Top 3 Performance Marketing Channels You Need to Use

by Frankie Karrer

7 Min Read

In marketing, you’re looking for an edge over the competition and a meaningful way to reach more consumers. Technology makes it easier to seek out customers directly and intimately, but the ubiquity of video and streaming services can also mean it is hard to compete with distractions. When you do find an innovative way to break through, it can get pricey.

That’s where utilizing the best performance marketing channels can provide a real solution.

What Is a Performance Marketing Channel?

A performance marketing channel is a platform or medium through which advertisers run campaigns that are measured and optimized based on specific actions, such as clicks, leads, or sales. By focusing on direct, trackable marketing metrics, performance marketing channels ensure that marketing efforts are efficient and ROI-driven.

Benefits of Performance Marketing

You can summarize performance marketing’s benefits with the following points:

Cost-Effectiveness: Since you only pay for achieved results (like clicks, conversions, or sales), it can be a highly cost-effective marketing strategy.
Measurable: Performance marketing allows you to accurately track and measure the success of campaigns, providing clear insights into your return on investment.
Targeting Capabilities: It offers the ability to target specific audiences based on various demographic and behavioral data, which can increase the effectiveness of campaigns.
Risk Mitigation: By paying only for completed actions, businesses can mitigate the risk typically associated with upfront marketing costs.
Scalability: If a campaign is performing well, it can be easily scaled up to enhance its impact.
Flexibility: Performance marketing campaigns can be adjusted in real-time based on their performance, providing businesses with a high degree of flexibility.
Brand Awareness: Although the focus is on measurable results, performance marketing can also significantly boost brand visibility and awareness.

Performance marketing is a leaner and more efficient way to reach your goals, and the following types of performance marketing all aim to break through the clutter and reach your target audience:

Social Media Marketing (SMM) involves using paid advertisements on social media platforms to target specific audience segments based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. This type of performance marketing allows for precise targeting and real-time engagement, making it an effective way to drive conversions and increase brand awareness.

Facebook and Instagram Ads: Use Meta’s extensive targeting options to reach specific audiences across both Facebook and Instagram platforms, enhancing engagement and conversions.
LinkedIn Ads: Target professionals and businesses with tailored ads based on job titles, industries, and company sizes, ideal for B2B performance marketing.
X Ads (formerly Twitter Ads): Leverage real-time engagement and trending topics to reach a broad audience with promoted tweets and accounts.
Pinterest Ads: Promote your products and services through visually appealing pins that capture users’ interests and drive traffic to your site.
TikTok Ads: Utilize short, engaging video ads to capture the attention of a younger, highly interactive audience on one of the fastest-growing social media platforms.

2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) uses paid search ads to appear in search engine results, targeting users actively looking for related keywords. This performance marketing strategy drives highly relevant traffic to websites, increasing the chances of conversions from users who are already interested in the advertised products or services.

Google Ads: Reach a vast audience by displaying ads in Google search results and across its extensive network of partner websites and apps.
Microsoft Ads: Advertise on Bing and its partner networks, targeting users who use Microsoft’s search engine and services.
Amazon Advertising: Promote products directly on Amazon’s platform, reaching customers who are ready to purchase.
Yahoo Advertising: Display ads on Yahoo search results and its network of partner sites, targeting a diverse audience across various demographics.

3. Over-The-Top Advertising

Over-the-top (OTT) advertising delivers streaming ads directly to viewers over the internet through services like Hulu, Roku, and YouTube. By leveraging OTT advertising, brands can reach a highly engaged audience who are consuming content on their own terms, often with greater attention and longer viewing times compared to traditional TV.

Additionally, OTT advertising offers advanced targeting and measurement capabilities, allowing advertisers to optimize campaigns based on viewer behavior and interaction.

Connected TV Advertising

Connected TV advertising can be an especially powerful form of OTT advertising. That’s in part because of the large audience available (92% of US households watch CTV), as well as the attention and focus of the medium in which that audience is served ads—the TV screen.

The ability of CTV to generate data on viewership means you can combine the virtues of performance marketing and targeting with clear, actionable information on your campaign. And if you want to make changes to your campaign to improve performance, CTV allows much more flexibility than traditional forms of TV advertising.

CTV advertising can take two avenues:

Increasingly, streaming services that were initially subscription-only have included ad-supported tiers through their platforms. There are also free ad-supported services like Tubi, whose popularity might surprise you, particularly with older viewers.
Roku and other CTV home screens have valuable advertising real estate that can reach viewers while they’re engaged in making their viewing choice, a process that can add up to forty-five hours a year, according to Vox.

Both of these avenues use highly-sophisticated data science to target audiences with precision.

Other Marketing Channels to Consider

The types of marketing below can sometimes be confused with performance marketing channels, but they are not the same. However, when these strategies are integrated with broader marketing initiatives, you can amplify your message.

1. Content Marketing

Content marketing focuses on disseminating relevant and informative content to targeted audiences. That could consist of how-to or explainer videos or more subtle, sponsored content that feels journalistic but still ties into your brand and marketing goals. The idea behind content marketing is to build authority and trust for your brand.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is another type of marketing that uses searched-for keywords to boost your content in web page rankings. So even if your content is not a paid ad, Google or other search engines may favor it in their rankings. SEO has become very sophisticated and can apply to visual content, both static and video, as well as to written content.

Attention spans are short, and SEO helps your content pop up on the more valued search engine real estate, such as the first page of results. That can make all the difference in whether your content is absorbed or ignored.

Native advertising refers to content that feels organic to the platform it’s on and can refer to style and tone. For example, LinkedIn is more professional, whereas Instagram is more casual and lifestyle-oriented. It can also refer to technical specs, including aspect ratio (Instagram tends to be square or vertical; Facebook is generally in the classic 16:9 horizontal ratio) and length. In either case, the idea is to make content that feels like a piece of the other content a user is enjoying. If the ad does not feel out of place for the environment it is in, consumers are more likely to enjoy your content for its entertainment value.

4. Partnership Marketing

Partnership marketing involves two or more businesses or entities teaming up to increase their reach and impact. As an example, sometimes a brand has a niche product or expertise, and a smaller audience to which they can get their message out. Through partnership marketing, they can borrow the gravitas of a more well-known brand. The crucial thing to guarantee success is to ensure your goals are aligned.

Affiliate Marketing

In affiliate marketing, one site links to another (typically a shopping website) and earns a percentage of the sales that result from that click. For example, shopping recommendation sites like NYMag.com’s Strategist offer a roundup of the best products in many categories, then link to Amazon and specific business sites, earning a commission from those sales.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing involves using social media or celebrity influencers with large numbers of followers to expand your marketing’s reach. After all, it’s undeniable that these figures play a significant role in making products and services appealing to their millions of followers, acting as a stamp of approval.

Connected TV Is Key to Successful Performance Marketing

Connected TV is pivotal for successful performance marketing due to its ability to deliver highly targeted and measurable ads to engaged audiences. That’s where MNTN Performance TV comes into play.

Performance TV offers a suite of reporting tools to track your most important KPIs and help you adjust campaigns on the fly. With our Verified Visits™ technology, you’ll be on the cutting edge of TV attribution and know exactly how your CTV ads affect your bottom line.

Elevate your performance marketing strategy and achieve unparalleled success with MNTN Performance TV. Request a demo to get started!

Performance Marketing Channels: Final Thoughts

Performance marketing channels can be a powerful tool to make sure you are reaching your audience in a measurable and effective way. And by advertising on a channel like Connected TV, which combines the best of digital advertising and the best of TV advertising, you can ensure your brand achieves its marketing goals.