Advanced · 8h 5m · 36 lessons
Performance Marketing
The economics behind every ad account: measure it, or you're just spending.
What you'll learn
- ✦Explain why brand and performance are complements, and what cutting one does to the other
- ✦Build a unit economics model and derive a break-even ROAS instead of picking one
- ✦Trace a CPA change back through the metric stack to the link that moved
- ✦Check whether a keep-or-cut decision flips across attribution models before acting on it
- ✦Design an incrementality test, and compute in advance whether it could work
- ✦Allocate budget by equalising marginal return, and find the right spend level
- ✦Test creative concepts, not executions, as the largest lever you control
- ✦Forecast with a saturation curve rather than a multiple, and scale in measured steps
- ✦Present a quarter in three sentences and six numbers, and price growth rather than refusing it
Part of these career paths
- Performance Marketer path · course 3 of 6
Certification projects
Build 6 projects to earn your certificate
Hands-on work that proves you can apply what you learned — part of the certificate requirements.
Syllabus
Module 1 · 55m
What performance actually means Free
What you'll be able to do
- Can explain why brand and performance are complements, not rivals, and what happens once brand spend is cut
- Can tell a reported conversion apart from one the advertising actually caused
- Can name the five repeatable ways performance marketing fails, including the ones that look like success
- Can judge a campaign only after its learning phase, on a review date set in advance
Module 2 · 53m
Unit economics Locked
What you'll be able to do
- Can compute contribution margin and a break-even ROAS from an order's real costs
- Can compute CAC, AOV, repeat rate and LTV using honest, non-flattering definitions
- Can explain why LTV:CAC and payback period answer different questions, and check both before scaling
- Can rank the levers on a failing business's unit economics and say which ones marketing actually controls
Module 3 · 54m
The metric stack Locked
What you'll be able to do
- Can trace CPM, CTR, CPC, CVR, CPA and ROAS as one linked chain, not six independent numbers
- Can state what each metric in the stack is honest about and what it stays silent on
- Can explain why platforms' reported conversions add up to more than a business's real customers
- Can diagnose a CPA rise back to the exact link in the stack that moved
Module 4 · 54m
Attribution Locked
What you'll be able to do
- Can show how the same data produces different keep-or-cut decisions under different attribution models
- Can choose an attribution model deliberately and state the rule for changing it later
- Can explain how an attribution window changes reported results without changing anything real
- Can decide a budget when the attribution models disagree, using the portfolio's blended MER
Module 5 · 55m
Incrementality and testing Locked
What you'll be able to do
- Can separate a reported conversion from an incremental one using a control group
- Can compute the minimum detectable effect a test needs before designing it
- Can choose among a geo holdout, a platform lift test, a ghost ad and before-and-after by what each costs
- Can design an incrementality test with a fixed end date and acceptance criteria set in advance
Module 6 · 53m
Budget allocation Locked
What you'll be able to do
- Can find a channel's marginal CPA and use it, not the average, to decide whether to spend more
- Can allocate a budget across channels by equalising marginal return
- Can explain why a fully optimised portfolio still needs a deliberate experimental tier
- Can find the profit-maximising spend level for a budget, separate from how it's split
Module 7 · 54m
Creative as the biggest lever Locked
What you'll be able to do
- Can explain why creative became the biggest lever once targeting and bidding were automated
- Can set a creative refresh cadence from an account's own fatigue trigger, not a fixed calendar
- Can design a creative test that isolates one variable so the result transfers to the next brief
- Can pick an affordable test metric for creative and validate the winner before scaling it
Module 8 · 54m
Forecasting and scaling Locked
What you'll be able to do
- Can explain why multiplying today's results by a budget increase overstates a forecast
- Can name the six things that break when a campaign scales, and which ones a forecast misses
- Can choose between efficiency, profit and volume as a spending objective, and state which one is in use
- Can price what a scaling decision would actually cost in forgone profit
Module 9 · 53m
Reporting to a business Locked
What you'll be able to do
- Can translate a marketing result into the three questions a business actually asks
- Can build a six-number dashboard that leads with a decision, not an activity count
- Can defend a number that depends on the product, price and competition, using dated, checkable evidence
- Can present a quarter to a board in three sentences and six numbers