CPA marketing can be an effective way to monetize your campaigns, so long as you test offers to identify the best opportunities.
When you have less experience, your monetization efforts are severely hindered. I’ve tried all the verticals to monetize my campaigns using better offers.
I started with Adsense but it turned out to be a big let down due to the low CPCs. Then I started promoting affiliate products, but I failed to get the traffic converting. I then tried CPA marketing, which was a huge success for my sites and helped me create more profitable campaigns in record time.
I quickly realized that CPA marketing is the best way to monetize your campaigns. Testing CPA is a great way to identify the best opportunities for making more conversions. It also helps save a lot of time, especially when you’re not sure about the marketing platform.
In this post, I’m going to share with you everything you need to know about CPA marketing and how to examine each promotion to find the best deals in the affiliate realm.
What is CPA marketing?
CPA (Cost Per Action) marketing is an online advertising model wherein the advertising party pays for specific acquisitions that have been pre-decided. These specific acquisitions can include a sale, a click carried out on the website, and some form submissions, which might include newsletters, documents, connection requests, user registrations and the like.
Many advertising professionals consider CPA Marketing to be the most effective measure of advertising since the advertisers only get the capital when the acquisition has taken place.
There have been many instances when radio and TV stations provide inventory and products by employing the CPA strategy. This confirms the fact that this form of marketing offers huge opportunities and is already being utilized to its fullest extent by multiple domains.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing mainly works based on performance per sec. It is a marketing strategy wherein the affiliates would receive rewards for every customer that has been brought into their fold. This is another effective marketing method that is often utilized aggressively by brands.
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The four main players involved in affiliate marketing are:
- The retailer, also known as the merchant or the brand that is being represented.
- The network, which would essentially help you make the connections and eventually the capital.
- The affiliate or the publisher, which is also associated indirectly with the merchant in some way.
- The customer, that is the consumers who would be receiving these programs.
Why should you test different CPA offers?
CPA offers can be incredibly different, just like affiliates. They can vary widely in a number of ways, including requirements, industry, deadlines, payouts, etc.
Finding the best-suited offer will help you build high-converting campaigns without putting in the extra effort. For example, you can choose to select offers from the industry that you are already aware of and you won’t need to do any additional adjustments to define your target audience.
Similarly, to double your chances of being successful and to find the most effective deals for your business and audience, you should test the available CPA offers. This will enable you to hone your strategy and see better ROI.
Why is CPA preferable over affiliate marketing?
There are a number of subtle differences that could mean CPA marketing gets better results than affiliate marketing, including:
- CPA enables users to get paid if they execute a simple action like filling in a form. Affiliate marketing, on the other hand, would work on the number of purchases.
- CPA marketing is considered to be much simpler than affiliate marketing as payment is only made for sending a prospective lead to the desired location. Conversion nurturing will then be carried out by the respective departments, but just sending a lead will pay you the decided capital.
- CPA marketing means consumers can take actions without sending their bank credentials or any credit card details. There is no prior amount that would need to be taken.
- The payments credited in CPA Marketing are fast and more efficient than with affiliate marketing.
- CPA ensures you make a profit if the services provided are top of the line.
- CPA allows for an integrated form of marketing, therefore providing you complete liberty to do marketing the way you want it to, even if you need to reconfigure your website.
- When it comes to CPA, you’re in charge. With affiliate marketing, there is always an affiliate manager involved. Although, the manager will offer guidance in terms of offers, services, and strategies for making money.
These points are very instrumental and important for understanding what you can get out of both methods. You also need to understand how best to configure CPA or affiliate marketing as per your current business strategies to make it work.
What are the steps to follow regarding CPA marketing?
Let us take a look at some of the steps that can be followed for CPA marketing.
Step 1 – Finding the right offer
The very first thing you need to do when it comes to CPA marketing is find the right offer for both parties. The internet is big and there are multiple paths to reach the same goal, so reaching the perfect destination might take some time. Therefore, it is imperative that you do your homework before you venture out.
The one logical thing that you can do is set Google Analytics up to find out what works best in your case.
What are the best tools for CPA offers in 2019?
Some of the best tools for CPA offers in 2019 are:
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is free and ideal for helping you assess what offers are working for you. It enables you to track all the relevant data you need to make a decision, including how much traffic is coming to your site and the number of conversions.
Alexa
This a well-known platform that has taken CPA marketing to the next level. Alexa offers various helpful tools and better solutions to its users, which helps provide actionable and compelling insights that ultimately lead to excellent results.
PowerAdSpy
PowerAdSpy is an ad-intelligence platform that is designed for Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Google advertisements. It lists all the winning advertisements that have been posted, allowing you to take inspiration from some of the best campaigns. This also means you can perform competitor analysis to ensure you remain competitive.
StatCounter
StatCounter is used for tracking the amount of traffic that comes to your website. There are services that can be used for free and advanced functionalities that set it apart from Google Analytics. It also provides real-time data, so you are always up-to-date with your results.
Quantcast
Quantcast is a real-time, artificial intelligence-driven platform that tracks all of the website metrics that matter for advertising purposes. It keeps track of all of the insights from and reviews given by visitors to help you better understand, influence and convert them with your ads and CPA marketing activities.
How to choose a CPA offer for high conversions?
