There’s inbound and outbound marketing and then there’s the combination of both in performance marketing, which is the sweet spot Wildfire operates in. Inbound covers off items that are content related and organic primarily while outbound is closely aligned to advertising and sales. Inbound is usually associated with B2B while outbound is associated with B2C. Performance marketing flips that on its head by using content and user experience as the core and combining the tactics (SEO, email, blogs, SEM, social advertising, direct mail, etc) as the natural extensions to drive business results for B2B or B2C.
As an example of performance marketing, you could start with an infographic and promote this organically and with proper SEO and CTA’s and then layer in social promotions, search and programmatic to reach new customers efficiently and move them into the inbound funnel or gain a sale.
Why is it important in the new marketing mix? Silos. Content and specializations have become compartmentalized along the purchase funnel or customer journey. Performance marketing aligns to the customer journey and their touchpoints and uses content (myriad forms) as the foundation to meet them at each step of the way and accelerate them to purchase or whatever KPI is set for that portion of the customer journey/ content piece.
Another small example of performance marketing is SEO and SEM and Email. Producing a piece of content, in this case a video explaining a product’s use, optimizing the video on YouTube and your website and using search marketing (ads) to drive to your website where the video is embedded. The CTA is for newsletter sign-ups, which would be the primary KPI. Emails then enter the inbound territory where you’re looking to solve problems and delight to prompt a purchase. The CTA on YouTube may be different – different channels, different measurements and sometimes goals.
All in all, I see companies looking to consolidate these worlds and be able to seamlessly re-purpose foundational content to meet customers/prospects on their journey organically or paid. Small businesses can particularly benefit from this as they typically have internal and external customers within the same marketing or sales team and the tactics to reach them all properly can seem muddied or overwhelming. Which is where the hybrid solution makes perfect sense.
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Photo credit: "High grain performance" by akigabo is licensed with CC BY-ND 2.0.