Performance Marketing: A Gateway to Account-Based Marketing for Banks

Performance marketing is a type of digital marketing where businesses only pay third parties (like marketing companies, publishers, or affiliate networks) when a specific action is completed. That action could be anything from a click to a lead or even a sale.

What sets performance marketing apart is its focus on measurable outcomes. By leveraging data to drive results, businesses can optimize their marketing budgets and track their return on investment (ROI) with greater precision. The rise of performance marketing has been fueled by the shift to digital channels in the buyer’s journey. With these channels generating vast amounts of data, it’s now easier than ever for businesses to monitor their campaigns in real time and adapt strategies for maximum impact.

The basic ingredients of performance marketing

Performance marketing starts with defining the specific actions you want your campaigns to achieve. These “desired actions” could include things like:

• Driving more website traffic: For example, setting a goal like “increase visits to our website by X% or X number of views during the campaign.”
• Getting more sign-ups: This might mean adding X new subscribers to your newsletter or service.
• Boosting online sales: For instance, increasing sales by a certain percentage or dollar amount over the campaign period.

Once these goals are set, marketers launch campaigns across digital platforms like search engines, social media, and display ad networks to reach those specific outcomes.

The beauty of performance marketing is that it’s results-focused. Businesses track everything—from clicks to conversions—to ensure their campaigns are meeting the goals they’ve set. By using analytics tools, marketers measure these results against Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to monitor their progress.

That’s what’s so unique about performance marketing: Marketers only pay their partners or providers for the results they deliver. This makes performance marketing much more efficient than traditional “spray and pray” approaches that involve guessing and hoping for results.

Performance marketing and ABM for banks

Performance marketing is becoming a go-to strategy for banks, and it’s easy to see why. It helps bank marketers achieve measurable results and drive revenue growth by directly linking specific investments to clear, tangible outcomes.

But what makes it even better? Performance marketing can serve as a great starting point for incorporating account-based marketing (ABM). Both approaches are data-driven and highly measurable, which allows marketers to test, learn, and refine their strategy over time. Essentially, performance marketing and ABM share the same goal—not only proving the value of marketing but also enhancing it by letting metrics guide the way.

ABM takes performance marketing a step further by focusing on targeted outreach to high-value accounts. It’s like leveling up your marketing game, creating a natural flow between precise campaigns, better results, and stronger, long-lasting customer relationships. Together, performance marketing and ABM work as a seamless approach to smarter, more impactful marketing efforts.

Why performance marketing works

Performance marketing is all about accountability. It connects every dollar spent with measurable results, whether that’s acquiring new customers, deepening existing relationships, or driving bank deposits. This focus on measurability and ROI equips bank marketers with a clear understanding of what works and what doesn’t at the campaign/tactical level.

How can banks get the most from performance marketing? By leveraging advanced analytics and optimization tools (provided by Demandbase), marketing teams can drill down into customer segments, identifying specific client needs and pain points that represent opportunities for revenue growth.

For example, banks can use performance marketing tactics to target potential depositors who display high-intent behaviors, such as browsing savings products online or engaging with financial planning resources. These intelligent insights help teams craft targeted marketing messages and tailored solutions that not only resonate with clients/prospects, but convert them.

The next step: Building on performance marketing to move towards ABM

Performance marketing naturally transitions into ABM because it already focuses on leveraging data to inform high-return engagement activities that drive client conversion. The biggest leap from performance marketing to ABM? Shifting your focus from broad segments to individual accounts or high net worth households that offer the highest potential for value.

With the insights gleaned from performance marketing campaigns, banks can begin to identify their most critical accounts—those that drive the majority of deposit volume or generate outsized profitability. From that performance marketing foundation, adopting an ABM approach becomes less of a challenge and more of an opportunity to refine and personalize engagement efforts over the full customer journey for every single client/account.

Here’s how performance marketing leads to ABM success:

1. Identifying high-value accounts: Using performance-driven analytics, you can spot customers or prospects with significant growth potential. Whether it’s commercial clients who show cross-sell opportunities or households with underutilized products, ABM ensures no effort is wasted on low-reward targets.
2. Tailored engagement: ABM thrives on custom, one-to-one approaches. Performance marketing already teaches you how to use data to understand behavior; ABM builds on that by applying tailored messaging and exclusive offers that elevate engagement for the long run.
3. Driving alignment: Like performance marketing, ABM encourages alignment across marketing, sales, and operations. Both approaches aim to deliver measurable results, fostering greater collaboration and data sharing among teams to achieve goals like deposit growth, loan acquisition, and client retention.

Bridging the performance marketing-ABM gap with Demandbase

Demandbase simplifies the transition from performance marketing to ABM by providing tools purpose-built to identify, target, and engage high-value accounts. For instance, our advanced data analytics help banks pinpoint lucrative opportunities, while our personalization capabilities ensure you deliver the right message to the right stakeholders at the right time.

Performance marketing insights, such as conversion metrics and audience segments, are seamlessly integrated into ABM strategies through Demandbase account intelligence.

This “contextualization” of data and account intelligence allows your teams to:

• Gain a 360 degree view of accounts throughout their lifecycle
• Personalize engagement based on dynamic account signals
• Orchestrate their aligned efforts

Expand long-term revenue, reduce churn, and boost lifetime account value by identifying and closing cross-sell and up-sell opportunities as they arise.

Instead of running generic campaigns, a bank can focus on nurturing its elite-tier customers, showcasing exclusive benefits like premium pricing, integrated product bundles, or personalized financial planning. The result? Stronger relationships, improved retention, and measurable revenue impact, all driven by your coordinated, data-driven revenue engine.

From results to relationships

By combining the data-driven precision of performance marketing with the personalized approach of ABM, banks can go beyond transactional interactions and build lasting customer trust and loyalty. While performance marketing pinpoints where customer opportunities exist, ABM turns those opportunities into meaningful, long-term relationships built on trust.

Together, performance marketing and ABM create the ultimate toolkit for banks looking to stay ahead in a competitive market. It’s not just about running campaigns that deliver results; it’s about creating strategies that prioritize high-value relationships and pave the way for long-term success.

Curious about how performance marketing and ABM can drive growth and strengthen customer connections for your bank? We’re here to help.