There are so many offers and deals out there aimed at providing you with the best CPA offer for increased conversion rates. Since each one provides different features and functionalities, it can be difficult to choose the one that would suit you best. Here are some factors that will help inform your decision:
1. Understand the service you want to advertise
Before even thinking about the offers you might choose, it is important that you understand them. The service needs to go through careful scrutinization and all the characteristics need to be looked at.
You also need to ensure that your services follow the legal procedures, otherwise, you could find yourself in serious trouble. Understanding every aspect of the offers being considered will ensure that your advertising process is smooth and streamlined.
2. Peruse the offer documents carefully
Would you buy a house, car or anything expensive without reading the documents prior to buying them? The answer should be no.
As well as understanding the procedures required for the offer you choose, you also need to go through the official documentation process that comes with it. While checking the CPA offer, the things that you need to keep in consideration are:
- Advertisement formats that are valid.
- Traffic variant enabled in the entire course of time.
- List of geographical locations.
- Official rules and regulations on conversion.
- Leads accepted per day.
- Other possible limitations that need to be highlighted.
3. Keep business seasons in mind
It’s important to consider the fact that certain products and services may need to be set aside during different seasons. To mirror changing demand throughout the year, it’s a good idea to use different sets of products at varied times in order to reflect consumer behaviour. If you are buying a CPA service that would be particularly suited for one season, buy it at the right time.
4. Terms and conditions on payment
The requirements and conditions regarding payments will be precise and need to be fully understood and followed. This is why it is important to discuss the payment policies in order to ensure they suit all parties.
Some advertisers will not consider having paid traffic, they will have restrictions on withdrawal policies and so on. It is important that you check these rules to prevent any problems in the future.
Step 2 – Connecting with your network
You’ve looked at the possibilities for the offer in detail and have taken every aspect into consideration while scoping out all the possible angles. It is now time to take the next step in the process and connect with the network. CPA marketing does not happen if you don’t have a network.
The offer page will contain a “Join the Network” CTA button, as well as an Affiliate Signup form that will include mandatory fields to fill in. This information would act as an identity in the network. All the details need to be legitimate if you want to join, so check the information you are providing.
Step 3 – CPA offer integration on your website
So you have your CPA offer ready and you’ve joined a Network of individuals. It is now time to put two and two together and integrate the offer with your website to gain some capital out of it.
You can easily improve the way your website looks with just a few clicks, helping you to get the best results. The best practice for getting more conversions at this stage would keep it simple, integrate your advertising and get some valuable conversions out of it.
Weird banner advertisements for no reason will look messy and won’t reflect positively on your reputation, let alone get the results you want. Keep it simple and focus on promoting the offer in the best, clearest way.
Step 4 – Drive traffic to your website
Everything is set for the grand finale now. You’ve checked all the prerequisites required for a successful conversion of your CPA offer. Now you just need to check whether all this has been worth it or not. It is time to start focusing on increasing traffic, attracting customers and converting them.
There are a number of ways in which you can do this:
SEO
An effectively executable method for kicking things up a gear would be to employ search engine optimization (SEO). However, SEO results don’t happen immediately, as configuration, keyword settings, and traffic accumulation would take some time. But this long-term strategy is worth it if you get it right.
Download our Individual Member Resource – Successful SEO guide
If you get it right, SEO can be a fantastic, relatively low-cost way to drive quality visitors who want to do business with you to your site.
Access the Successful SEO guide
Pay per click advertisements
Using Google and Facebook advertisements for PPCis another great way to increase the traffic towards the website. The biggest advantage of these tactics is that you can start immediately, so you can see traffic pick up fairly quickly.
However, you need to pay for your advertising so your overall CPA marketing ROI could be impacted, especially if your PPC campaign isn’t fully optimized, as this can mean you are paying more per click.
Social Media
Social media is now a powerful way to increase traffic to your website, with audience research helping you assess which platform is likely to work best for your site. As well as social referrals from organic reach, you can also invest in social media ads. It’s worth remembering that gaining engaged social media follows takes time, but building up your base will be worthwhile.
CPA in affiliate marketing statistics
If you’re still not sure that CPA marketing is the right choice for your site, here are some helpful statistics that could help you make your decision:
Best Examples of CPA Offers
Take a look at some of the best examples of CPA Network Offers:
Maxbounty
This has been one of the most successful affiliate networks since 2004 and has become renowned in this area. Maxbounty has multiple affiliates, therefore, earning a considerable amount of capital.
Clickbooth
This is one of the fastest-growing affiliates in the market and has paid close to $100million to its affiliates.
Peerfly
Peerfly has over 30,000 publishers spread across 160+ countries owing to its renown with respect to multiple brands and the wide number of choices that it offers.
GlobalWide Media
GlobalWide Media was previously known as Neverblue. It is still one of the biggest names in the CPA based affiliate network. The quality of services it provides is timely and efficient.
ClickDealer
ClickDealer provides great payouts for its affiliates and an affiliate manager always stays in touch.
Conclusion
This is a complete plan to execute a CPA marketing strategy. Whatever that you need to plan, whatever that you need to do for the benefit of your organization as a whole can be done with this as a reference point. Following the steps I’ve outlined will help you make the most of CPA and affiliate marketing.
