Performance Marketing Defined

Performance Marketing has been bandied about lately and needs some clarification. It's a collective term for any marketing effort that can be measured and the results can be compared to the costs. It's closely tied to direct marketing but more strongly associated with new media. Direct marketing has been tracking marketing performance since it could track results of individual campaigns. Direct marketing was pioneered by Wunderman, see more on this guy here, in the 1970's and his group is still a leader in that field.

So much of Internet marketing has a measurable component that it's very similar to direct marketing in that regard. Email campaigns, for example, follow the direct marketing cycle in many instances. They're planned, launched, measured, adjusted, and re-sent. Then this process is repeated for as small an audience segment as possible.

For some reason the industry felt it necessary to distinguish the larger discipline of direct marketing from what was happening in Internet marketing and call it performance marketing. Since direct marketing has been tied to some more traditional media like direct mail, performance marketing has come to represent the newer media that can be measured. For example, there are some opportunities now for pay-per-call marketing. Leads on the Internet are directed to call with interest. Marketers only pay when the call is generated. This can be woven into a direct marketing campaign. But, its newness would lump it in with performance marketing.