CPA marketing is the fastest growing niche of advertising strategies. CPA business promotion from A to Z: how it works What is an affiliate program
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SQL query for CPA report
In recent years, CPA marketing (from the English Cost Per Action - payment for action) has gained good momentum in the CIS market. This model of online advertising is quite effective and, if used correctly, can bring up to 20% of all traffic on the site. However, it has its own pitfalls. For example, partners who bring low-quality traffic or openly scam. In this article, we will talk about examples of dishonest work of webmasters that we ourselves have encountered, and show how to detect such cases in time. But first, a little materiel.
How CPA Marketing Works
There are three parties involved in the process:
- Advertiser- a customer, a site whose goods and services need to be advertised.
- Webmaster— a performer who places ads on banners, social networks, email newsletters, on his own website, etc.
- CPA network (affiliate network)- an intermediary between the first and second, who accepts orders (offers) from advertisers, selects webmasters and deals with organizational issues: concluding contracts, accounting for work performed, paying remuneration.
So, the customer and the contractor find each other on the site of the partner network and agree on cooperation. The webmaster places on his site or in another channel an affiliate link that contains his tags. When a person follows such a link to the advertiser's website and performs a conversion action (purchase, booking, registration, etc.), the webmaster receives money for this.
What difficulties may arise when working with CPA networks
This is where the “trust but verify” principle comes into play. Naturally, not all partners try to deceive their advertisers, but if you do not control the quality of affiliate traffic, then the likelihood of encountering fraud increases significantly. In addition, by ignoring the activities of unscrupulous webmasters, you not only lose money, but also risk ruining relationships with partners who work honestly. After all, it is their work that scammers appropriate for themselves. Let's see how exactly they do it.
Examples of Advertiser Fraud in CPA Marketing
Context per brand
The webmaster places contextual advertising using the name of the client company in the keywords. When a user clicks on such an ad, he gets to the webmaster's site, where he is marked with affiliate tags and redirected to the advertiser's site. If a person eventually places an order, then the webmaster will receive a reward for it. Why is that bad? Yes, because the online store has to pay for attracting customers who were already going to make a purchase in it without any advertising. In addition, in such cases, keyword bids increase and the advertiser has to spend more on their own campaigns with branded queries.
Clickunder (ClickUnder)
A person goes to some site, for example, to watch TV series online and clicks the mouse in any of its areas. At this point, the advertiser's website opens in a new tab and the user is marked with affiliate cookies. If after a while this user visits the advertiser's website via organic or type-in and makes a conversion, the webmaster will receive money for it.
Opening sites in a frame
This method is very similar to the clickander, with the only difference being that affiliate sites do not open in new tabs, but in 1×1 pixel pages that are invisible to the human eye. This is due to the tag
Toolbars
These are browser extensions that offer additional features, such as refunding part of the amount from online purchases, blocking ads, showing the weather, etc. When a user visits an advertiser's site, these extensions can set affiliate cookies or redirect the user to the same site but with the publisher's UTM tags. If a person buys something on the site, then the sale is credited to the partner, although in fact the client was brought by another channel.
Overwriting source/medium
An interesting case that we recently encountered in our work. One retargeting service working on the CPA model added its own type-in tags to users before sending a hit to Google Analytics. As a result, Google Analytics reports showed that the client was referred by a CPA source. The partner explained this by saying that he marks only his users in this way, so that it is more convenient to count post-view conversions. However, if there was another source between viewing an affiliate banner and a direct visit to the site (direct traffic), for example, google/cpc, then it was overwritten.
What could be a wake-up call
The main markers that a partner is playing a dishonest game:
How to set up CPA reports
You can create reports that will help you control the work of CPA partners using various tools (more on that below). Let's take a look at three main steps:
- Collection of raw data about the actions of site visitors.
- Sampling of suspicious sessions when the interval between them is less than 60 seconds, while the traffic source is changed to affiliate.
- Building reports.
Step 1. Collecting raw data
In order to detect cookiestuffing, we need complete, unsampled data about user actions on the site for analysis. In our experience, they are most conveniently collected and processed using SQL queries in the Google BigQuery cloud storage.
To import data from a website into Google BigQuery, you can use:
- OWOX BI Pipeline - this solution allows you to transfer raw data almost in real time.
- BigQuery Export is a standard export available to paid Google Analytics 360 users.
