Performance marketing has changed the way modern marketers are approaching digital marketing and it’s easy to see why. For years marketers actually paid in advance for the ad placements with absolutely no guarantee as to how effective it would be. The primary goal was to get it in front of as many eyes as possible and hope the messaging hits home with some of those who saw the ad.
Then came the age of paying based on impressions. While an improvement over treating digital ads the same as print ads, impressions alone aren’t what marketers and recruiters need. Eventually, most ad platforms allowed for PPC or pay-per-click campaigns following the example of paid search.
Most recently, advertisers have the option of paying by “conversion” as defined by the platform, usually viewing the intended final page in a conversion workflow. So in a sense, while these models are improvements, they are still versions of paying for the ads, not the true outcomes you need.
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How is performance marketing different?
Instead of paying with no guarantees or paying for meaningless impressions, the performance marketing model allows advertisers to set their own definition of results and only pay for the results they get. This is a huge advantage. If you know exactly the measurable outcome you want, your campaigns can be optimized for that.
For instance, your recruiters may work best with inbound phone calls from drivers. So you would want your campaigns optimized for the outcome of phone calls. On the other hand, if your team is great at reaching out and talking to drivers but isn’t set up to field a lot of calls, you may want your campaign to be optimized for short forms.
That’s the beauty of performance marketing. You get decide your ideal results without being limited to the options within an ad platform. But performance marketing also has another huge advantage. It’s platform-agnostic.
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What does “platform-agnostic” mean?
As we know, the goal for most fleets when it comes to driver recruiting is to get as many qualified drivers as possible. Implementing performance marketing as a recruiting strategy ensures, not only that fleets are just paying for what they get, but it also allows the campaign to be optimized based on the platforms that perform best.
While it can be difficult to optimize across multiple channels, in the end it’s one of the best strategies for fleets to reach their driver recruiting goals. If the desired outcome is gaining driver phone calls, you need the right combination of platforms to drive the most phone calls overall . . . not just the most phone calls one platform can provide.
These platforms, such as targeted display networks, Facebook, YouTube, and search engines, allow for real time feedback and analysis. Performance marketing uses that feedback to adjust targeting parameters, landing pages, ad formats, and much more, all with the goal of achieving your specific desired outcome.
Applying performance marketing to the world of driver recruiting provides the opportunity for fleets and their recruiting partners to reach the most prospects with the least amount of wasted money.
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How can you get started with performance marketing?
The first thing you need to do is decide on your unique definition of results. What is the outcome you want from your campaigns? To get to the answer to that question, you need to apply your deep understanding of both how your recruiting team processes driver leads and the workflow you want.
Secondly, you need to define your driver target. When building audiences, your campaigns will get closer to your desired outcome if you are using data to build those audiences. That’s why it’s so important for us to spend time with our fleet clients talking through their individual hiring criteria and location needs. Building an audience with data takes collaboration to get the targeting right.
And finally, the thing to keep in mind with performance marketing is that optimization takes time. A test needs volume and duration to be statistically conclusive, and most AB and multivariate tests are run to a 95% confidence level. When doing that across multiple platforms, you may need a few months to find your sweet spot. But the advantage you get from finding that sweet spot is huge.
Plus, if you’re only paying for the results you get, you aren’t wasting money while you optimize.
Hopefully, performance marketing helps you shift your campaigns from just “metrics” to actual outcomes. And of course, we’d love to help you get started.
