Top 5 performance marketing strategies to boost e-commerce sales Share via

Performance marketing is one of the most preferred tools brands use to drive the growth of their e-commerce businesses. In this form of marketing, brands collaborate with affiliates or publishers, who promote the company’s products on their website. A publisher earns a commission whenever a sale is made through their referrals. E-commerce companies partner with various publishers to increase the sales on their platforms. Moreover, it is one of the few forms of advertising where you pay for marketing spending only after the sale. This feature makes it an attractive proposition for e-commerce businesses to use performance marketing to reach many new customers, who otherwise could not be reached, with a minimal investment.

A sound affiliate strategy is a must for brands to reap the maximum benefit from their performance marketing strategy and will be different for each company. One size fits all approach does not work with this marketing tool. In this blog, we look at the top performance marketing strategies to boost e-commerce sales.

Get the Right Partner

As it holds for most marketing activities where there is a reliance on an external partner, getting the right publisher who can help you grow your business is a must. Brands should choose a publisher who witnesses good traffic of relevant visitors on its website, has greater engagement with its audience, and can influence consumers to buy the product they are promoting. The other important aspect to look out for is if the affiliate has an audience who is also your primary target customer. For example, if you are a sports goods company collaborating with a publisher specializing in food, the association will not make sense, and all your efforts will go in vain. Hence, this first step becomes very critical in deciding the fate of your entire performance marketing strategy.

Effective Communication with Publishers

Your performance marketing campaign’s success would also lie in the effective communication you had with your publisher. The publisher should be clearly informed about the campaign’s objectives, the terms and conditions of the activity, and the brand’s tone of communication. Once both the brand and the publisher are aligned to the goals and the deliverables, it will become much simpler to drive an effective campaign.

Robust Commission Framework

Brands should create a strong commission structure to get the best publishers to promote their products on their platforms. The commission paid to the publisher ranges from 5%-15%, according to various marketing experts. And what a brand is going to pay the publisher depends solely on the industry, price, margin on the product, and the partner’s capability. So, although creating a solid commission framework will push the publishers to go the extra mile to promote your products on their websites, brands should also be mindful of what they can afford to pay based on their end objective from the activity.

Focus on High-Value Items

According to various market research reports, performance marketing that focuses primarily on the sales of expensive products is found to be the most effective. Therefore, brands should inform the publishers they are working with about the high-value products in their portfolio. If brands can convince the customers to make an expensive purchase, they can form a long-lasting relationship with their consumers. Additionally, this will make it easier for the brands to sell less expensive items in the future as well. The greater the value of the goods sold through their referral, the more commission they will make for the publisher. Brands can lure customers by providing good discounts on first-time purchases or by incentivizing the shoppers somehow.

Reward Top-Performing Publishers

Brands should identify their top-performing publishers and devise strategies to retain them. One of the ways is by rewarding them for their hard work in generating revenues for your brands through their network. Brands should give them exclusive discount offers for their audience in the form of coupons to motivate the affiliates. They should be pampered with top-performance bonuses and high commission rates to get the best results out of their network. This strategy will also push other publishers to drive more sales for your brand.

It may take some time for brands to create an effective performance marketing strategy to achieve their goals, but once they understand the tricks of the trade, they will start witnessing the benefits this tool provides. Although the world is fast-changing and the ongoing pandemic has disrupted the marketing domain, marketers will have to be on their toes to create innovative performance marketing solutions to be ahead of the game.