There are several points that you should definitely pay attention to in the table with user behavior data:
- Availability and correct transmission of Client ID, User ID or other user identifier. Since all requests will be based on this parameter, it is important that it is correct and unique for each site visitor. To check if there are any problems with passing this parameter, you can form a segment of users who have a User ID in Google Analytics and see how the number of such users correlates with the total number of site visitors over the past few months.
- If there are errors in the data and you cannot correct them using an SQL query (for example, filter out abnormal transactions and users), it is better to take only the period with correct data for analysis.
Step 2. Select suspicious sessions
- Date of.
- User ID (Client ID or User ID).
- Source and channel of the session.
- Time between two sessions.
- The start and end URL of each session.
In addition, conditions must be specified in the SQL query that will help to understand that a source substitution has occurred. These terms can be customized for your business. For example, in our joint case with one of the clients, they were like this:
- Less than 60 seconds elapse between two sessions.
- Changing the source does not change the page.
- There was a buy in the last session.
- The last channel is affiliate. Here you need to take into account that in some CPA projects the source is defined differently, for example, cpa or aff.
As a result, you will get something like this table with information about clients whose traffic source has changed, and the time between sessions did not exceed 60 seconds:
But first, a little materiel
Step 3. Building reports
The data received using the SQL query can be formatted into a report in any way convenient for you.
Method 1. Import data from Google BigQuery into Google Sheets using a free add-on. Further, this data can be formatted, for example, in such a summary report that will help monitor statistics on affiliate partners:
In the screenshot, we can see that affiliate partners numbered 3,4,5 and 8 had the most suspicious transactions. At the same time, such sources as CPC and Organic were most often replaced with CPA.
Method 2. You can import data from Google BigQuery into Google Data Studio, Power BI, Tableau or any other service you are used to working with.
Method 3. Use service. Our clients periodically encounter fraud in CPA marketing and turn to us for help. Therefore, we have added a whole set of reports on this topic to BI Smart Data. In the service, you can enter a question in human language (without using SQL) and immediately get an answer in the form of a table, graph or chart.
What you can do with CPA reports in BI Smart Data
1. Reveal the substitution of traffic sources.
This report shows how many source change transactions were made for each campaign. For example, in the screenshot we can see that campaigns 3, 5 and 4 had the highest percentage of transactions with less than 1 minute between sessions. The higher the proportion of such transactions, the higher the probability of source substitution. Therefore, it is worth paying more attention to the work of partners who launched these campaigns.
2. Find out which sources and channels are losing value due to fraud.
This report shows the sources and channels that were in the funnel before the affiliate source. For example, in the screenshot above, we can see that campaigns 1 and 4 had paid channels (facebook/cpm and bing/cpc) before the sessions with CPA transactions. The difference between sessions of 17 and 18 seconds tells us about the likely cookie stuffing. From this we conclude that advertising campaigns in Bing and Facebook are underestimated.
If you enter the question “How is the number of CPA sessions distributed by landing pages and keywords?” into BI Smart Data, you will get a report as in the screenshot above. To find out if partners are using your company name, simply enter it in the filter for the "Keyword" column.
4. Understand who to pay money to if the same transaction is duplicated by different partners.
If several publishers billed you for the same purchase, then this report will help you figure out which source was the last one in the chain before ordering.
In our experience, in cases of duplicate transactions, the last source receives the reward.
conclusions
In conclusion, we want to say that we do not in any way call for abandoning affiliate traffic or reducing the cost of attracting it. On the contrary, the simple anti-fraud reports described in this article will help you:
- It is more efficient to work with honest webmasters.
- Make mutual settlements with CPA partners as transparent as possible.
- Evaluate the usefulness of affiliate traffic, how much money it brings in and how it affects other sources. For example, if we are talking about cookiestuffing, then we can underestimate sources that have been overwritten
- Get rid of manual work by setting up automated reports to check affiliate ads.
To detect cookie spoofing, it is enough to collect complete user behavior data using OWOX BI Pipeline and apply an SQL query to it. Fill out the form and we will send you the text of such a request by email.
The World Wide Web has enveloped the entire planet, penetrating into all spheres of life in all countries, exerting ever-increasing pressure on politics, the economy, the social structure, and so on. In addition, the Internet is systematically modified, stunning the whole world with the next novelties. In the first decades of the twenty-first century, the concept of CPA (Cost Per Action) arose. Literally translated from English, this means "payment for actions." Completely incomprehensible, isn't it? What is CPA marketing? Studying this subject will show the depth of changes in the marketing technologies of the modern Internet.
