Imagine you’re at an art auction. There’s beautiful art all around you. And there are bidders competing to purchase the most beautiful pieces, each with their own idea of how much the art is worth & what they’re willing to pay for it.

" People are visiting my website but not converting"

" I'm not able to scale revenue from paid ads beyond a point" 

These are some of the top pain points we heard from performance marketers and so we built this guide to help you build a solid foundation of Performance Marketing. This will make you think and strategise in the right direction. 

P.S.A: If you’ve come here looking for hacks that will scale your campaigns by 43%, I’m afraid you’re at the wrong place. 

  Converting your ICPs into a Performance Marketing Audience

  Finding the sweet spot with your budget allocation

Scaling your Performance Marketing efforts by tracking & optimising for max ROI

  Accelerating customer acquisition via paid ads

Founders and Marketers looking to solve for acquisition, scale and revenue growth via paid ads.

Learning is tough. It takes effort. Lots of it. It's not easy to pull the brakes on your work or life and sit down to learn when you have the option to spend your time in a million other ways. 

But now that you've taken this step for yourself, let's do it right. 

Don't think of this guide as just another piece of content to read and learn from. Instead, take it as a step-by-step process, which if you follow will help you achieve the above outcomes. If you find yourself dozing off - take a break, stretch and come back. Take notes, read, re-read, process, practice and apply. 

Set up your work desk and sit there (I know, the temptation to be on your bed is real)

Put your phone on silent, switch it off for the next hour if possible. 

Grab your favourite cup of tea or coffee and settle in. 

Introduction and Outcomes

A sneak peek into the Foundations of Paid Marketing and learning outcomes from it. 

Foundations of Paid Marketing

Building the foundations of Paid Marketing by understanding the basics of any paid channel and going deep into the nuances of campaign set-up. 

Paid Marketing Channels

Cracking the channel selection framework and diving deep into push and pull campaigns with Meta and Google Advertising. 

In paid marketing, picking the right channels is like choosing the right tools for a painting—each one has its own colours and canvas for achieving specific goals. Just as artists select brushes and paints carefully, marketers explore different channels to find their audience and connect with them. And if they don't the result is off the roof CACs and heavy cash burn. 

And so, it becomes extremely important to carefully pick and choose the channels for Paid Marketing. 

But honestly, it's more science than art and by the end of this section, we will equip you with a framework to pick the best possible channels.

Paid Marketing strategies boil down to 2 approaches: 

These methods define how brands interact with their audience, guiding them from discovery to making a purchase.

So then, how do you go about selecting the right channel?

Should you opt for push marketing or pull? Or is a search based channel better for you than a display channel?

I bet you find yourself struggling with these questions. 

While we're particularly talking about paid ads here, this framework will help you choose out of all relevant channels of acquisition - be it organic, search ads, display ads, referral or partner program. 

Based on the above framework and example from Orange Health, the most suitable channels can be chosen based on factors like where are we getting the highest ROAS and LTV from but at the same time CAC is not shooting up too high. 

As per the priority of the business, the ad objectives and their top parameters, the channels can be picked out. 

Super! With the channel selection framework in place, we will be moving into Google and Meta Advertising next. 

Channel Selection Framework

A 6-step framework for channel selection

Meta Advertising 

Diving into Meta Advertising with campaign set-up, audience targeting and ad creation. 

Be honest, how often do you find yourself in this spot everyday? Multiple, I’m sure. And so there’s no surprise that Google is the most used search engine, receiving millions of daily user searches.

Let’s start by looking at some Google Ad types:

They present users with visual advertisements across multiple devices and locations.

They're presented within content users are trying to view (read: they can be annoying) and tend to have low click-through rates but high conversion value.

These text-based ads resemble standard link listings in the Search Engine Results Page and pop-up at the top everytime you search for something on Google. ,

Unlike Search ads, which advertisers fill out from scratch with original copy, Shopping ads pull data from product feeds in the Google Merchant Center. 

→ For this guide, we’ll be diving deep into creating search ads.

We'll understand the process in 2 parts: Setting up your Ads manager and running a campaign. 

Fill in your business name and what the URL/link to what you want to advertise - your website, phone number, app or something else.

Next, link relevant accounts to get started - whether its youtube, Mobile App, Business Profile or Phone Number

Choose between your expertise and Google’s. Basically, when you create a new campaign, google will ask you to opt for a Smart Campaign right away. This mode gets work done with less effort but offers less control so we recommend taking out the time to build customised campaigns.

Do not choose your “Main advertising goal” as Google asks, and instead click the option to “Switch to expert mode.”Don’t fret, we’ll help you get your campaign up and running.

 This will impact how Google shows your ad and what result it will yield. 

Google offers 8 different campaign objectives:

 Once you’ve chosen your objective, it will show you the available campaign types. For this guide, we’ll be creating a search ad campaign and the goal we’ll select is website traffic.

Keywords:This is what your screen will look like at the keyword stage

This is the final stage where you create the ads that will show up when someone searches for your targeted keywords. First, let’s get familiar with the dashboard at the ad level.

