There are so many new concepts being introduced in affiliate marketing. And one such popular concept is CPA. Many affiliate marketers are not aware of this strategy. It is important to know what is CPA marketing all about.
Whenever you are promoting any product or service of a merchant, the core motive would be to scale your business online. When it comes to promotion, there are so many different ways that you can reach out to your target audience. But it all depends on the type of affiliate product and service that you are promoting.
There are so many methods of affiliate marketing programs that are subdivided. Some of the popular ways are cost per sale, cost per click, and cost per lead affiliate campaigns. To this list, CPA marketing is a new addition.
The CPA marketing technique is a completely different ball game. This is a unique way to monetize your affiliate website. And likewise, it is a unique way for the merchants to pay the affiliate marketers whenever a sale happens.
In this blog, you will understand what is CPA marketing and how it works.
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What is CPA marketing?
The term CPA stands for cost per action. This is the action triggered whenever an affiliate cycle takes a successful transaction. It is a model where merchants offer the commission to the marketer whenever there is a successful sale completed by the end-user.
If you compare cost per action with other methods of affiliate marketing strategies, this model is completely different. Because the merchants have the complete power to decide how much commission they need to allocate for the affiliate marketer after the sales happen.
The action can be triggered even when there are no sales. Because it completely depends on the merchants how they want to give out the commission. Whether it is going to be based on action or for successful sales.
Let us assume that you are selling a product that costs $200. And the merchant might have told you that you will be getting a 20% commission out of it. So ideally the affiliate marketer should get $40. But here the merchants have the complete authority to pay the affiliate marketer even when there are no sales. Or they can even increase the commission with what they had decided earlier.
The other method of how CPA affiliate marketing will work is based on leads that you help the merchant to generate. When you help them to download software or an application. Get contact form signups. Help them to get surveys filled by the users and so on. Through these ways, the cost per action goals gets differentiated.
How does the CPA model work?
There are three major components that are involved in the CPA marketing model. The first is the merchants who are the advertisers. Second-party is the affiliate marketers who are also known as the influencers or publishers. And the third comes the CPA network, these are the mediators between the affiliate marketers and the merchants.
When a merchant has a requirement of getting leads to generate sales for their business, they register themselves on the cost per action affiliate network.
The CPA affiliate network gets the complete requirement of what the merchant has and then it puts out the requirement for publishers.
When the publishers see the requirement and if it is relevant to their niche, then they enrol on the CPA affiliate program.
The affiliate network will send the application to the advertiser for review.
Based on the application, the publisher will decide to proceed ahead with the affiliate marketer or not.
And when they approve it, the affiliate marketer is eligible to start promoting the products and services.
How is the money paid through CPA marketing?
The payment method is slightly different when compared to the traditional method of affiliate marketing.
If you look at the revenue model of CPA marketing, it completely depends on the type of business the merchant is into. Because retail CPA affiliate networks tend to pay less commission compared to health cost per action programs.
The commission ranges from 10 % to 70%. It is all dependent on the type of Merchant that you are going to get associated with.
When the affiliate marketer has successfully registered on the CPA network. They need to furnish all the details such as bank account details and tax information correctly. Based on the acceptance of the cost per action network, affiliate marketer gets paid on every referral or the sales that they make on behalf of the merchants.
The payout usually gets deferred on the type of product or service that you market. Because some of the retail products will have a return policy. And when the customer returns those products back to the merchants, you will not get the commission cut. You need to read and understand all the terms and conditions before enrolling on the CPA program.
Suggested read: How to affiliate marketing without a website?
How to start CPA marketing as a beginner?
If you look at the process of how CPA marketing works, it doesn’t look as complicated as you think. Here is a step-by-step guide for you to understand how to start cost per action marketing as a complete beginner.
1. Brainstorm for the idea
When you think about starting a CPA marketing, you need to have an idea in your mind. The idea can be based on a category where you want to actively work on a cost per action marketing. By selecting the relevant niche, it helps you to diversify the strategy for the promotion and acquiring leads for the merchants that you are associated with.
The CPA category can be anything. It starts from health to business-related categories. When you select one particular category, it will be easy for you to approach the CPA networks so that you can showcase your blogs. The cost per action network will decide whether to proceed with you or not.
2. Search reliable CPA network
There are many CPA networks that are currently available in the market. But to find a reliable one is an important step that you need to look forward to.
Every cost per action network will have its own set of target merchants. Based on the type of niche that you are catering to your audience, you need to see the respective CPA network which will be beneficial for your business.
Ensure that you follow all the compliance before searching for a reliable CPA network.
The best way to go around this step would be to check for the reviews of CPA marketing networks. Read the existing customer and affiliate marketers testimonials before enrolling on a cost per action network.
Check about their payment schedule and how genuine the business is in the market. Also, check whether the platform is user-friendly so you can easily register and access products from the affiliate network.
Check the type of payment method and the amount of commission that you are going to get from CPA also matters while selecting a reliable cost per action network.
3. Register on a CPA network
This is a tricky part. Because to get successfully registered on a CPA network is a little complex. The registration process works like an interview. As you need to submit all the details on the CPA network, and then they start reviewing the applications.
For a better success rate, you always need to be credible enough while giving out details to the CPA network. This can be the personal records such as your name, address and what are your speciality. This step is taken basically to ensure that there are no spammers and to find people who are genuine who can be associated with them for long tenure.