Internet and time
The Internet has now become a place for processing a large amount of information at different levels and in completely different ways. So big that even in Russia (with all the successes of computer technology and business are still far behind the West), the Internet is comparable in terms of financial flows to the country's agriculture.
But big money requires big efforts to manage and speed up the movement. CPA methods are one of the effective ways to work with a business on the Internet. You can both make money on this by attracting traffic, and develop your own business by paying advertising specialists only for targeted actions of potential customers. In recent decades, CPA marketing from scratch has been one of the most popular areas of activity in Internet commerce in the world and the fastest growing area on the Russian Internet.
Why is that? When firms in the past gave out money for visiting potential customers on their pages and displaying direct advertising on blogging sites, this was enough. Today the situation has changed. Internet sellers need effective target spending of budgets. CPA marketing calculates payment only for a certain action of a potential client who came. Registration, further subscription to the newsletter and trade offers, calling a specialist (measurer, for example), calling, making the necessary purchase of goods (ideally) - this is some list of proposed conversion (desired) commercial actions.
CPA marketing
It used to be easier, it was enough just to create and regularly maintain your site with the listing of goods. This gave about 90% successful trading on the Internet, which was considered a significant success. Now such a promotion of goods will not give any effective result, buyers simply will not find a site or a trading platform if there is no correct, interesting and unobtrusive advertising. The rivalry between firms and goods is very great, besides, the situation is also aggravated by the fact that the Internet has virtually no specific boundaries, which requires constantly stimulating potential consumers and sending them along the right path.
This is now called the term "internet marketing". And an important place is played by CPA marketing from scratch to results.
As opportunities for trading become smaller, the problem arises, how to increase the effectiveness of marketing activities? You need a working CPA model. The return on existing investment reaches in this case almost 100%. CPA marketing (see examples below) shows that, in particular, a travel company in our time pays only for registering a tourist on its website or even ordering a tour. If the client did not do this, the responsible advertising agency does not have the required fee. And vice versa, the larger the database of the received data of the tour operator or the more tours it was possible to sell, the greater the profit of the company working with this. Consequently, money from the existing budget is distributed much more efficiently. Honest and fruitful cooperation in this case is beneficial to all participants in the chain.
In a similar position, a digital agency can significantly increase its commercial profit.
Difficult start
Of course, the opportunity to earn quickly attracts those who want to. The term affiliate marketing itself has been popular for generations. But only today the financial flow earned from attracting a large number of customers to the site of the advertiser's company is produced not through the usual movement through the link, but from the position of a possible client.
There are many attempts. Even very, very much, because who does not like quick money. But, judging by the further reaction to CPA marketing, reviews are very often negative. Why is it so? Why are people leaving marketing in droves?
Many users who are just starting to work in this field are emotionally stressed and simply refuse CPA marketing due to the fact that their work and any attempts give absolutely no results. Nothing works for those who want to make money quickly and easily, and not become a specialist. Only professionals remain.
The problem is that the techniques are not yet so popular, because, on the one hand, they have not been fully developed, and on the other hand, they are not widespread. Lots of newbies. The desire to receive money is constantly growing, but the skills are still lacking. Hence a lot of pessimists and negative reviews.
Meanwhile, there is no need to lose heart ahead of time. Actually, any work, no matter how difficult it may seem, tends to end with a victorious report. The most important thing is not to abandon your idea halfway. CPA marketing succumbs to a lot of patience and a tough focus.
Mainly, for this you need to change your own approach to work, to work on the mistakes, a deep analysis of the work done. These reflections will show what was done in general, what were the typical mistakes that can be corrected by the same standard actions.
Education
A close acquaintance will tell you that you can’t just understand CPA marketing. Training, at least minimal, must be present. The most primitive and rather subjective can be obtained from older, more experienced comrades. The positive side of such training is that it is a concrete job. The negative - the theoretical side is presented from the point of view of a mentor who does not always understand what the scientific basis of CPA marketing is.
Universities provide a much more decent level, but their standards often lag behind the realities of life. Books on CPA marketing are more up-to-date, but their content should first be reviewed by a specialist. Otherwise, a beginner can get a very non-trivial understanding of CPA.
