Performance marketing has traditionally relied heavily on last-click attribution and basic demographic targeting, but as marketers have witnessed, this space is rapidly evolving. Smart brands are already using AI-powered predictive analytics and real-time behavioral data to not only improve their understanding of actual campaign performance and improve attribution, but also facilitate the seamless delivery of highly personalized customer experiences across channels.
To learn more about how performance marketing is changing, check out the expert insights below. Here, 18 members of Forbes Agency Council share tips for how brands can best prepare for the future of performance marketing today and ready their resources to thrive amid this continuing evolution.
1. Collaborate Cross-Functionally To Balance Execution
Ideally, performance marketing will directly build brand equity as the new marketing standard. Brands will need to drive immediate, measurable action. While the industry strives for this, execution often lacks balance. Marketers must eliminate the operational dichotomy of brand and performance. The first step is effective collaboration across strategy, data, analytics, creativity and media. – Ellis Verdi, DeVito/Verdi
2. Make The Audience Feel Part Of A Valued Community
Modern performance marketing is more human-oriented and aims to create authentic, long-term relationships with the audience. It is important now for the audience to feel valued and part of a community of like-minded people. The focus on metrics still remains, but performance today is no longer just a race for numbers. – Michael Kuzminov, HypeFactory
3. Pivot To Meaningful, Long-Term Brand Strategies
Two decades of prioritizing “measurable” over “meaningful” have left many victims of metric manipulation. Brand strength has eroded, businesses are less adaptable and market share is slipping away. Success tomorrow demands a pivot to long-term strategies. Start now by investing in brand strategy as your guiding light to outlast trends and secure sustainable success—even in performance marketing. – Shanna Apitz, Hunt Adkins
4. Focus On Brand Favorability Factors And Attachment
Buyers are becoming more sophisticated and discerning. Tomorrow’s performance marketing will include more brand favorability factors. A click is one thing. Brand attachment is quite another. It’s brand affinity, brand preference and brand love that performance marketers will focus on more in the future. – Tom Shapiro, Stratabeat
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5. Double Down On Building Direct Customer Relationships
Tomorrow’s performance marketing will be all about privacy-first data. With cookies crumbling and tracking tightening, marketers will rely more on first-party data and AI-driven insights. To prepare, brands need to double down on building direct customer relationships—think loyalty programs and interactive content—to collect data ethically and still crush their KPIs. – Justin Belmont, Prose
6. Focus On Earning Trust And Creating Connections
Tomorrow’s performance marketing will rely more on businesses collecting data directly from their customers (first-party data) because privacy rules are making it harder to track people online. Marketers should focus on earning customer trust, creating stronger connections and using their own tools (like email lists or apps) to build relationships and guide campaigns. – Jason Hall, FiveChannels Marketing
7. Adopt Tools That Align Campaigns Across Touch Points
Tomorrow’s performance marketing will pivot from chasing immediate KPIs to crafting cohesive, customer-centric journeys. Marketers should adopt tools that align campaigns across touch points, ensuring every interaction builds long-term brand affinity rather than fleeting conversions. – Dmitrii Kustov, Regex SEO
8. Layer In Comms, Messaging And Media Investments
Tomorrow’s performance marketing will be more results-driven than it is today. It’s important to note that, without a brand layering in communication, messaging and media investments, performance marketing per se exhausts the existing market pool. While it’s efficient, relying solely on a performance-focused approach puts the brand’s future at significant risk. – Oksana Matviichuk, OM Strategic Forecasting
9. Connect Your Customer Data To Conversions
Tomorrow’s performance marketing will be more offline-conversion-driven. The strategies of leveraging form data for lead generation and full understanding of the lead funnel are rapidly changing; the pivot to maximizing conversion value is here. Having a connected CRM with customer data tied to conversions is the future and will enhance the ROI of your campaigns. – Jerry Kelly, Marketing 360®
10. Shift To Nurturing Micro-Communities
Performance marketing’s future demands human-first strategies. Shift from chasing clicks to nurturing micro-communities. Build passionate communities through collaborative content and virtual roundtables and by empowering brand advocates. When algorithms fail, authentic connections will drive sustainable growth. – Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS
11. Invest In Brand Storytelling
Tomorrow’s performance marketing will blend brand and performance like never before. I’ve seen firsthand how campaigns succeed when a strong brand amplifies performance efforts. Marketers must invest in brand storytelling to build trust and awareness, ensuring performance marketing strategies resonate long-term. Preparing means aligning brand building with data-driven performance tactics for lasting impact. – Anthony Chiaravallo, Vallo Media
12. Prioritize Mastering Customer Moments Over Metrics
Tomorrow’s performance marketing will shift from chasing metrics to mastering customer moments. AI and real-time data will make campaigns feel like conversations, not ads. To prepare, marketers must focus on empathy, use tech to listen deeply and design experiences that solve problems in real time. The future isn’t about louder marketing; it’s about smarter, human-centered marketing. – Ajay Prasad, GMR Web Team
13. Analyze Customer Longevity; Target Lifetime Customers
Tomorrow’s performance marketing will focus not only on acquiring new customers, but also on analyzing customer longevity and targeting lifetime customers. Marketing efforts should be evaluated differently, emphasizing long-term value when assessing return on investment. – Jessica Hawthorne-Castro, Hawthorne Advertising
14. Optimize For Faster, Deeper, More Active Awareness
Traditional performance marketing treats conversion as a binary event—did they click or buy or not? Tomorrow’s performance marketing will need to measure and optimize for how quickly and how deeply audiences progress from passive awareness to active participation with your brand ecosystem. – Goran Paun, ArtVersion
15. Focus Only On Metrics Related To Business Goals
Today, performance marketing is driven by data, much of which is irrelevant. Performance marketers have a mantra: “If it can be measured, it must be presented.” Changing this approach relies on a change in mindset among senior leaders. In the future, executives will understand that metrics are only useful if they have a clear relationship to business goals, and they won’t accept vanity metrics. – Mike Maynard, Napier Partnership Limited
16. Consider The Concept Of ‘Brandformance’
Recently, I was introduced to a “new” term from Google called “brandformance” (brand and performance marketing). The idea is to track your brand growth efforts in conjunction with your performance marketing efforts to build your brand equity over time. As your brand solidifies its place, organic purchasing increases, lowering the need for paid media spend. – Bernard May, National Positions
17. Combine Algorithms And Human Aspirations
Performance marketing is shifting to a human-centered approach! While it was focused on immediate ROI and conversion metrics before, it now demands mastery of emotional touch points and authentic connections. Savvy marketers are already blending behavioral data with psychological insights, mapping micro-moments that drive long-term loyalty. In the future, we need to combine algorithms and human aspirations. – Merag Shahzad, Reppocrates
18. Connect The Dots Of A Customer’s Purchase Journey
Performance marketing of the future will have a larger focus on connecting the dots of a customer’s purchase journey. Currently, performance marketing is mainly focused on a single end-point sale. Engaging with customers over the long term, developing recurring buyers and building a product-obsessed community, while tracking and attributing customer touch points along the way, will be the future. – William Gasner, Stack Influence
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