What's the deal with performance marketing?

“Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted.   The trouble is I don’t know which half”

John Wanamaker

For the longest marketing was supposed to be a beautiful but inexact science.  You put a few tv ads, you got a few billboards and flyers and you sprayed your message to masses.  Eventually, whoever was qualified and was the right person for your business would come out, eventually and buy your product or service.   It was almost like praying to a muse, a muse that would almost always respond to the business owner that had the most money.

However, over the last 20 years that has changed.   Direct marketing channels such as Google and Facebook have elevated marketing to a place where performance of every ad or creative decision can be measured.   As a result, marketing is not just measured by awareness or amount of people that saw your ads, now you can measure visits, purchases, clicks and a whole host of actions that make marketing more meaningful.

As a result a new bread of marketers are arising and they are forced to be just as good at math as they are creative (and most times just the former).   If you are a business owner, this allows you to grow much faster and in a less expensive manner.  More importantly, you can pay for actions that lead to a sale or purchase rather than just paying for people to become aware of your existence.   

Better yet, many agencies (including this one) were created just for this type of marketing allowing you to get the best bang for your buck in the most measurable manner possible.