Marketing Options
CPA marketing and other names imply the same concept. Using for commercial purposes a model of rapid promotion of manufactured goods (services) on the Internet, in which specific user actions are paid. In this regard, you can develop a very effective CPA marketing. The mistakes of beginners lie in the haste and rudeness of the methods of influence. Specialists in this field use different tools, such as direct and contextual advertising, effective SMM marketing, fast search promotion, etc. But it is necessary to emphasize that an advertising company in any of the listed commercial models creates its own financial direction. In this regard, according to reviews, CPA marketing makes it possible to make a profit almost from the first working week. This is a very good financial result.
Flexible Recoil
There are many opportunities for CPA marketing. How to make money now is not an unsolvable question. Internet marketing is developing rapidly and actively, and the buyer is no less eagerly looking for an opportunity to get away, to hide from annoying direct advertising. Because of this, marketers are constantly looking for less and less crude ways to attract potential customers.
In this regard, the undoubted advantage of the CPA model will be the ease of changing actions. A new client subscribed to the newsletter - they paid, did not want to - the company did not want to transfer the payment. It is this ease in determining the effectiveness that attracts all partners in the product promotion chain. But, of course, this is not the last positive side that can be highlighted in CPA marketing.
Positive points
The reports of experts in this field make it possible to determine some of the reasons for the popularity of the scheme:
- For an offer, this is a very profitable way to spend the available money. Payment occurs only for the useful actions of a potential client. It turns out CPA marketing without investments. Monetary risks are actually discarded. After all, compared to the investments made in certain contextual advertising and SEO, the offers clearly know that they will be able to achieve the planned activity, the targeted action.
- Marketers, in turn, earn on the targeted leads they receive. Therefore, they have to compose new incentives that are interesting and understandable for the consumer. Since most often the allocation of money for successful conversion actions is higher than fees for collected traffic, consumer clicks and impressions, advertising agencies are quite interested in using CPA marketing.
- The owner of a popular consumer-oriented entertainment site in our country will also maintain his own resource at a high level. After all, he needs a regular flow of customers who will be shown advertising as part of the CPA model option. The higher the popularity of the portal, the greater the potential to receive a constant income (or simply raise the payment for a single short action).
In general, each of the participants in the chain, in addition to elementary monetary benefits, also receives additional bonuses - from facilitating the planning of an ongoing advertising campaign to the development of an Internet resource.
Development ways
Among the large number of opportunities for using marketing with a possible payment for conversion actions, let's consider the most popular ones. Effective CPA marketing, positive examples of which can be quickly explored, manifests itself as follows:
- Pay for Leads (CPL) - advertising of goods is considered to have taken place when a potential client has clicked on the link offered and, at the very least, has registered (entered his email address and name).
- Selling pages or sites (only one page or full-fledged Internet resources with landing advertising pages) - in them the client acquires full useful information about the products sold and is redirected to well-known manufacturers, where he can place an order. The task of the advertisers themselves is to try to qualitatively push the consumer so that he really has a personal desire to purchase the product.
- A fairly successful promotion with payment for actions is very similar to content marketing that has existed for more than a year, but the emerging CPA marketing believes that payment will be made not for existing traffic or a place in the search query string, but for certain actions of an Internet user .
- Review sites with a substantial amount of information about products, comparative characteristics and so on. Here you can also find user reviews, professional reviews and ratings. Each such message sends the client to the page of the desired advertiser (the manufacturer itself or an authorized seller), and if the consumer follows the link and buys the product, the owner of this review site receives a certain reward.
Chain
To fully understand the nuances of CPA marketing, you need to understand how many participants in this chain are, how they are involved in the promotion structure that provides a reliable cash flow.
CPA marketing, reviews of which are very diverse, is implemented in the presence of at least three equal parties: the seller of the goods being sold - an advertising agency (full-cycle or digital-based) - owners of Internet blogs and popular sites. The first two participants are called offers, i.e., persons who determine the payment for attracting various consumers to their site. But, as already noted, CPA marketing without cash investments (without separate investments and payments for Internet content) is not just ordinary traffic; This is a payment for certain actions of the client of the site.
Therefore, it is much easier for active owners of review, general or thematic sites, popular infotainment portals to receive money. After all, several thousand (knowledgeable experts indicate that the usual statistics are 15-20 thousand) visits per day will certainly give the required number of clicks. Another issue is that the consumer is becoming more and more picky and it is not easy to force him to implement something: you will have to make a lot of efforts and think over really effective incentives.
