CPA Marketing - The New Edge of Marketing in Business

Monetization of your website calls for active marketing. In general, you must have started with digital and affiliate marketing with Google Adsense and slowly moved on to CPC to generate more revenue?

But are you satisfied? Just when we thought that we have tried everything for our business development, CPA marketing technologies came into the market and showed us a new dimension of marketing.

Many people have tried using CPA for website promotion and have got amazing results. What most people saw was the increase in traffic and footfall increasing in a remarkably short time span.

We will be discussing all about CPA in this article to guide you through the process. Understand how it works, and earn from your website.

What do you understand by CPA Marketing?

CPA or Cost Per Action is an affiliate marketing model. When you opt for CPA during web development, you get paid a commission amount each time you have a new user or when users make specific moves on your website.

The web activity can be anything from trial signup to form fill up to purchasing a product. CPA is commonly used by e-commerce websites.

Why should we choose CPA Marketing?

At any point of time, I recommend CPA as a better affiliate marketing plan over CPC or Adsense. Do you know why? I say these 2 are the major reasons-

It holds a higher position in the marketing value chain
Advertisement integration in your website

Obviously, I am not saying Adsense or CPC doesn’t work. But they never work as efficiently as CPA.

It’s the commission amount that makes the difference. The amount of commission you earn from CPA is way higher than the other affiliate marketing strategies.

The formula of Cost Per Action Marketing comes with other benefits for e-commerce websites as well-

1. East to launch process:

Launching CPA marketing is very simple. All you need is a CPA affiliated network and the website in question. Even the capital investment is very low to obtain marketing tools.

You will start earning website traffic from with immediate effect of choosing the CPA offer, from affiliated website partners.

2. Pay only when the sale is over:

While using CPA, if you have no conversion for some traffic, you are not required to pay for it. In fact, if you are not satisfied with your affiliate partner and getting a low rate of conversion for a long time, feel free to switch to a more successful affiliate influencer.

3. Low market risk:

the risk factor is quite low here as you don’t have to pay your publisher until their referred visitor converts into your customer. CPA comes with its own set of analytical tools like Mentionlytics for monitoring the performance of the affiliate marketing. You can check the conversion rate and pay accordingly.

4. Return on Investment is High:

CPA raises the highest commission among all other affiliate marketing tools. You can earn almost 16% of your online revenue through CPA. Studies prove that customers pay more while buying from affiliate websites, hence, the ROI is also high from here. Naturally, it proves that this marketing procedure is driving better traffic to the website than others. The more visitors you have on your website, the more are your chances of generating revenue, both from commission and sales.

5. Expand your marketing circle:

CPA offers a higher chance of distribution and scaling. now you can scale the message of your brand consistently and in a faster way to reach out to more audiences than ever. This capacity makes it very important for e-commerce websites. Regardless of the product type, be it electronics or fashion, everyone now loves CPA. The affiliate network is built such that you get a partner in every genre of product marketing. So expand your circle with better affiliate marketing.

The CPA Network

We know CPA is important for e-commerce. Before we get into how it works, let’s have a look at who all are involved in the network.

1. The Publisher or Affiliate:

The Affiliate is the person or company or another website that is working as an influencer and helps with your brand promotion to drive more traffic to your e-commerce website. They also play a vital role in traffic conversion.

2. The Advertiser or Business:

The advertiser is the brand or company that requires assistance or collaboration with the affiliate to drive traffic to their e-commerce website and generate revenue from lead conversion.

3. The CPA Network:

The CPA network is the platform connecting the affiliate with the advertiser or business to increase traffic and sales at the e-commerce website.

Knowing the CPA Networking will now help us to understand how the marketing strategy works for e-commerce. We will now move on to the 4 basic steps of CPA marketing techniques.

Basic Steps of CPA Marketing

Step 1: Find the Affiliate Offer

To promote your e-commerce website under a CPA network, the first thing you need is an offer from an Affiliate who can influence the audience in your product niche.

How to find an ideal affiliate partner for this job?

It’s very simple; you just need to go to some affiliate platform and look for them. I suggest you have a look at OfferVault or oDigger and see if you find what you are looking for.

