Heard of mobile marketing yet? Cell phone marketing? No, it’s got nothing to do with using your cell phone to send ads to other cell phones. If you don’t know already, it works like this.
You open a CPA account that offers products you can market as an affiliate. CPA stands for cost per action. So the company publishing these offers is paying you for each lead you succeed in capturing. Leads can range in price from $1.50 (usually such offers would be the easier leads to collect like a zip code only) to $30 and $40 per action (such offers would require the lead to fill in much more than just name and email).
Marketers have been a big ho-ha about CPA. On the face of it, it’s easy to see why. But here’s the catch, if you’re new and don’t have a big budget.
When you’re looking at CPA offers, you’re given a range of info on how the product fairs in the market. Key percentage figures are for Value (payout for each lead) EPC (earnings per click) and CR (Click through rate). I wasn’t familiar EPC, so I pretty much ignored it at the beginning – I don’t think I even knew what it meant! Duh. Anyway, it’s pretty crucial. And this is why.
When you go over to admob, Google’s mobile optimised ad platform, or adfonic, you’ll set up a campaign pretty much as you would with ppc – except, you don’t have to fiddle around with keywords. I hear you sigh with relief. Your ad ‘creative’ on a text ad is limited to 35 characters. So no room for clever copywriting. So that’s my unique talent redundant right there, anyway… You write your little ad and then you have to bid. A few months ago all bids were dirty cheap. NOT ANY MORE.
I’ve been running some campaigns taken from Adam Horwitz’s top ‘proven’ campaigns and the bid prices have tripled since he started having fun. A typical bid on admob is around 15 cents. So, let me bring us back to EPC. A typical EPC might be $0.10. That means you’re earning – or due to earn – an average of 10 cents a click. But if your bid is OVER 10 cents, you’re in for a rough ride, because your ad spend is greater than your average rate of return.
I can’t believe no one’s pointed this out. (OK, maybe they have, I just haven’t seen it.)
Admob’s bids are more expensive than adfonic, I noticed. So I tend to go with them more often. And I go slowly. I try at the minimum bid for a few days, then raise if I’m not getting enough clicks. Disappointingly I haven’t made more than small change so far.
The more sensible strategy, long-term, would be to use Adam Horwitz’s software, Beast Mobi. Beast Mobi allows you to use a mobile optimised webform, which works as a squeeze page or lead capture page. This way you can build a list AND promote a CPA offer on the back of the squeeze page. Sounds great in theory. My experience so far? I ran a quick campaign, copied word for word from two of Adam’s ‘proven campaigns’- one for the Weight Loss niche, the other for the Make money niche. Weight loss was a – dead loss. Not one subscriber. Make money I got in excess of 600 clicks and 12 subscribers. Not good enough to blow me away. Especially as that blew my minimum ad spend of $50. OK, it was my first run, but still, I was copying a so-called expert.
Conclusion? I have mixed feelings about it all. This is clearly the new market. There is money to be made, but as with Google ad words, you’re going to have to be careful with your ad spend. If you have thousands to throw at it, and you carefully monitor which campaigns are making you a real return, you’ll doubtless do well. If, however, you are not yet rolling in it, go carefully! Test every campaign and, if I were you, I’d avoid those that Adam has been successful with – because everyone else is on them and the bid is making them risky now. Find your own CPA offers, etc. Create your own unique giveaway, then proceed cautiously.
Here’s more on Mobile Monopoly.