Internet marketing indicators CPC, CPA - objective indicators of CPC marketing. The price paid by an advertiser for one click on a commercial ad, followed by a smooth transition to the site, is the best indicator of success.
Scope of application
Thematic online stores, service establishments, etc. - here are the most suitable business projects that need such marketing. Money transfers (professional reviews about CPA marketing are encouraging) can rise to very, very high numbers. But this will happen only if the site owner correctly assesses his audience and demonstrates the proposals of the necessary offers. The products sold should be clear to visitors, meet their interests and financial capabilities.
The implementation of unusually exotic, purely individual products on websites with the help of CPA marketing will not get the desired results. After all, consumers of such goods are in a small number.
CPA ("c-pi-hey", an abbreviation for the phrase Cost Per Action - "Pay for action") - a model of payment for online advertising, in which only certain actions of users on the advertiser's website are paid.
CPA model- one of the most cost-effective advertising payment options. The advertiser pays not for clicks or impressions, the effectiveness of which is difficult to measure, but for specific consumers who have confirmed their interest in the product through targeted actions.
Interpretation of the term in the CIS countries and abroad
In the West, a slightly different interpretation of the term CPA - Cost Per Acquisition - "price for acquisition" is common. This is because the CPA payment model is often used when advertising online stores, for which the purchase of a product by a buyer is the action that advertisers pay for. In Runet, this interpretation of the term did not take root. Instead, an analogous abbreviation is used, CPS (Cost Per Sale) - payment for a completed sale.
Development of the CPA model in Runet
Affiliate programs can be considered the prototype of the CPA model in Runet. The first advertising campaigns on the Internet based on the CPA model were like offline versions of affiliate programs: an order form was installed on the advertiser's website, in one of the lines of which it was proposed to enter the name of the person who contributed to the purchase.
Then the mechanism of such promotions was improved and the advertiser's partners began to receive a special personal link to the order form (“referral link”), thanks to which it was possible to track the buyers brought by each partner. Referral programs of this kind are still popular in the segment of entertainment sites, online stores, MMORPGs, as well as on resources dedicated to making money online. (Fig. 4).
The next stage in the development of the CPA model was its distribution as a ready-made advertising product by banner networks. This made it possible to save the advertiser from installing complex software on their website to manage the affiliate program and to shift all technical issues onto the shoulders of banner network specialists.
CPA chain. How does a CPA network work?
The CPA marketing chain includes 4 links:
1. CPA network. Controls the observance of the rules by the partner and the company, is a kind of "trusted link", for which he receives his percentage.
3. Partner (webmaster). Attracts traffic to the company's website by any available means (based on their capabilities and knowledge).
4. User (visitor, potential client). Visits the company's website through a unique webmaster link, performs the necessary actions, for which payment is made.
How does a CPA network work?
CPA network is an intermediary service between the advertiser and the performer. The webmaster enters the CPA network, selects an offer, indicates his traffic source, starts promotion of the offer, and makes a profit (Fig. 5).
Rice. 5. An example of a site with mobile offers CPA network
A CPA offer has at least 2 links: an advertiser and a partner. The task of the advertiser is to create an offer (offer) based on their needs. The task of the partner is an offer to promote and receive his payment for the actions of the users he has attracted.
The CPA affiliate program requires more intellectual work and costs on the part of the webmaster (publisher). He needs not just to attract traffic by increasing the quantitative traffic to his site. He needs to take care of the final action of each attracted user. And for this, you need to take care of the quality of traffic, make it as targeted and useful as possible for a specific offer.
How CPA works. Pros and cons of the CPA model
When the CPA model emerged, advertisers were able to pay only for specific actions taken by users. Moreover, the action could be anything - filling out a questionnaire, subscribing to a newsletter, registering on the site, an application confirmed by a call center, etc.
To find an audience for a product, advertisers involve webmasters - people who know where to get targeted traffic from. Anyone can be a webmaster - a site owner, a specialist in contextual advertising or targeting. If there is a user in the traffic he attracted who has performed the desired action, the webmaster receives money for this - for example, a percentage of the cost of the product.