Before you start registering on a cost per action network, you should keep your portfolio ready. This can be the YouTube channel, websites or a blog. When you have all these digital methods at your disposal, there are high chances for you to get accepted on the CPA network.
Share your personal interests where you want to actively work for the CPA network if you get selected. All these details help in decision making from the cost per action network.
4. Select the product or service
When you successfully get registered on the affiliate CPA network. Now it’s time for you to start choosing the product or service that you want to promote through your website.
The best way to proceed with this step would be to talk to the management of the company. When you talk to them, you get ideas. You will also realise which is the best product that you can market to the consumers. They also help you in furnishing the analytics insights that will help you to make decisions better.
Sometimes the cost per action network merchant can even assign an affiliate manager to handle your account. When they do this, it will be very convenient for you to reach out to the affiliate marketing manager so that you can clarify your queries.
It will be better if you get acquainted with the affiliate manager, they can give you what are the best products and services with complete data. They will also help you in evaluating your decisions and also help in promotion as they are completely aware of the demographic and geographical factors.
After this process, you will receive a CPA affiliate link. Through this link, you can use it for online digital promotion. A healthy practice that you need to follow here would be maintaining a proper tracker for every product associated with the affiliate CPA link. This will be easy for you to track future campaigns and also get better insights.
5. Devise a content strategy
A content strategy is important before you proceed with CPA marketing. Because when you are able to devise a content strategy, it will help you to plan the future course of activities. Through these activities, you can easily scale the growth of cost per action marketing.
It all depends on the type of base you have to market on. One more unique step that you can include here would be creating design collaterals and coming out with offers. This is something that matters a lot for the audience wherever you are going to target the promotional campaigns for them.
The content strategy can revolve around the type of articles, emails and it can also be the videos you wish to promote. When you can create a theme around these content strategies, you can conveniently reach out to the target audience. This will help you in getting a better conversion from your CPA marketing.
6. Brainstorm for promotion campaigns
When you have developed such good content articles, now the main thing is you need to brainstorm for promotional ad campaigns. Through these campaigns, you will start to receive traffic through desired channels or platforms. Based on that you can instantly see the conversions rising on the promotion strategy that you have executed.
There are so many ways you can promote your content across the web. It can be video, blog posts, emails, search engine, social media, guest posting and other creative techniques. In this section, we will be discussing some of the major ways where you can effectively promote the CPA products and services.
Social media promotion
Social media is one of the popular methods when it comes to CPA marketing. As you can find multiple social media platforms that have more than a billion users. This makes it easier for CPA marketing to target the relevant audience based on the CPA affiliate product and service. Some of the popular social media platforms that you can try are YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. These social media channels are the best when it comes to the CPA affiliate promotion.
Search engine ads
The search engine is one of the highest convertible platforms when it comes to CPA marketing. Because you can get a serious target audience when you execute search engine ads for your affiliate products and services. The downside of this strategy would be it is slightly expensive when we compare it to social media promotion. But worry not, the conversion rate is much better than social media. Some of the popular search engine ads that you can execute are google search engine and bing ads.
Email marketing
Email marketing is one of the effective and efficient ways when it comes to CPA marketing. This is a sophisticated technique that requires a well-planned strategy to get better results. The main result-oriented factor that can influence email marketing is that you need to have a valuable email list that you trust. When you have the database, it will be easy for you to convince your target audience to purchase the product or service that you are promoting.
Native advertising
This is one of the most creative strategies that you can utilise for CPA marketing. But let me give you a disclaimer that this approach is one of the most expensive methods of promotion from this list. The reason for the high expenses is that native ads always appear on the top websites which have millions of traffic. As you can get in touch with some of the top native advertising companies who can promote your products and services to a wide audience.
7. Measure the performance of your CPA affiliate campaigns
It is one of the important steps that you need to undertake for analysing the performance of your CPA campaigns. Because this is one of the important measures where you can get answers for the highs and lows of your campaigns. This will help in further making your decision better when it comes to promoting CPA products and services.
Ensure that your landing page and all other digital channels have been integrated with analytics.
Some of the major metrics that you can track while executing CPA affiliate campaigns are:
Check which platform is delivering better results
When it comes to the CPA promotion, it will be obvious that you will be promoting on multiple digital media. And when you are promoting, it is important for you to track from where you are getting better results.
Check which type of AD is favourable
When you execute multiple ad sets and AD groups either on social media or search engines. You need to check which type of adset helps in getting better results. Through this, you can re-optimise it and expand so that you get more volume of traffic from your campaigns.
Analyse the performance of the landing page
The ideal way to promote any ad campaign would be to have multiple landing pages. This will give you an idea of which is the highest converting landing page for your ad campaign.
Related: How Affiliate Marketing works?
To sum it up
As you can find so many CPA marketing networks, it will be better to self assess yourself before enrolling on the portal. This will help you in determining whether you can venture out success through CPA marketing.
The best way to proceed with CPA campaigns and strategy would be to do extensive research. It will be an effortless step for you to analyse and forecast what the competitors are doing and the opportunities in the promotion.
If you look at the future and trends of CPA marketing, it is rapidly growing and evolving. You need not get concerned about what’s going to happen after some years. Because cost per action marketing strategy will stay and will be there for a decade at least.
Always remember that patience, hard work and commitment. These are the driving forces behind CPA marketing.
Let us know about your experience with CPA campaigns.