How to Setup a Successful CPA Marketing Campaign – 2022 Updated

Cost Per Action (CPA) marketing is a hot topic right now and there’s a reason it’s gaining a lot of traction fast.

Here’s what happens most of the time. Some marketers spend thousands of dollars on ads to generate leads and sales for their business. Sadly, they never get a good enough return on investment (ROI) and even struggle to measure the effectiveness of their ad campaigns.

The good news is CPA marketing has changed the game. This particular business model allows marketers like you to spend money when your marketing works by paying your affiliates only when they refer a customer who buys your product.

See how CPA marketing is better than running ads? You can easily track the ROI. And the best part is CPA marketing reduces your marketing budget!

In this guide, I’ll walk you through CPA marketing and how to get the most out of it for your business.

What is CPA Marketing?

CPA stands for cost per action. It involves paying advertisers after their referrals complete your desired action like filling a form, buying a product, signing up for a free trial, etc.

Here are the main players in CPA marketing:

• The affiliate marketers – are the people promoting your products for you. They can be influencers, bloggers, or authors.
• The advertiser – This is you, the person who’d like to promote your brand in your CPA network of choice.
• The CPA network – is the platform connecting affiliate marketers to advertisers. The network comes with everything affiliates and advertisers need to start partnering.

Also, CPA networks have different payment models. I’ll discuss them briefly.

1. Pay per sale – the marketers will earn a commission only after their visitors buy a product.
2. Pay per action- the marketers will make money if their referrals complete set actions like filling in a form, watching a video, joining a free trial, etc.
3. Recurring payments – the merchants will pay their affiliates after they drive leads or sales.

According to Affise, 94% of publishers use multiple affiliate programs. They love the pay-per-sale model.

So for example:

Let’s say you have a marketing automation product. You can join a CPA network to promote it. Then you will list your offers on the platform. The affiliate marketers join the network and then will promote your software for you in exchange for a commission that you’re comfortable paying.

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That’s how CPA marketing works.

The Benefits of CPA Marketing

CPA marketing offers several benefits for merchants.

First, it is easy to get started. You don’t need any technical know-how to start CPA marketing. You’ll only need to create some online presence then join a good network where you’ll promote your offers.

Using this type of marketing allows you to get the maximum return on your investment. You can’t compare CPA marketing with running ads because you are only paying someone when your affiliates actually make a sale (assuming you use the more common method of affiliate marketing of pay-per-sale).

This means it is not as risky for your business. So far we’ve seen that doing CPA marketing is less expensive than other marketing channels like PPC which demand payment for every click, even if it doesn’t convert.

Creates brand awareness. You can boost your reach if more marketers join your affiliates to promote your product. They can make you dominate the market, especially if your product solves a great problem.

Finally, no start-up costs. You won’t create any new platform to start CPA marketing. The CPA networks will give you all of the essential tools you need to launch your campaigns successfully.

How to Succeed with CPA Marketing

Here are the tips to dominate CPA marketing today.

1. Promote Your Best Products

Successful CPA marketing campaigns start with creating the best products.

Most affiliates put their audience first and they don’t just promote any product. Most marketers pick the high-quality ones because they fear breaking the trust they’ve spent years building with their audience.

Here are some benefits of creating top-notch products:

• You’ll lure other marketers to choose your product over others.
• You’ll entice more affiliates to drop their partners for you.
• You’ll scale your income once you build a reputation for yourself.
• You’ll reduce your marketing budget when affiliates actually want to promote your business for you.

As another example, you won’t mind promoting Apple’s products because the brand creates some of the best products in the market. I’m sure they have several affiliates.

You too can be the next Apple. Simply launch a great product for your affiliates to start spreading the word that solves a real problem for their audience.

Join Reputable Networks

The CPA network you join will make or break your marketing. Always avoid CPA networks that are not transparent in their dealings or delay payments to affiliates.

Affiliate marketers will always drop the worst-performing platforms for better ones. This is evident when there aren’t any decent systems for tracking payments and compensating affiliates.

They are the ones taking on most of the risk so they should be appropriately compensated for it.

If there is also a lack of effective customer support it may put some people off from joining. Someone may get stuck for one reason or another so it’s good to have a helpful support team to iron out any kinks.

You’d rather spend hours finding the best CPA networks that care about the welfare of affiliates and advertisers. Here are some of the good ones worth checking out:

• ShareASale
• Maxbounty
• Peerfly

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Also, remember to go through the brand’s terms and conditions and reviews to get a feel of their platforms.