Pros and cons of the CPA model
Advantages of the CPA model for advertisers
- Fixed costs for Internet marketing: the cost of a targeted action is clearly defined, which greatly simplifies planning.
- Placement on thematic sites without the need to negotiate, send out banners and pay each owner separately.
- The ability to outsource those elements of affiliate marketing that you do not want to deal with (for example, traffic accounting and payouts for complex schemes).
- In highly competitive topics (banks, cars, etc.), the CPA conversion cost may be lower than when working with contextual advertising or SEO.
Advantages of the CPA model for owners of thematic sites, publics in social networks, etc.
- The most attractive opportunities for earning - "partnerships" are much more profitable than in the advertising networks of search engines.
- The ability to switch between offers that interest your audience the most, thereby optimizing profitability.
Cons of the CPA Model for Advertisers
- The need to sign "paper" contracts before starting work.
- Difficulty of entry for small advertisers - networks are only interested in those partners who are willing to pay for a long time, a lot and stably (the ideal partner is a bank, an airline).
- The need to compete with other advertisers for webmasters is to increase the size and duration of payments.
- You need to watch out for unscrupulous webmasters who may be driving low-quality traffic or fraudulently setting cookies to increase commission payments (as a rule, CPA networks track such unscrupulous participants themselves).
Cons of the CPA model for all partners
- Non-transparent contractual relationship. However, for a good negotiator, this can be a plus.
- Optionality of representatives of some networks - failures with payments, problems with communications.
Advertisers who benefit from the CPA model
Paying for ads isn't for everyone. First, we are talking only about product advertising. Secondly, the CPA model is effective for companies that use the Internet as one of the main sales channels. As a rule, websites have landing pages that are the source of calls, letters, applications, leads, online purchases:
- online shopping
- banks, insurance companies and financial brokers
- construction companies, real estate renovation companies
- lawyers, accountants, auditors, notaries
- car services, car dealerships
- medical and health institutions
- job sites
- educational institutions
- services for buying and booking tickets
- real estate agency,
- travel companies
- business service companies
- public service companies
- Online Games
- hosting providers
According to information from M-Shop.ru, the most popular offers for August 2016 (Fig. 6).
In CPA marketing, the work is easier than when advertising on the rights of affiliate programs, for example.
The actions of site visitors can be of any kind:
Large companies that are willing to pay for any work order, for example, lead generation from partners. In this case, both benefit:
- since partners earn, they don’t even make sales
- companies make tariffs for regular customers with 100% commission
This model is suitable for sites that sell on the Internet, as well as promoting goods or services and getting to know the products themselves.
Examples of such companies:
- Online shopping
- Hotel booking platforms
- Travel agencies and others
On such sites, you can buy a place for your company's advertising campaign on a specialized page. There it will be possible to perform certain targeted actions: place an order, fill out a basket of goods, register, order a reservation, and others. Such placement on special platforms will help to promote and advertise many companies.
What is CPA Marketing
CPA marketing is a kind of business based on affiliate terms, which includes payment for the actions of attracted users.
In Russia, this system is still developing, and therefore, in fact, it is better to start introducing it here now. Because later, when everything stabilizes, it will be more difficult to start working in CPA digital marketing.
To join the CPA network, you must go through a fairly rigorous process. You will need to obtain permission to conduct this activity.
Since this procedure was easier before, there were many moments with fraud, and therefore registration in the CPA field was tightened, and certain requirements for partners were added.
You need to follow one set line and stick to it until the results appear. You should not do what some companies do - you should not make proposals on completely different topics. For example, one company should not be engaged in business projects and at the same time make offers for online games.
It is necessary to adhere to the vertical line in order for this activity to be profitable.
After choosing a niche, you can start searching. You need to analyze and calculate which offers in your field are relevant for a given period of time, which ones have a high conversion rate.
Then you decide for yourself which of the specific given list, the offer seems to be the most suitable for you. It needs to be promoted. It should be noted that specific proposals convert specific fare sources.
You can use the "reward per click" (EPC, i.e. earnings per click) in your check. This is a good counter to check, but does not always mean that the final result will be accurate.
In any case, you will be able to find out what is the income for a particular offer. You need to remember that the offer must be suitable for the traffic source you choose, and it does not contradict, for example, the content or consists of several separate offers. This includes pay-per-view.
If there is no traffic attracted by your offer, there will be no profit.
