Performance marketing is a crucial aspect of the overall digital marketing strategy for building products manufacturers, and it is reshaping how businesses reach and engage with their audiences, whether they are architects, specifiers, builders, developers, or all of the above.

What exactly is performance marketing, especially in the context of B2B?

Put simply, it is an approach where businesses focus their efforts on results-based initiatives, which includes establishing and measuring performance-driven metrics such as leads, clicks, conversions, sales, and more. Performance marketing involves targeted strategies and campaigns designed to generate measurable results. It is about understanding the customer's journey and crafting marketing tactics that lead to conversions. Key metrics, such as return on investment (ROI), cost per acquisition (CPA), and return on advertising spend (ROAS), play a significant role in gauging success.

A digital marketing agency that focuses on B2B businesses or one that specializes in a particular industry brings expertise that is crucial in crafting and executing effective performance marketing strategies.

In the building materials category, it can pay dividends to choose an agency that specializes in building, architecture, and construction, such as BLD Marketing. Builders, contractors, architects, and other construction industry professionals operate differently that audiences in other sectors. Therefore, it is important to find a partner that understands your needs and those of your buyers.

Performance Marketing vs. Brand Marketing

Performance and brand marketing are both important for building materials brands, but the two pursuits have distinct differences. Performance marketing is driven more by KPIs and specific benchmarks that you establish at the beginning of the campaign. Optimizations are made along the way and will fluctuate based on campaign goals.

On the other hand, brand marketing is much more focused on generating awareness. Think impressions. It is a broader approach to marketing for your organization.

BLD Marketing believes in a balanced approach to that combines these efforts, incorporating both brand-building and performance-driven strategies. While brand efforts are essential for generating upper-funnel awareness and education, performance marketing activities with strong calls-to-action are vital for eliciting action and conversions. BLD Marketing’s approach involves building out comprehensive digital marketing ecosystems that seamlessly integrate both types of strategies, ensuring that building material manufacturer client campaigns contribute to both brand equity and tangible results.

Tools, Techniques, and Measurement for Performance Marketing

Staying ahead in performance marketing requires the right tools. From analytics platforms to automation tools, leveraging technology is key to optimizing campaigns. Other helpful tools include customer relationship management (CRM) and content management (CMS) systems, social media management tools, SEO tools, and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology. Agencies often integrate a variety of tools to provide a comprehensive view of campaign performance, enhancing decision-making, strategy development, execution, and reporting.

Measuring success in performance marketing is all about tracking the right metrics. Since almost all of Google advertising can be categorized under the performance marketing umbrella, many organizations and their marketing firms utilize Google Analytics for this.

At the beginning of a campaign, you and your marketing agency should collaborate on defining KPIs and setting up meaningful conversion events. These events might be form fills, sign ups, purchases, content downloads, or even social media follows. Events are assigned values in Google Analytics so the search engine can begin to understand how to prioritize them specifically for your organization.

Agencies play a pivotal role in not only tracking these metrics but also interpreting them to refine strategies continually. Optimization is key. If something is not working, building materials brands should never be afraid to pivot and try something new. Your marketing agency should stay apprised of what is working and what is not, helping you make an informed decision on changing course if necessary.

Overcoming the Inevitable Challenges

While performance marketing offers numerous benefits, it comes with its share of challenges. Advertisers and marketers should be aware of this and understand that there will be ebbs and flows in terms of metrics and performance.

The building materials space itself presents a very specific challenge in this regard: Manufacturers are advertising items that are not typically high-volume Google searches. For example, B2C products such as shoes, exist in a much shorter sales cycle, and consumers search for such merchandise much more frequently than those who might search for building materials. Therefore, the challenge for building materials manufacturers and their agencies is to utilize tools such as Google and optimize them for B2B businesses, keeping in mind more complex sales cycles and longer lead times. Optimizing performance marketing strategies for the B2B industry with longer sales cycles is a key consideration.

In addition, an unhygienic CRM can be a challenge on multiple fronts, so it is important that sales teams keep the system updated and tidy. This allows for integration and data sharing to make your ads much more targeted, effective, and impactful.

These circumstances further highlight the importance of optimization in addition to establishing regular reporting for insights into key analytics. When it comes to anticipating and overcoming these challenges, it is important for organizations and their marketing agencies to stay up to date with the latest trends and changes in laws. This includes privacy laws in place in the state of California along with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

Measuring Success

As with any marketing effort, meeting the established KPIs determines the success of a performance marketing campaign, but there are other important considerations as well. For example, examining cost per conversion is one method of measuring success. To do so, according to AgencyAnalytics, “A good average cost per conversion varies by industry but should be significantly lower than the customer's lifetime value. Marketers are on the right track if it costs less to get a new customer than they'll ultimately spend.”

In addition, measuring return on advertising spend (ROAS) provides a big picture look at success, providing an understanding of what is leading to conversions as well as the amount of revenue each conversion action is generating for your business.

There is never truly an “end” to your performance marketing efforts. You and your agency should constantly be examining and optimizing the program to deliver the best results based on evolving business needs. But when all the aforementioned analytics and indicators are steadily pointing in the right direction, it is the sign of a successful campaign.

Future Trends in Performance Marketing

The landscape of performance marketing is ever evolving, and it is happening quickly in the digital age. Emerging trends such as the increased use of AI and machine learning are set to impact how building materials businesses approach their marketing efforts. Therefore, staying informed and adaptable is crucial for ongoing success.

The importance and popularity of video content continues to grow. Video has become a preferred medium for consuming information, and building product marketers that incorporate video into their performance marketing strategies are likely to see increased engagement and conversions. While there is often more of an upfront lift to produce video content, many advertisers find it to be worth the effort and costs. This is particularly true when organizations cut up larger videos into bite-sized clips to be repurposed in a variety of ways.

Furthermore, the increasing focus on privacy and data protection continues to shape how businesses collect, store, and use customer data. Adhering to regulations related to this is essential for maintaining trust with customers and avoiding potentially costly penalties.

Maximizing Growth with Performance Marketing

Performance marketing presents a powerful opportunity for building materials manufacturers to drive growth and enhance their digital presence. By partnering with a skilled digital marketing agency and leveraging the right tools and strategies, businesses can achieve measurable success and stay ahead in the increasingly competitive digital landscape.