With that we've completed this section. Consider this a V1 and if you have any recommendations, resources, or information you’d like to contribute, 

Alternatively, you could also email us on 

Google Advertising

Diving into Google Advertising with campaign set-up, keyword Planning and ad-development

Tracking and Optimisation

Understanding tracking metrics at different stages of the funnels, comparing them to category benchmarks and optimising for improved ROI by solving for ad fatigue and campaign settings. 

Performance Marketing is a channel that’s driven by results. It helps you accelerate your acquisition efforts by going to customers at scale instead of waiting for them to discover you.

Fab India wants to boost sales by 30% for their gifting collection before Diwali. While people will discover them online, using platforms like Meta and Google they can accelerate the process of customer acquisition by running a sales campaign. While running ads they’ll pay the platform when a customer takes a specified action, which in their case could be a purchase on the website.

 This is the essence of any Performance Marketing campaign. 

We will go deeper into the nuances of how any performance marketing channel works at a fundamental level. 

The Fundamentals

Paid Marketing at a fundamental level. 

Welcome to the next chapter! In the previous one, you understood Performance Marketing at a conceptual level, let's now take it a notch higher and delve deeper. In this, we will cover Stage 1: Campaign Set-up.

At this stage, you identify the goals for your campaign by aligning the stage of your company, product and overall objectives. For this, you need to have a crystal clear understanding of your business, business metrics and how they change at different stages. 

If you have a heavy number of Daily Active Users (DAU), then you might run campaigns for bottom funnel audience with the goal of getting higher conversions. (of course, after considering other factors)

At the same time, if you have low DAU and a smaller budget to work around, you will optimise for a different goal, audience and event. Could be sign-up or an add to cart. 

[ DAU: The number of unique users who engage with your product or service within a 24-hour-period ]

With that understanding in place, let's look at the kind of objectives in Performance Marketing and what you should optimise for. 

Every campaign starts or with a specific campaign objective (extremely important) and so the first step of setting up a campaign is choosing the objectives that best align with your business goal. 

Using Nykaa as an example, here’s a quick breakdown of the 6 objectives:

The campaign stage looks like this in Meta and Google:

Often overlooked, naming is an important part of campaign set-up because it helps in effective tracking and reporting. While a simple name might be easy to understand, it becomes difficult to track and report when running multiple experiments.

Setting up a campaign

Understanding the process of campaign set-up across channels. 

ICP Building, Audience Targeting and Budget Allocation

Building Ad-Sets by diving deep into how to build and prioritise ICPs, target the right audience and allocate budgets. 

Your ads are what your users will actually see → making them the most crucial element of your campaign. It’s simple. People won’t engage with an ad that is low-resolution, is poorly written, or doesn’t grab their attention in a crowded feed.

In one sentence, Display ad campaigns push and search ad campaigns pull.

 that appear on websites, blogs, social media platforms, and apps that let you promote your brand by increasing awareness about your products and services to your target audience. They are quite versatile and help you reach your audience at 

The USP for display ads is the ability able to highlight visual elements and make people experience the product (virtually of course), catching their eye and moving them through the funnel. Video ads for example tend to have a greater impact.

These are search based ads placed in search engines that pop up every time a user looks for a particular keyword. For example, the ads that appear at the top and bottom of organic search results in Google.

These ads usually target users with a high intent since they’re already searching for the product - highlighting their need and can be a powerful way to drive these users to your website, increasing traffic and brand awareness.

1.  Do customers search for your brand or product?

If you have products or services lots of people are looking for on search engines, search ads are great for you. This is done by bidding on keywords that closely represent your business (Moz is your best friend here). Doing so increases the visibility of their business on search engine results pages for these keywords. People who are in active need of your product will see their ad at the top or bottom of organic results and click on the ad if they want to learn more.

But what happens if you have a lesser-known product not many people are searching for?

Let’s say you created a new, groundbreaking product for dogs. Since you've basically just invented it, your potential customers may likely not be aware of it – and likely not search for it. With display advertising, you can run your ads on websites and communities about dogs, dog training, and pets in general, thereby putting your product in front of the best possible audience. This allows you to target people as they move across different websites and social media platforms.

You need to identify your customers’ online buying behaviour; what drives them to make a purchase and where do they usually make a purchase from. Search ads can be super powerful when used in combination with an e-commerce website. Imagine your own online behavior. You search for a solution to a problem, and one of the search ads seems to fit your needs perfectly. You click on the link, add the item to the cart, boom.

Meanwhile, if you’re a modern D2C brand, you will likely use a hybrid approach: use display ads to build awareness and search ads to drive a sale online.

3.  Where in the customer journey is your audience?

Building a clearly defined funnel and understanding your customers’ journey through it is crucial here. As display ads increase awareness about your brand or product, you can use them at the TOFU stage. While Search ads encourage people to visit your website and make a purchase, its a good idea to leverage them at the BOFU stage when you’re using a channel mix.

Not everyone will purchase your product after clicking a search ad. So you can also use display ads to remind customers about your product after visiting your website.

A combination of search and display ads also suits long customer journeys, especially for a high ticket product. You can increase awareness about your product over time with different display ads, then use search ads to drive more qualified traffic to your site.