Several options for attracting traffic:
- Advertising on Youtube
- Rate on paid traffic
Depending on how much budget you are willing to spend on it, you can choose one that will work quickly, on a large scale.
If you are not sure about the conditions, re-read the offers and their descriptions. Lead generation allows certain offers to use only certain methods.
But you also need to be aware of prohibited traffic sources. For example:
- classified ads
- social media
- trade mark rate
- co-registration (joint registration)
- stock
When generating conversions, you do not need to use the strategies that are written in the restrictions, otherwise you may be blocked.
The commission comes to you when a user performs a certain action on the site.
Those who, when launching campaigns, only make a link to the offer page, can expect an increase in conversions, and even an increase in profits. But for greater performance and increases in the number of indicators, it is better to do a few more things. For example, create a landing page for your own business. Such a landing page will be a good step for you and your activity, as after switching from any advertisement or banner.
Since the landing page is a page that is aimed at converting potential customers into regular users, its design is completely customized for the sale. They are created for certain conditions, and in some cases may even place a small liability or obligation on the clients. Such landings are called pre-landings (intermediate landings).
Sometimes they are much more effective, and even easier to work with in terms of adding several sentences of the same topic.
High-quality implementation of this type of landing helps to increase conversion, where traffic can be sent from various platforms: forums, classified sites, social networks.
About 60-70% of all traffic can go exactly to the offer thanks to this method, and also an increase in conversion by several times can occur in the same scenario.
Earn on CPA
CPA marketing consists of four links.
- Company.
- CPA network.
- Partner.
- Client.
To get customers on autopilot without buying ads, many companies make a good affiliate program, for example. Then they simply find their partners and make a profit without literally entering the field of advertising and promotion.
The CPA network acts as an intermediary between a particular company and its partners.
The main action is already taking place here:
- Creation of an affiliate program
- Statistics of actions taken by users
The CPA network is a guarantor between two strangers or companies that decide to cooperate.
After the conclusion of the transaction, the partner can start earning by attracting customers. This involves the promotion of an affiliate link, perhaps even including advertising in this work. And if you approach this issue correctly, then advertising will pay off pretty quickly.
And the last link is the client. It satisfies both companies by performing a specific action. And it also works for its own benefit, while helping partners to make a profit, and the company itself to get new users.
Thanks to such CPA programs, it is possible to place blocks with advertising, which allows you to increase traffic thanks to the resources of these advertisers. In addition, this also affects them well: if the conversion increases, then the advertising revenue of the site will also increase.
But where to get more CPA traffic?
- Website.
You need to create your own website - this is the best way to promote products. Thanks to this, in a couple of months it will be possible to start making a profit.
- Banners are also a good option for attracting new customers.
You just need to place them in the right places. Look for platforms where the audience you need will be located, otherwise there is no point in promoting your products where no one will be interested in it.
- Teasers.
Before launching teasers, you need to work out some details, and then analyze the results. However, you should not make teaser ads for training courses, as they are usually paid, and none of those who get through this ad is willing to pay.
- Social media.
If you go the second way, it will be easier to determine the target audience.
If you delve into the work of CPA marketing, you can understand that it is not particularly difficult.
- You just need to choose an offer.
- Attract traffic to an offer or a specially created landing page.
The main thing is not to try to do everything at once, but to follow gradually, step by step. Also constantly test your work: offers, traffic sources and others.
Today, CPA marketing is one of the most effective advertising strategies that has a lot of undeniable advantages.
CPA as a type of marketing was born in the early 2000s, when a well-known American agency announced that their marketers had found a gold mine in this niche. On the example of this agency, which received huge dividends in just one year, one can judge the effectiveness of the method. In order to achieve such colossal results, marketers have changed the classic CPC (Cost Per Click) or CPV (Cost Per View) pay-per-click model to a CPA (Cost Per Action) pay-per-action model that is more profitable for the advertiser.
How the CPA model works
The structure of the discussed technology consists of the following participants: the first are advertisers who form their advertising offers (offers), wishes and tasks. The second are marketing agencies or affiliate networks: resources that place ads and attract the attention of a third party - the consumer.
In the case of a marketing agency, the promotion of advertising content is provided by a team consisting of marketers, SEO-optimizers (website optimization for search queries), designers, media planners, SMM specialists.