You can even get free access at these sites to apply for offers. These platforms work just Google for the CPA search. You will come across hundreds of CPA networks and offers to choose from. The platform features say the rest.

When you are using these sites to look for an offer, you can use the keyword search method. These platforms allow you to search for offers based on category, network, price, products.

Suppose you are looking for an offer in transportation for a tourism website, you can simply go to the search bar of the platforms and type in “transport” and see the result for yourself. I searched in oDigger and got results like these-

You can search similarly based on your niche. If you find an offer of your preference, simply click on the business listing to check the details of the affiliate. Once you open the listing you will be directed to the page for details of the offer. You will get a complete idea of the marketing terms, the traffic you can expect from the affiliate, etc.

I again searched for “transport” in OfferVault.com and came across an offer on Disneyland offers. Disneyland lotteries are great for tourism, so I went with it to know more about it.

You must have stumbles across an offer like this in your niche? Did you like the offer? If you like it, find out more about it by clicking on the button called, “Full Landing Page View”. this button is the link to the web page your users will come across when they visit your link.

You now have the affiliate landing page in front of you. But you can just go ahead and select any because you liked the offer. The offer needs to come along with a good landing page. It is your job to determine if the landing page is good enough for your audience. So, how to determine if it’s a good landing page?

Here are a few features a landing must have. Check if they match with the landing page you came across, then have come across the right page and right offer.

The landing page must have a professional clean get up.
Shady pages never convert business. Ensure the web page is attractive to draw visitor’s attention.
A good landing page will not have too many fields. Too many fields lower your rate of conversion.
Again certain fields ensure higher commission. So fields have to be checked to determine how necessary they are.

If the landing page offer is exciting and attractive enough, if visitors’ interest is satisfied, they will signup for a newsletter or purchase the product.

Well, all these were for situations when you came across a desirable offer for your e-commerce website. But what about the cases when you don’t find a suitable offer?

These situations might arise when your due to your website niche. If you have not come across any offer suiting the topic of your website, look for CPA offers that are satisfactory to the demographics of your website traffic. This happens when you have a topic niche that doesn’t have regular demand. Those topics get targeted based on their demographics. Try CPA for that and you will make a significant amount of money then.

Step 2: Get into a Network

You have found the offer suitable for your website. get into the network of the affiliate partner now. Check the previous image of the offer from OfferVault. You will come across a similar page where there is a button for “Join Network”. Click on that button to proceed with the network joining process.

Upon clicking the “Join Network” Button you will be taken either to a page to fill up the network form or to create a network account for free.

If you try to create an account or fill-up the form, you will be required to provide your personal details. Plus, they also ask for a contact number. Ensure you give a valid number because they do call for verification. In the majority of the affiliate marketing platforms, you will not be asked for any such verification. But for CPA, the scenario is different. It is necessary here that you talk and do some paperwork. You shouldn’t say no to such formalities. After all, you will be earning more from CPA.

The next step to joining the network will be to get accepted by the network. How to make that happen?

CPA marketing is all about checking legibility and transparent business module. A few activities will help you with the selection in the team-

Call your affiliate network right after you submit your application. Even before they reach out to you. This shows your interest in the deal.
Does your website has a whois address (personal domain name), if not, go and get one before. Networks check for whois.
While filling your application, e 100% honest. Networks always want to know about your experience in the field of online marketing. Honesty is important there.

One doesn’t have to e great with digital marketing to get selected into a network. It is the honesty that the CPA network is looking for. If you are new into affiliate marketing, feel free to inform that.

Step 3: Website designing based on CPA

You have an offer from CPA and also have joined a CPA network. It’s time you get it integrated into your e-commerce website now. This is the part where the CPA shows it wonder. Having the offer and network-integrated help you create a website like fortune maker, even if you have not spent a lot of money on it.

It’s important to note here that you should never put up a bad banner. It is important that you create a legit website. Advertising is not always needed to promote a website.

Not sure if that will work?

Trust me it will. the majority of the CPA affiliated websites have integrated contextual links or ones that are embedded in the design of the website. You will rarely come across advertising banners. Can you imagine, without any banner a CPA affiliated website can make 26.4% CTR! Unbelievable, isn’t it? Well, it has happened to many brands. We can site two such brands who got success from CPA.

