What is CPA Marketing? Find Out How It Works

For every company, reaching the right people online is a challenge, especially if you have a limited budget and there are plenty of other offerings in your industry. So many companies are spending significant dollars on website advertising, and not many are converting website visitors to actual customers. 

The solution to this problem can be CPA marketing, which lets businesses pay only for someone’s taking a valuable action. This makes ad spending more efficient and focused on the results.

What is CPA Marketing?

CPA marketing stands for Cost Per Action marketing, which is a form of affiliate marketing measured by results. In this model, advertisers only pay if a particular action is completed. As opposed to other models such as Cost Per Click (CPC), where you’re paying for every click regardless of whether that click became meaningful for your ROI.

In the case of CPA marketing, you work with affiliates promoting your offers to their audiences using sites, social media, or email. All these affiliates only make a commission when one of their audience does the required action, thus it’s a win-win situation for affiliates and sponsors. Unlike using CPC, where you might be clicking a lot, there may not be many conversions, but CPA makes sure it’s the money that is spent on the actions that directly impact your business.

For companies that want to keep a close eye on return on investment and avoid losing money on unqualified traffic, this approach is very useful. CPA marketing helps you to scale your business successfully as you only pay for actual results, and you can get a great deal on your advertising budget.

How the CPA Model Works

CPA marketing comprises three main players — advertisers, affiliates, and the CPA network.

• Advertisers: Businesses targeting to promote their products or services, and then they make clear which action they would like users to do. 
• An affiliate: Someone with their own website, blog, or social media channels that market the offer of the advertiser to their own followers. 
• CPA networks: a company that connects advertisers with an affiliate, who tracks actions with the technology and makes payments for them.

So here’s how it works. An advertiser submits his offer to a CPA network, which is an offer along with an action and an offer commission that he is willing to pay. The CPA network receives the offer, reviews it, and makes it available to their pool of affiliates, who can then choose to promote according to their audience and experience in marketing. The network provides unique tracking links to affiliates to promote the offer on your websites, email newsletters, or social media platforms.

When a user clicks on an affiliate’s tracking link, the user’s browser receives a cookie to track what they do, and the completed action will be attributed back to the right affiliate. The CPA network’s tracking system records the conversion if the user completes the desired action in the allotted time frame-e.g., making a purchase, completing a form, or downloading an app. The affiliate gets a commission for such an action, and the advertiser only pays when the result is completed.

CPA marketing is based on tracking and attribution, with the idea that each action is correctly attributed to its source affiliate. CPA networks use advanced analytics and fraud prevention tools to support the integrity of the process for both advertisers and affiliates to remain safe from invalid or fraudulent actions. Ad networks such as Offer.one make it simple for advertisers and affiliates to start by having a secure platform, a number of offers to work with, and detailed reporting tools.

CPA Marketing Types

CPA marketing offers come in lots of forms, with each type specially produced to assist with different business goals and client behaviors.

• Pay Per Sale (PPS): Pay per sale (PPS) is probably the most common type where the affiliates earn a commission when the referral has led to a purchase. In e-commerce, this model is popular because revenue generated from sales is directly tied to ad spend.
• Pay Per Action (PPA): Pay Per Action (PPA) is another common type of online affiliate marketing since it pays affiliates for driving certain actions, typically against a sale. Actions, such as filling out a contact form, signing up for a newsletter, downloading an app, or registering for a free trial are part of these actions. For lead generation or building a subscriber base, PPA is ideal as it lets you pay only when action is taken.
• Recurring Payments: Recurring payments CPA programs also offer and affiliates earn ongoing commissions for actions that occur recurrently over time. For instance, an affiliate can be paid on a monthly basis by the number of users who subscribed to some service the affiliate promoted. The model is attractive for advertisers as well as affiliates, where advertisers get long-term relationships and revenue stability.

However, each type of CPA offer has its own merits and demerits based on the business model and marketing intent. Affiliates will choose those offers that fit their audience's needs and interests, and advertisers have the freedom to pick the best type for their goals.

Best Practices for Successful CPA Marketing

Success in CPA marketing hinges to some extent on finding a reliable CPA network that will have good support, good tracking, and payment on time. Offer.one is a great place for prospective beginners and serious marketers, with offers in gambling, iGaming, and sports betting. They offer advanced tracking tools, rapid payouts, and a lot of high-converting campaigns to help you maximize your earnings on the platform.

Choose the best offers—you want to select those that are relevant for your audience, and it’s been proven to work. Your strategies to promote your offers include search engine optimization (SEO), paid advertising, and email marketing, along with a mix. Targeting keywords to your niche is SEO, whereas paid ads let you get to a selected audience fast and efficiently.

Nurturing leads and making conversions, email marketing is still a powerful tool despite the growing traction of all other marketing modes since it is a personalized feature. To test the merlot, we change the creatives, landing pages, and calls to action to see what is the most resonating to our audience. You get analytics to monitor your results and perform a fine correction for any ineffectiveness over time.

Trust with the audience is key; always promote offers with value that align with your brand.

Benefits of CPA Marketing

CPA marketing has many advantages both for the advertiser and its affiliate, and that is why it is so popular in digital marketing today.

Low Risk: Probably the best aspect is that the advertisers pay only when the advertiser clicks or fills out a form, which means that their money is spent wisely. This is a performance-based model, so it is not like you are paying for clicks or impressions that, in the end, have no result. That actually helps to control the cost and increase ROI.

High ROI: The high earning potential of the affiliates is another bonus point, as the affiliates can earn very high commissions promoting offers that really convert with their audience. Considering that the model is scalable, affiliates can earn more income if they drive more traffic and improve their offers in the portfolio.

Increased Reach: More reach means more exposure of their offers for advertisers to whom affiliates promote and engage in new audiences that they may not have been able to reach themselves.

Easy to Start: CPA marketing is a great way to generate revenue since it is easy to launch and manage, especially so if you have a trusted CPA network such as Offer.one. You can focus on growing your business and improving your campaigns, and the network takes care of tracking, payments, and reporting.

Conclusion

CPA marketing is effective, low-risk growth marketing that pays for results that only matter. Advertisers are able to control costs and greatly improve ROIs, and affiliates can generate steady income by promoting acceptable offers through its performance-based model. If you want to try affiliate marketing or find the top ways to start working with casino affiliate programs, iGaming, and sports betting, then Offer.one is a good place to begin. Partner with the only CPA network for the practically perfect onboarding experience.