Note: Some CPA networks are legit, but you’ll find some customers complaining. That shouldn’t scare you. Instead, ‘test-drive’ the platforms to see for yourself.

Identify Influencers in Your Niche

Once you’ve found the best CPA network for your product and joined it, doing so doesn’t mean that the network will automatically promote your products for you.

You have to market yourself, that is, by sweet-talking affiliates to become your brand evangelist. Here are some pros of working with influencers:

• They will earn you quick sales, especially if their audience trusts them.
• They will influence other marketers to promote your brand.

Ideally, look for affiliates driving high revenue for your competition. You can find them through the network or Google itself. Then send your best offers. Here are some of the best tips I have encountered to win over affiliate marketers:

• Give them an irresistible offer. You can offer them better commissions than your competitors.
• Let them test your product first. The advertisers won’t mind partnering with you if they can confirm that your products are legit.
• Disclose your bonuses. Do you give some after every successful referral or every 10th sale then can level up to the next commission bracket? If so, let the affiliates know that.
• Inform them that you regularly share tips to increase their revenue over time.

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Pro Tip: Stay consistent with your marketing, and you’ll start getting some traction.

Hire a Dedicated Affiliate Manager

CPA marketing is a tedious process, much like SEO and social media marketing. You can’t do everything alone. For the best results, you have to delegate tasks to gain extra time so you can market your business on other channels.

I recommend hiring an affiliate marketing manager to work for you. Here are some of their roles:

• They reach out to affiliates in your niche. They will find new players to promote your offers and grow your influence over time.
• Inform your affiliates how to spread the word about you, such as through SEO and social media marketing.
• Reviewing your offers and telling you how to drive more sales. Some affiliate managers have enough experience in growing affiliate marketing programs.
• Giving your affiliates valuable resources. The manager can curate helpful content for your brand evangelists to place within their content.
• Sending affiliates product updates such as new features. This keeps their content fresh too.
• If there is any update in your commission rates, they will inform your affiliates about the changes.

The affiliate manager will essentially handle the leg work of growing your business through CPA marketing. Hire an experienced person in this field and they could become one of your greatest assets for your business.

Invest in Useful Tools

Most CPA networks already have the tools you need to track your marketing performance and improve it. But you can always invest in better resources to grow your reach and get more conversions.

You can use keyword research tools such as SEMrush and Ahrefs to find the right keywords to double your traffic through search engine optimization.

Email marketing tools such as Convertkit are great to communicate with your affiliates and automate your marketing process.

One of the best editing tools I recommend is Grammarly for editing your sales copies. You’ll get an improvement in your conversions if your customers actually understand what it is that you are asking of them. Basically, how easy is your call to action?

You can also look for other promising tools that will assist you in marketing your business. For instance, I’d invest in a tool that tracks the commissions within the CPA networks to find and choose the best pricing.

Educating Your Affiliates

Another way to get the most out of your CPA marketing is to splurge on educating your affiliates. You will reassure the marketers that they’re working with a serious brand.

There are a few different ways to keep them informed, such as introducing them to better marketing channels like SEO. Some marketers love to rely on social media traffic alone.

You can show affiliates how to drive traffic to their sites by giving them a guide to walk them through choosing low competition keywords with plenty of search volume.

And don’t forget to share proven conversion rate optimization tips. Not everyone who promotes your product will be a pro at writing great copy. The more help you can provide, the more comfortable people will feel in knowing that there is going to be a higher conversion rate.

If your affiliates win, you will win, which will make for steady revenue. More traffic equals to your affiliate sites means more clicks which will equal more money!

Final Word

The bottom line is CPA marketing is an effective marketing strategy. Most merchants love this business model because it gives them a high return ROI if done properly.

Many affiliates won’t mind promoting your products for you to get a share of the pie and that will greatly reduce your marketing budget in the long run.

This is a great way to take your business to the next level by leveling up your marketing efforts, getting your brand out there for the world to see, and at the same time building real relationships with other businesses.

Author Bio: 

 

Chris Bournelis is a writer and marketing consultant. With 5+ years of digital marketing experience, he’s passionate about leveraging the right strategic partnerships, content, and software to scale digital growth. He writes about how to blog like a business on his own website, ChrisBournelis.com.