Firstly, because this is not such an easy step to take.
If you already have a marketing department working on your ads and campaigns, moving to an agency is a logistical undertaking.
You need to monitor your development, approve pieces and strategies, keep an eye on the results, correct points here and there, etc.
And if you haven't started working on your marketing cell phone number database yet and you expect the agency to start its efforts in this area, it's also not very simple to do this work because you end up not having a reference for what a good agency really is.
So what should you do in this case? Do a lot of research, and more than that: understand in advance what to expect from an agency. And how to select the best one based on the qualities you have determined as the most desirable.
That’s what we’re going to talk about today throughout this text. Are you ready to get started?
Understanding the performance agency — what does it actually do?
You will find a few different definitions of what a performance agency is across the internet.
And many of these definitions are quite confusing, full of buzzwords and not necessarily saying much.
Typically, we understand a performance agency as an agency focused on delivering fast and scalable results, and creating campaigns and strategies using data as the main source.
But don’t all agencies work like this? Isn’t this — or shouldn’t it be — the concern of any service company?
Well, more or less. Delivering results is always a concern for agencies, but that is not their main concern. After all, many marketing services will not deliver results that are easy to measure.
Ex.: a guerrilla marketing campaign for a product that does not have an online or physical store. To see the results, you will need to wait for orders to arrive over the weeks following the campaign.
A performance agency delivers results that can be — and should be — monitored in real time.
To better understand this point, we need to understand a little more about the preferred work methods of performance agencies.
More about this in the items below:
Focus on digital marketing
If we are talking about a performance agency, it is very likely that we are talking about a digital marketing agency .
As we have seen, performance agencies are mainly concerned with presenting and monitoring data to understand what is working and what is not.
And everything happens very quickly: monitoring this data must happen in real time.
This is precisely why these agencies focus primarily on digital marketing. This is the only type of marketing that allows for such close monitoring.
But it is not “just” digital marketing that determines that an agency is a performance agency, as there are modalities within it that are not included in this methodology.
Inbound Marketing, for example, is not considered performance marketing, even though some of its resources are used in some situations.
In this case, a performance agency can use Inbound Marketing, but an Inbound Marketing agency does not have performance marketing as its main product.
Read more: Inbound marketing — what it is, examples and how to do it
This difference will become clearer in the topic below, come with me:
Focus on PPC campaigns — paid media
Performance agencies will work a lot with paid media.
In fact, in many circles, “performance marketing” is a synonym for paid media and outbound digital marketing.
This is a natural conclusion. Digital marketing efforts focused on sales and constant measurement of results would obviously involve paid media.
But the main point that paid media offers and that a performance agency needs to deliver is faster results.
This type of agency is typically hired to make a difference quickly, without the waiting period that other types of services typically require.
Inbound marketing, for example, will bring you results a few months after the strategy begins. Maybe even more than that if you are starting from scratch — a year to start seeing results is completely normal for this strategy.
Companies that hire performance agencies need fast results. And paid media is the best way to deliver them.
Focus on speed
PPC — pay per click — campaigns created by performance agencies will bring results in the first month. And even if these results are not in sales, they will come in data.
Meanwhile, a content marketing strategy will take months to deliver the first data, and then some more time for the first sales to start arriving along with the applied Inbound strategy.
Until the results and data arrive, companies are left with little to do other than produce and believe in the strategy.
The best thing about PPC campaigns and performance marketing in general is that everything happens very quickly. Within the first week, you can tell for sure whether a particular ad campaign worked or not.
This is its main differentiator. But of course, this doesn’t come for free: the investment in a performance agency is usually greater than that invested in a marketing agency.
But we talk more about this below:
Differences in contract values
In this case, it is not possible to point out the differences as clearly as in the previous cases, mainly because the values will vary from agency to agency.
However, there is a very clear difference in the hiring model.
In the case of a performance agency, you will pay for the contract with the agency and also for the amount invested in your PPC campaigns.
The amount you are paying to the agency includes:
Google Ads setup;
Setting up events in Google Analytics 4;
Link assignments, if necessary;
The creative development of campaigns;
Monitoring these campaigns;
Among other related services.
However, to launch a campaign on Google Ads or any other platform — on Meta Ads, for example — the brand needs to make an extra investment.
This extra amount is not covered by the agency contract, and it is the responsibility of the contractor to provide a prior quote.
But there are also different types of contracts. Some agencies charge very little for the entire setup or even cover it completely, taking a commission on the amount invested.
For example: you agree with the agency on a monthly investment of R$100,000, and the agency will withdraw 10% of this amount every month.
The hiring method works well this way in many cases, since if the campaigns are not going well, the brand will naturally reduce the investment, which weighs directly on the agency's pocket.