership marketing, but for good reason. With a typical ROAS 12x the rate of other marketing methods, how could you not? We have plenty more reasons to consider partnering with affiliates or publishers if you are looking to shave down on your marketing costs while still achieving your desired growth outcomes.
Target Your Dollars
Your marketing dollars are best spent on campaigns that are highly likely to reach your target audience. Partnering with affiliates like loyalty and cash-back sites and content publishers puts your brand into the orbit of consumers searching for product information to help inform their buying decisions. These consumers are on the hunt for deals, coupons, and word-of-mouth recommendations from content they trust.
Getting your brand included in your brand in content comparison pieces, product round-ups, and review/discovery channels, will optimize your marketing costs by maximizing your potential of reaching converting consumers looking for products just like yours. This way you can make your brand more competitive and foster a sense of urgency around your brand.
Pay for Conversions
As mentioned above, the vast majority of partnership programs operate on a CPA basis to keep your marketing costs at sustainable levels. Partners will earn a commission for every sale generated through their affiliate link.
Flexible Commission Rates
Oftentimes, other traditional marketing methods can have rigid rates you either accept or don’t. With partnership marketing, all commission rates are up to your discretion meaning you can adjust them as needed to meet program goals.
Flexible commission rates mean you can ensure your marketing costs will be ideal for your financial forecast and substantially lower your risk of overpaying for campaigns which in turn end up cannibalizing your potential ROAS.
Cost-effective Management Solutions
Last but not least, emerging technologies like Advertise Purple are built to deliver agency-level management strategies by streamlining the most crucial pillars of partnerships like affiliate recruitment, performance reporting, and campaign promotions offering a financially sustainable approach to management.
This approach gives brands with limited resources an opportunity to build a competitive partnership strategy with all the expertise of an agency while keeping their marketing costs manageable.
Conclusion
Performance marketing models like partnership marketing offer cost-effective alternatives to traditional advertising methods while delivering measurable results. By embracing these strategies and implementing best practices, businesses can effectively cut their marketing costs without compromising on effectiveness or reach. Embrace the power of performance partnerships to drive growth and achieve your business objectives in the e-commerce world.