1. NerdWallet, a personal financing website.

2. MoneySupermakret, a big brand for financing from UK that is 100% CPA affiliated

Both these websites developed excellent integration of affiliated networks on their website have got better results than banner advertising. However, at this point, it is best to get the clarity that I am not discouraging banners. Even banners have shown great marketing response in many cases. But it always great to have a custom-designed website for better traffic retention.

Step 4: The drive for website traffic

You have the offer, you are in the network, you have integrated your website, it’s the perfect time to drive traffic to your website. There are several ways to make that happen. However, I would like to mention the 3 most preferred ways to drive traffic here.

1. SEO marketing:

SEO is the favorite strategy of all that is valid in the market. It might be a little time-consuming process, but once you have the desired SERP, you will automatically get huge traffic on your website. SEO marketing will have its own set of criteria for website designing. You need to accomplish that as well. Keep in mind the keyword search option in mind when you create your website and get the affiliate network. All you need to work on for SEO is keyword optimization of the website.

2. PPC Advertising:

PPC or Pay Per Click is yet another favorite form of digital mark that drives traffic to the CPA offers.

Why is PPC chosen so often? It has only one plus point over SEO. You can see the effect of PPC with immediate effect from the time of application of this strategy.

But unlike SEO there is a little issue. You need to shell a little amount of money in the PPC advertisements. You need to keep spending on it to have revenue flow.

3. Social Media Marketing:

Social media marketing is yet another great marketing strategy to drive traffic. Starting from YouTube to Facebook Marketing to Instagram Marketing, all platforms are well known to display your affiliate offers on their website so that users have easy look at them and visit your website smoothly.

It is yet another time-consuming procedure. After all, it takes time to build followers on social media. But this wait is worth it. Once they start paying off, they become assets for a lifetime.

CPA Marketing Process at a Glimpse

I have passed on a lot of information. If you have missed out on how the process works, here is a gist for the same. Remember, it is a cycle.

The client checks the Affiliate’s offer from a website advertisement
The visitor clicks on the ad to know more
They are directed to the link of the merchant’s website
The customer makes a purchase or signs up
Your affiliate network keeps a record of the transaction
The merchant validates the sale
Credit is given to the affiliate referring the offer
The affiliate then earns commission from the sale
The entire process is repeated

Certain Terms in CPA That You Should Know

1. Display: These are the banner advertisement and text-links.

2. Pay Per Call: Earn money when a visitor clicks on the affiliate link and then makes a call.

3. Email/ Zip Submit: The simplest offer on CPA. User only enters their zip code and e-mail id while filling up a form. This is great for when you are not targeting your website traffic.

4. Pixel Fires: When a user clicks on the affiliate link and become a potential lead for you.

5. Rev Share or Sale: Commission or per sale cut you receive.

6. Incent: This is the short form for “Incentivized” where you can offer your visitors with a free product to check out your link.

7. Chargeback: In case a sale doesn’t happen whereas the affiliate has already paid the advertiser for it, the commission previously given to the advisor is deducted and returned to the affiliate.

8. Contextual Link: This is a Text link present in the website of the affiliate, that leads to the website of the advertiser.

9. Cookies: These are unique IDs assigned to users who click on the link of the affiliate. The advertiser site records this id and sends a report to the affiliate website to confirm the conversion.

10. EPC: This is Earnings Per Click where the affiliate earns every time a user clicks on their link.

Some Pro Tips for CPA Marketing

For newbies, here are a few pro-tips for CPA marketing. Try these strategies, they really work and help you earn revenue for your website.

1. Hire an affiliate manager and stick tight to him

Successful CPA marketing requires constant monitoring by an expert. I suggest you hire a professional affiliate manager to get the job done. Having a dedicated person on board will help with the new affiliate recruits, website engagement, promotions, drive more traffic, and hence, the revenue. All this happens without you getting involved in the process! If you have a dedicated person to do these jobs then you get to focus more on your e-commerce.

An affiliate manager cares for all these jobs for your marketing-

Evaluate the affiliate offers you get and suggest changes in marketing strategies as and when required based on the offers.
Advise on the suitable links for your website that helps with conversion optimization.
Provides meaningful content management tips to improve promotion.
Keeps in touch with your affiliate partners and provides them with timely updates about your new products.
Releases performance commission to the CPA affiliates in your network upon performance.

