In some areas of marketing communications (well, in most in fact) the procurement department might as well be the Bogieman, Mr Judder Man and George Osborne rolled into one. And with good reason, many would say – namely the people who have found budgets slashed by them.
But no matter how people might bemoan the role of procurement, it is here to stay and it serves agencies (especially those working in the online arena) to try and work with them, and this is one of the main (but not the only) reasons why our payment by performance model is valued by clients.
The payment by performance model helps to empower marketers by removing some of the barriers that can traditionally exist with online advertising. It encompasses a variety of different metrics such as CPM, CPC, CPLand, CPA, CPE, CPDownload, which when used alongside clients objectives, site visits, unique users, site conversion statistics, offer, product and pricing can mean that realistic goals are set and can be achieved.
It can also help to unlock or redistribute budgets by giving insight into ‘high value’ customers, deeper understanding of the better performing channels etc. But this can only be done via sophisticated tracking technology such as the QUISMA Media Platform which works effectively in our complex media environment.
While the pay for performance model particularly appeals to procurement departments it shouldn’t just be seen as an easy way to cut costs. It is much more than that. It is a way to help clients to gain a better understanding of how their product or service performs in the marketplace at a given point in time and how external factors such as pricing, competitor activity, seasonal variances will all impact this.
Ultimately it’s about looking at the goals that are being set at the time of the campaign and seeing how realistic they are, as we are performance experts we have a broad knowledge by sector and advertiser that help us to work with clients as to what an achievable or reasonable goal is.
It’s important to let advertisers know that just because we are taking on the risk the onus is also on them to help us drive and increase the performance. We will always have a dialogue for the duration of the campaign and feedback learnings, but the dialogue has to be a two way discussion, we need to have an input into the metrics that we are being measured against to ensure that they are not only hitting marketing’s objectives but are also a realistic achievement.
Pay for performance, which originated in the Affiliate Marketing field, maybe feels more natural to us than other agencies because QUISMA has performance at it’s core – after starting off in the search arena and then diversifying into affiliate marketing before launching performance display we have always had a visible, results driven culture where the advertisers could easily see how well we were performing on their campaigns.
However, this doesn’t mean that other businesses can’t take up this mantle and begin to work with procurement teams to offer the best solution for their clients. Something that we believe will become more and more significant in the market.
Interested in finding out more about The New Agency Model? Head over to Quisma.com for more on what they do.