What does this mean? It means that the only checks you’ll write for advertising expenses will be for actual sales generated, qualified telemarketing leads who are waiting to hear from you, or permissioned leads expecting email from you.

Essentially, you should no longer pay for advertising that does not guarantee some type of result. In the best case scenario, that means every advertising dollar guarantees a sale.

How is this different than affiliate marketing? Affiliate Marketing uses similar principles of pay-per-sale, but occurs on a micro-scale. It deals with interactions between the advertiser and the individual affiliates. Performance Advertising operates on a massive scale, making it possible to drive tens of thousands of transactions with relatively few interactions and relationships with publishers and affiliates.

To begin understanding how performance advertising works you should first understand the difference between the four major types of performance marketing networks. Knowing the difference between Closed, Open, In-House and Aggregators will help you formulate a better performance advertising model. Closed networks aggregate thousands of publishers who want to run performance advertising in newsletters or on their sites. The advertiser cannot interact with the affiliates and are typically prevented from doing so by contract. Open networks create a platform for advertisers and publishers to interact and discuss rate schedules. In-House networks sell performance advertising only on behalf of sites under their own control or ownership. Aggregators work with closed and in-house networks to provide advertising solutions to clients. Aggregators include companies that broker email lists. It is also very helpful to understand the difference between the seven performance advertising media types such as cost per click (CPC) or cost per lead (CPL). Implementing a pay for performance advertising model will allow you to apply a sustained lead generation program by paying strictly for results.

So what’s the catch? Unfortunately, there’s a significant one. Performance Advertising isn’t the type of thing you do once a week for an hour and then ignore for the rest of the week. To be successful, you’ll have to invest a significant amount of time and energy, more than is common for most traditional Internet advertising. Because you’re buying results, you’ll need to be significantly more aware how sales leads interact with your sales process. There won’t simply be a place where your advertising dollars get spent and sales come (hopefully) out the other side. Instead, Performance Advertising requires that you understand each phase of the sales process for your business. Despite what you’ve been told (and sold) in the past, successful Internet advertising is not an event, but a process that takes significant time and energy. You’ll need to think about the common sales model (or one of many like it) and the steps that precede a sale: namely, Awareness, Comprehension and Conviction. We wish you the best of luck as you look into the possibilities of capturing leads on a pay for performance basis.

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HyperX Media specializes in helping small to mid-sized companies achieve a sustained online and email lead generation program on a pay for performance basis. To find out more about HyperX Media and we can help you with your lead generation efforts, visit www.hyperxmedia.com. If you are interested in starting your own Performance Advertising campaign please contact Alan directly. HyperX Media requires an initial deposit of $3,000 start a lead campaign (cost of leads to be deducted from the deposit, much like an escrow account), and a $2,500 monthly minimum purchase for all lead generation campaigns.

Alan Pohlman is the Director of Sales and Marketing for HyperX Media based in Salt Lake City, Utah.