What is CPA Marketing?
CPA marketing, also known as cost per action marketing, is a style of the affiliate marketing model that offers a commission to the affiliate when a specific action is completed.
The lead action can be anything from making a purchase to getting a quote, watching a video, or filling out a form.
Ecommerce sites around the globe can leverage CPA marketing to create different offers and online marketing campaigns.
CPA networks then promote these campaigns through affiliates.
The CPA affiliates are paid a set fee each time a referred visitor completes the action or offer.
Why CPA: Top 5 Benefits of CPA Marketing
In this CPA marketing guide for beginners, You will learn how CPA marketing is important for every online marketer.
CPA marketing has more benefits than other types of online marketing. Here are the top 10 reasons to start CPA marketing today:
1/ Get Paid for Every Action
The biggest advantage of CPA marketing is that you get paid for every action a person takes. That means if someone fills out a form, you get paid. If someone enters their email address, you get paid.
And if someone buys something, you get paid. There is no risk involved, and you don’t have to worry about making a sale.
2/ Don’t Worry About Conversion
With CPA marketing, you don’t need to spend time converting a visitor into a customer for someone else. You’re simply getting paid for an action that someone takes. The action required may be a sale!
Conversion Sales Funnel
But you don’t necessarily need to worry about it. You send a person to a business who completes a task. And then the business convinces him or her to buy.
3/ Enjoy High Return on Investment (ROI)
Don’t worry; I’ll walk you through a CPA affiliate marketing tutorial that will help you start for free. But then you’ll eventually need to invest some money.
The good news is that CPA marketing has a very high ROI. It’s one of the highest ROIs in any form of marketing. That means you can quickly make back your investment and start making profits in no time.
You make money with CPA marketing, even with less traffic.
4/ Scale Quickly and Make More Money
CPA marketing is extremely scalable. You can quickly make more money by increasing your organic or paid traffic. Once you know the cost per action, it’s very easy to scale up your CPA marketing campaigns.
5/ Get Paid Over and Over Again Passively
With CPA marketing, you usually just get paid one time.
But if you do it right, you can get paid repeatedly.
For example, if someone fills out a form or enters their email address, you can get paid for email, trial, and sale.
Some businesses offer recurring payments for their products or services. So you can get paid every month for the same action. Click on the image below to learn about the top recurring affiliate platforms:
Top Recurring Affiliate Programs
And if you have a blog or website that sends people to a business’s site consistently, you can generate passive income.
Do these reasons make you interested in CPA marketing? If yes, let’s head to the top CPA marketing networks.
How Does CPA Marketing Work?
The CPA model is a simple concept once you break down into how it works and who’s involved.
- Affiliate or Publisher: The influencer (blogger, brand, business) that promotes a business or product in order to drive traffic to the ecommerce site and make a specific conversion.
- Business or Advertiser: The brand that desires a partnership with an affiliate to drive quality traffic to the business’ website and increase sales, generate leads, or boost conversions.
- CPA Network: The platform that brings together the affiliate who wants to make money by promoting products and the businesses that want their products promoted.
Let’s say a popular cooking blogger named Lisa (our affiliate in this story) has a healthy following of YouTube subscribers and blog readers.
She learned how to start a blog to make a living in her kitchen—trying new recipes and recommending specific brands and products to her audience.
After developing a guest blogging strategy, increasing web traffic, and building a cult following, her cooking crowd is eager to buy the next kitchen gadget she recommends.
Then we have our example business, Easy Cooking.
Easy Cooking manufactures high-quality kitchen gadgets – from cutting boards and measuring cups, to professional mixers and food processors. They’re looking to expand their marketing reach and would love to take advantage of Lisa’s audience of budding chefs.
A CPA marketing network brings Lisa and Easy Cooking together.
Ecommerce businesses like Easy Cooking utilize CPA networks to find and partner with influencers like Lisa.
Influencers like Lisa, who want to make money doing what they love and engaging their audience, can turn to CPA networks to find companies that want to pay her to use and promote their products.
Lisa sends her audience to the business’ website and makes a commission on each sale or lead conversion.
In turn, Easy Cooking makes money from Lisa’s referral traffic.
The network brings them together and the audience gets to try new products and learn about emerging brands. It’s a win-win.
What are the Benefits of CPA Marketing?
CPA marketing is very profitable when you target the right audience (as an affiliate) and connect with quality influencers (as a business).
Compared to other ecommerce marketing channels, the cost per action formula offers a number of benefits, including:
1. Easy to set up.
CPA marketing is easy to launch: you only need a website and a CPA network.
It takes very little capital upfront to use this marketing technique.
When you partner with a trusted CPA affiliate network, there’s no guesswork as to how to get started.
By using your own website and choosing a CPA offer, you can begin getting traffic from affiliate sites almost immediately.
2. Pay After the Sale.
You’re not paying for traffic that doesn’t convert.
If an affiliate’s referrals continuously offer low-rate conversions, diversify your affiliates and shift your focus to a more successful influencer.
3. Low Risk.
Because no payments made to the publisher unless a referred visitor converts to a customer or completes a specific task, the risk is low for ecommerce businesses.
There are tools like Mentionlytics that help you monitor how the affiliate is marketing your brand or product, but cost per acquisition marketing doesn’t call for an immense investment of time or capital.
4. High ROI.
Affiliate marketing generates 16 percent of all online marketing.
CJ by Conversant’s Affiliate Customer Insights reveals that customers spend more money when making a purchase off an affiliate’s recommendation.
This means these types of marketing campaigns drive a better quality of traffic and offers a better value than most traffic sources.
Affiliate marketing produces i.e.
- 58% higher average customer revenue.
- 31% higher per customer order average.
- 21% higher average order value (AOV).
Plus, the more sales you drive, the higher your commissions can be. For instance, the BigCommerce affiliate program starts at a 200% bounty payment and goes higher based on sales volume.
5. Expand Marketing Reach.
CPA marketing gives you scale and distribution.
Also you get to scale your brand message faster and more consistently to the largest possible audience.
Whether your brand is in fashion, electronics, home and garden, pet supplies, beauty, or almost anything else, most business verticals use CPA marketing.