In the case of affiliate marketing, this chain includes another participant, who is called differently: partner (affiliate), webmaster, arbitrator. This participant ensures the interaction of the advertising offer (offer) of the advertiser with the target audience. This method implies a high interest of the latter, which provides a guarantee of effectiveness.
How the affiliate network works
The pay-per-action model is relevant for most business areas. It will be ineffective only in very highly specialized types of goods and services. The most popular section of CPA marketing is PPC, that is, pay-per-call or callback order. As a rule, clients, representatives of medium-sized or medium-sized enterprises, call more often than leave personal data.
Varieties of CPA
Active marketing technology distinguishes three main types of interaction between the customer and the contractor. The first, often used to collect personal information, CPL implies payment for a lead, that is, an interested consumer goes to the advertiser's website and fills out a registration form, leaves contact information, and books a product. The second option is suitable for owners of online stores when sales are conducted through the network. PPC - pay per order, purchase - a great approach, but does not always guarantee effective sales. Finally, the most popular type of interaction with the buyer is making calls. The contractor is paid for each request for a return and incoming call.
Each of these varieties is effective in its own way, often when applied they are combined in several approaches, which allows you to achieve real sales performance. The positive side of using the CPA technique is free traffic and views that do not lead to the customer's goal, and a senseless waste of the budget. Paying for the result is an excellent stimulator of the performer's activity and the ability of the client to reasonably plan expenses.
How to turn quantity into quality?
For the effectiveness of CPA technology, a company should set a specific program for the performer. It is great if the agency involved in the promotion of the customer's goods will act in several directions at once. We must not forget about the benefits of contextual advertising or promotion in social networks. With the competent work of the manager and the correct use of technical resources, it will be clear to the advertiser which type of advertising calls are received more often.
The best option when receiving calls would be to warn about the recording of the conversation. By recording the communication between the manager and the client, the manager, if desired, will be able to listen and correct the behavior of his employee. Perhaps new conversation algorithms will be needed. No less depends on the qualitative treatment of the client than on the placement of advertising. Therefore, if the customer plans to make a profit regularly and for a long time, do not forget about the human factor. Not every sales manager will persuade you to buy a product. The main thing to remember: if a client called, it means that he is interested in the product, and interest can always be converted into sales.
Statistics say that an optimized site that is not tied to lead generation brings only about 5% of real customers, while when using CPA marketing, the number exceeds 30%. These values are determined by getting an interested audience with high-quality traffic.
What does an advertiser need to understand for PPCall marketing to be effective?
For advertising to be effective, you need to show customers your location and contacts. It's great if even contextual advertising will indicate at least the city or region of the customer. Your site should be informative enough, dialog boxes or a link to direct dialing also do not interfere.
The feedback form, in which you can order a callback, will increase the effectiveness of advertising and attract the attention of busy customers. Some will be deterred by an intrusive service with an online consultant, and for some, a phone number simply indicated in the contacts of the organization will turn out to be an insurmountable task. All these nuances must be taken into account, since sales primarily depend on the interaction between the seller and the buyer.
If the advertising results are unsatisfactory, there may be several reasons. Perhaps the performer is negligent in his duties and does not regularly or carefully select your audience. Or your product did not interest the consumer, for example, due to a more attractive price from a competitor.
The way out of this situation is as follows:
- work better with affiliate networks, attach instructions, information about the target audience, their preferences and features;
- competent monitoring of your goods and possible improvement of conditions for the buyer.
What are the benefits of using the CPA methodology?
For the advertiser, the pay-per-action method is beneficial for many reasons. First of all - a reasonable distribution of the budget. The customer does not have to spend money on unnecessary and inefficient traffic. This significantly reduces the cost of advertising and increases the zeal of performers. Equally important is the almost complete absence of risk. The advertiser will not go down the drain paying for optimization and a million clicks. To do this, of course, you should choose reputable affiliate networks or marketing agencies.
It is possible to track customer calls and work out the categories of goods that are most interesting to customers. As a rule, the return on investment exceeds the invested funds, depending on the popularity of the product.
It should be noted that the affiliate network attracts a huge number of webmasters working in affiliate networks to work with the offers (offers) of advertisers, and at the same time the budget will not have to be expanded. However, you should correctly describe the conditions for receiving a commission for the result obtained, because. there are times when unscrupulous webmasters “wind up” traffic by artificial methods. As a rule, reputable affiliate networks track such "comrades", cancel "cheated" orders and suspend their activities.
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