Case study of a successful CPA campaign

There is a perpetual conundrum of the client wishing to run a CPA campaign and the network running a CPM/CPC campaign. Both for obvious reasons.

I have , in my earlier articles, spoken of using a combination of CPM and google adwords to meet CPA objectives.

Today I am going to discuss a case study where this combination was effectively used to deliver CPA results month on month.

The client was a online merchant – buying and selling electronic items and used mobile telephones. The client brief to the network was that they wished to run a cost per action campaign – where the payout would happen when the visitor to the website would buy an item on the website.

The network, after considerable cogitation, decided to run a CPM + google adwords combination campaign. They went back to the client with a request for banners as well as a list of google adwords. The network, in their briefing to the client, explained to them how they proposed to run the campaign. They got a customer buy in to the idea and explained the collaborative model. The campaign required that the client share daily ‘sales’ information with the network.

Once the campaign was live, the network and the client worked very closely. The client shared ‘sales’ information on a daily basis. This helped the network correlate number of impressions/clicks with sales. The network optimized the campaign increasing number of clicks/impressions. After a week of the campaign going live, between the network and the client a figure of number of impressions a day and number of clicks was arrived at. This figure was based on client expectation of number of sales as well as Network ROIs. Obviously number of impressions/clicks could be continuously increased. Such an increase would get more sales, but compromised Network ROIs. The number of impressions/clicks per day was a win-win for both network and client – from the network point of view, it assured good ROIs , while from the customer point of view as well acceptable ROIs were achieved.

Social Media Marketing

Social media are media for social interaction. Examples of social media are facebook, twitter etc. Social media has become an extremely appealing marketing tool for small and medium businesses. With Twitter expanding to Japan, Indonesia and Mexico it has become a very effective social media marketing medium to reach different corners of the world. Advertisments can be put out in multiple languages reaching a much wider range of customers.

Social media can take different forms – Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, microblogging, wikis, podcasts… the list goes on. Examples of social media include –

Blogs

Microblogging – Twitter, FMylife…

Social networking – Facebook, Myspace, Orkut….

What started out as a medium for individuals to exchange information, has now metamorphosed into a powerful social marketing tool.

Why should I use social media, you may ask. Here are a few reasons –

Website exposure

Website exposure happens spontaneously, without any commercial overtones. Given our inherent dislike to be bombarded with advertisements, this is a very natural way to get visibility.

Web Traffic

Social communities can greatly complement other traffic you get from search engines, banner campaigns etc. Social Media traffic can be increased by strategic marketing.

Costs

There is hardly any cost in Social media marketing. Costs are limited largely to your time. Benefits exceed costs. Social media marketing will give you links for free, which would otherwise cost an arm and a leg.

Sits over other initiatives

It sits over other methods you could have to drive traffic to your website. It doesn’t interfere with other methods you have of increasing traffic.

Bottom line is that social media marketing is a very non-threat, non-intrusive way of getting mind space. Like other methods of online marketing, it doesn’t have its own two legs to stand on. But supported by other online marketing methods like banner advertising etc, social media marketing can be very effective. And certainly can’t be ignored.