Pay Per Call… Making Money Beyond the Click!
The affiliate space is changing… Again. It’s hard to keep pace and continue to make money in the same old way. One of the hottest new trends to maximize your experience as a marketer is to learn and use pay per call strategies.
What is Pay Per Call and How Does it Work?
Still relatively new to the industry, this marketing model lends itself to innovation and exploitation of some of the most powerful opportunities to earn money both on and offline. Pay-per-call marketing is in its early stages and to date affiliate marketers are achieving greatest success via mobile search and display. Google of course drives the largest share of volume, however other networks are starting to show potential. To date, click to call methods have been relatively unsuccessful. Most offers delivered via WAP and other type of Mobile ads drive consumers to a landing page that automatically rotates an affiliate assigned phone number. This page may be hosted by the lead buyer or by the affiliate.  The choice is often made by the advertiser and terms each landing page are campaign specific. If affiliate hosted landing pages are allowed, it presents a great opportunity to customize the offer to meet your special marketing style and/or placement.
Using Pay Per Call with Search Traffic
In addition to mobile ads, traditional search creatives also work well when paired with ad extensions. Using multiple promotion numbers and keyword tracking features allows affiliates to target and optimize the best converting sources. Without leveraging these techniques, it is easy to lose money fast! Like other types of affiliate marketing, it is imperative to measure performance so that financial losses in the beginning of the process can be turned into lessons learned that yield long term profits. There are “free†ways to generate calls – however, so far these methods do not yet yield the kinds of volumes that excite most super affiliates.
There are also other tools available to affiliates that can improve overall campaign performance, including call promotions (e.g. customized IVR options) and offer bundling. Call promotions can be used to ensure caller intent prior to sending to call center. Although your conversion rate will be lower as a result of this process, your effective CPMs will sky rocket. Overall eCPMS are much higher than traditional performance based marketing strategies. As such you can bid higher, up to 3x your “normal†bid to get traffic on a particular keyword. Once you gain traction and meet or exceed quality standards, your costs should lower thereby resulting in a positive impact to your volume and profitability.
Pay Per Call is Limited, but Expanding Quickly!
It’s hard to find solid campaigns with national coverage. Offer bundling maximizes traffic and is an upcoming trend in the space. To make the marketing effort worthwhile, volume is essential. However, not all advertisers have the capacity to handle large volume or full state coverage. As such, routing calls by coverage area, call center hours and volume caps is solution that can benefit everyone.
For those of you that are new to pay per call, here are a few facts about the current offer mix available and what a typical campaign might look like.
The early leading verticals in the space: legal leads, insurance, subprime financial offers, travel, entertainment and health campaigns.
- Durations on average are approximately 90 sec.
- Most payouts are $8+, but some higher converting verticals may be lower.
- Although national coverage is most often sought, local geo-targeted offers have their place. Especially for search, there is an advantage to taking a long tail approach for niche or highly targeted campaigns as highly prized keywords are just as expensive as usual.
It’s never been a more exciting time to explore new marketing approaches that leverage the future communication tools of our time. Mobile search lends itself well to pay per call offers and provides an easy transition into the space for experienced affiliate marketers. Being a leader is re-energizing. It’s fun to find a way to leverage fundamental online marketing skills and make money again.
This guest post was provided by Jennine Rexon of Rextopia.com affiliate network and RexConnects, which specializes in pay per call marketing.
Great story and great advice, it means a lot and is much appreciated that you help us all out so much. Thank you!
Zac
wow its crazy how the internet changes but for the better, "Pay Per Call" I've been reading shoemoney's local marketing blueprint ad he talks about this, a marketer getting paid per phone call.
the companies already know what a phone call is worth to them so thats where the marketer is able to propose their cut of the leads worth
My recent post Local Affiliate Marketing Lesson
This sounds really good. I would like to put this in action as it seems pretty handy.
Very interesting concept. I like the overall idea. But can you please advice, which kind of products one should advertise on pay per call concept and from where an advertiser might get the product? From Clickback, Peerfly or any other place?
“The choice is often made by the advertiser and terms each landing page are campaign specific.” quoted from its page, I agree with it. Choice really often made by the advertiser. But come to think of it, what about the consumer made the choice? Anyway, it was really a great concept. excellente!