They not only help the website owners with the chores of daily marketing, but also aid the advertisers in the following manner-

Connects both the recruit and you to the high-performing affiliate serving your niche of products.
Thinks new ideas for business promotion.
Sends promotional and updated information about your brand all across the network of CPA consistently.
Deals with affiliate partners, compare affiliate contracting and checks the performance. All this is done in an attempt to stay competitive in the market.
Guides the best affiliate program in the market
Cares for the finances.

When you get such great services from an affiliate manager, you will surely like to stick to the person. I say stick tight and see a miracle happening at your e-commerce website.

2. Don’t get involved with shady networks for affiliate marketing

While you search for the right affiliate network for your e-commerce website for CPA, you will come across several options. Some will provide you with excellent offers too. Don’t fall victim to great offers. Always remember to check the reviews of the affiliate network you choose. You don’t want to get into a shady one and waste your time and money.

You can check the reviews of the network in oDigger. The website has a specific review tab against each network. Click on that tab after you search for one offer and find out what others have to say about the network.

When you open these reviews don’t get disheartened, you will not come across one network with 100% satisfactory reviews from all users. Different users have different perspectives and expectations from a network. A few complaints on the review doesn’t mean its a poor network. You need a check for reviews like this to know if it’s a shady one-

Payment inconsistency
Dissatisfactory affiliate managers
A network that is difficult to use or sign-up to

3. Try Native Advertisement

Like I said before CPA marketing doesn’t require banner advertising. but if you must, then go for native advertising. Not sure what it is? Let me explain.

Native Advertising can be explained as a type of advertisement that gets camouflaged with your website. It has the same layout, theme, and color as that of the web page. Trust me this is highly trending in 2020. Facts and figures say-

There will be a growth of 80% in nonsocial native advertisement expenditure. in 2020.
Native advertisements will account for 77% of mobile advertisement displays.
People are expecting 60% of the CPA revenue from these native advertisements in 2020.

If you want double-effective results from CPA then clearly, you need to integrate the native advertisements with a well-designed e-commerce website, rather than banners.

CPA Marketing Trends

As we discussed all about CPA, it is essential you understand the trending marketing strategies in 2020-

In 2020, developing countries are to experience a surge in CPA marketing trends.
There year, there will be a “focus on copy” in the strategy rather than sticking to the old trend of headlines and pop-ups.
CPA affiliate networking will increase for e-commerce as influencer marketing will overlap with CPA
A major portion of the e-commerce budget for marketing is expected to be awarded to CPA over traditional forms of marketing, as performance is more valued now.
We expect more transparency in CPA offers along with a data-driven approach for marketing

Top 4 CPA Affiliate Networks in 2020

I have already mentioned that you need to avoid shady networks. Plus, we are now aware of market trends in 2020. We need a reliable affiliate partner to enhance our performance. To ease our work, I have listed the top affiliate network trending in the market.

1. MaxBounty

MaxBounty is one of the best affiliate network in the market providing-

Merchant’s marketing focused affiliate managers with knowledge of business and the suitable affiliate marketer
Nearly 20,000 affiliates under one platform
top-quality website traffic for better conversion
Newbies can join their training plan to get weekly payouts.

2. Clickbooth

Clickbooth, now known to people as Perform, is an innovative and easy platform for CPA providing-

25% higher EPC earning for their affiliate partners with their AI technology.
It’s a free platform for an advertiser.
They have a team to manage payouts, campaigns, and even the budget.

3. PeerFly

PeerFly might be a small network company, but the commission payout is more than many others. From this company, you will get free training as an affiliate out there.

4. Admitad

With Admitad, you can expect about 1,200 advertisers and 5,20,000 publishers. If you need international affiliate support then this is the platform to look up to. They provide personalized training sessions to induce a customer-oriented business approach.

Summary on CPA Marketing

If you are used to digital marketing, CPA marketing is an advanced form of it that is highly focused on the ROI.

We have discussed all the steps that will help you get into an affiliate network.

Follow the steps and check the latest trends to get the maximum out of CPA.

CPA Marketing – The New Edge of Marketing in Business