With ads flooding each and every platform and attention spans falling rapidly, creating an ad that converts is challenging. 

Super, we're now at the end of this module.

Let’s summarise it with the example of CRED:

 A Bengaluru based fintech unicorn, CRED is known for its marketing strategies. I'm sure you've seen 

in one of their most popular ad campaigns, and if you haven't, 

That said, let's apply all the learnings from this module and see how CRED would run a performance campaign across channels by way of experimentation with audience types, targeting, marketing pitch and ad creatives:

With that, we've completed this module on the Fundamentals of Paid Marketing. Consider this a V1 and if you have any recommendations, resources, or information you’d like to contribute, 

Framework to Build Creatives and Write Copy

Learning to build solid creatives and write copy that converts. 

Performance Marketing is driven by numbers and results. 

Sure, the quality of your creatives and your ability to target your ICPs matter, but it’s all for nothing if you don’t consistently track and optimise your campaigns.

Platforms like Google and Meta have robust tracking systems within their dashboards, supplemented by third-party apps, to monitor your campaigns at different funnel levels using various metrics.

Tracking becomes crucial because it gives you direct insight into the ROI of your efforts and tells you straight up whether you’re on the right path or not, allowing you to course correct. After all, you don’t want your entire budget to land up in a campaign that burns it all without any returns.

Performance Marketing metrics help you find out opportunities for making data-driven decisions. They show patterns, helping you compare performance and conduct A/B tests to see what works best.

Sure, tracking is important. But what metrics should you track?

Your campaigns essentially target three types of audiences - 

By analysing KPIs across these levels of the funnel, you’ll be able to identify areas where you can double down and areas where you can tweak performance by optimising for creatives, copy and targeting.

The most important metrics to monitor for your performance marketing campaign will depend on what you’d like that campaign to accomplish.

Based on the stage of funnel, track your campaigns with the following metrics:

Awareness stage metrics help you assess the success of digital marketing campaigns that expose your brand to new potential customers.

These metrics assess your campaign’s effectiveness in converting people from casual visitors to potential customers.

These KPIs help monitor the success of procurement campaigns - the ultimate goal of any marketing campaign.

There's another concept that's super important which people sometimes tend to overlook when it comes to Performance Marketing: 

Let's understand what an attribution window is.

You’re running an ad campaign for a fashion brand. Someone clicks on your ad, visits the website, looks through multiple options of suits 

 they go away without making a purchase. 

 is the time frame during which that purchase is "credited" back to the original ad click.

 where any actions taken by the customer - like signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase - are attributed to the initial ad interaction.

Why is it important, you might be wondering?

When you’re running ads, you start off with an objective and optimise everything to meet that goal. And attribution windows help figure out working and what’s not.

They give you a direction to understand which ads are really driving your sales. If you know that most of your sales happen within a week of someone seeing your ad, you can optimise your campaigns to focus on that critical period to get the maximum ROI.

Attribution windows can vary depending on the platform and the type of ad campaign you’re running. Let’s look at a few types:

But how do you go about choosing the right window for you?

See, there’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to this. Choosing the right window can make a big difference in understanding your campaign's performance. If your sales cycle is longer, you might need a longer window to capture all relevant conversions.

Now let’s look at it with a practical example →

You’re running a campaign for a new gadget. You notice that most of your sales happen within 10 days of someone clicking on your ad.

In this case, setting an attribution window of 10 days can help you accurately measure how effective your ads are.

If you used a shorter window, like 3 days, you might miss out on crediting some sales to your ads, leading you to think they aren’t performing as well as they actually are.

Recommendations on setting your window →

Now you know what metrics to track to understand the performance of your campaigns at various levels of the funnel and attribution windows. But these metrics alone are futile. Unless you have a parameter to compare to, you will not be able to assess the effectiveness of your campaigns, 

bringing me to the next chapter: Category Benchmarks. 

Metrics to Track: Awareness, Consideration and Conversion

Understand which metrics to track across different stages of the funnel. 

These benchmarks across different platforms will allow you to compare the performance of your campaigns, identify leaks and take corrective measures by optimising for better results.

Refer to this list for benchmarks across platforms:

We'll look at how to solve for these 3 scenarios and optimise your campaigns for high ROI in the next section. 

Category Benchmarks and Industry Standards

Benchmarks across categories to compare and analyse the performance of your campaigns. 

Remember the 3 scenarios we talked about in the last chapter?

First, there’s something wrong fundamentally.

If either of these are misaligned, stop right away, scrutinise your metrics and fix.

While paid ads are great to accelerate acquisition and scale, they require quick and constant observation and iteration.

Imagine, you’re 3 weeks into a great campaign, ROI is good, CAC is stable and you’re meeting your objective when you suddenly CPC spikes. Your ad frequency is through the roof, and your audience is tired of seeing the same ad. 

, and it can waste your budget and annoy your audience.

Paid ads can accelerate customer acquisition, sure. But they don’t work in isolation. For growth, you need a holistic system. Here’s how you can do it:

We hope this guide has been full of value for you. Consider this a V1 and if you have any recommendations, resources, or information you’d like to contribute, 