Enhancing Performance Marketing Management

Actually, digital performance marketing is a subset of generic marketing management based on the same principles. However, due to its increasing dominance - driven by continuously evolving technology - it's looking like a new discipline all by itself. 

Although digital performance marketing is in essence the same as traditional marketing, there are some differences, the most distinctive one being the ability to measure success. So what do we mean by this?

Marketing pre-Internet

Although there have always been people with the talent of grasping a customer's needs and desires, in the world of commerce, mass marketing management is a relatively young discipline that only started to gain traction on a larger scale during the mid 70ies following mass advertising. Over the past 100 years, other concepts have dominated the world of commerce. 

It all started a long time ago with the product concept; products were produced by craftsmen and sold locally. Then the concept of regional or geographical expansion gained popularity to expand sales. Due to the introduction of mass production and assembly lines early 1900, the production concept became dominant. Larger production volumes needed faster means to reach consumers, which fuelled a new trend: the uprise of supermarkets after the second world war. Due to the rise of supermarkets, The sales and sales channel, followed by the channel distribution, and sales concepts in the '50ies. 

The marketing concept has become only widely spread over the past 30 years following mass advertising which took off during the '60ies. 

Although not many marketers will admit it, in the past, a lot of marketing did not bring too much in terms of value-added to the bottom line results of a company. And of course, there are examples of great marketing successes, but they represent a small minority. 

The most heard excuse of marketers has always been that it was not possible to measure the success of a marketing strategy or campaign, which was simply not true. Although it did require effort, budget, and sound research to measure the effects or ROI of marketing strategies and programs during the old days. 

The Growth of Digital Performance Marketing

At the beginning of this century, digital marketing began to gain traction. An example is the business case of the  first Dutch PaaS marketing platform kaboem.nl which was established in the year 2000. and nowadays more marketing metrics can be measured than ever before as long as you have the right software and a professional digital marketer at your disposal. 

Whereas the first 12 years of digital marketing was dominated by relatively easy to use systems and straightforward analysis tools, the last six years the number of tools and systems at your disposal are countless and you require a substantial budget to pay for all the people and software licenses you require. Outsourcing everything is also possible. but you have to ask yourself whether that would be the right strategy to follow?

Avoiding the New Trap of Wasting the Marketing Budget

And this brings a new dilemma. What is a good digital marketer? A modern digital marketer works with at least 4 to 7 software programs, and then we are not even including the latest software tools enabling AI, machine learning, deep learning and artificial neural networks (ANNs). 

Although technical skills and programmatic experience is a requirement, it does not make one an experienced or talented marketer who, for instance, understands the deeper logic of segmentation, or the fact that different stages of the customer buying decision making journey requires a completely different approach. 

And as a result, nowadays, digital marketing enables organizations to waste as much money as the good old fashioned marketers used to do.

So what is the solution? A healthy balance between marketing and technology based on a deeper understanding of marketing metrics that come along with each stage of the customer experience journey.