When do you kill a once profitable campaign? (6)
Have a campaign, it was profitable for a few weeks, but has lost money recently.
How do you decide whether to kill it and move on or keep working it?
Originally Posted by thenjp
1. offer stopped converting - could be a change in the offer flow, advertiser started scrubbing, the offer is oversaturated ... if its really the offer that went to shit, there is not much you can do and this campaign is most likely done. You can still use the funnel for a similar offer tho.
2. your creatives are no longer working - could be due to a burnout or you already picked all the interested fishes from the pond (traffic source) - in this case, you need to come up with fresh creatives that will resurrect the campaign. Its also possible the angle needs an update.
3. you are not getting the right traffic anymore - several good placements are gone from the network, you have been outbid and lost the ideal position, prices went up too much - First find out if some placements are gone, if its the case and its too many of them, well the campaign is done because you are not able to buy the traffic you need anymore. In case you have been outbid, or generally pushed to a different position in the chain, you need to play with the bids to see if the performance returns at some level. If the traffic is too expensive now, you need to get better creatives (banners) or improve the funnel somehow. High price can also be related to being outbid, because higher bidders usually get better CTR.
There are more possibilities of course, but these are the most probable, so check them first.
To sum it up, you should instantly kill a once profitable campaign only if the problem lies with the offer - you can still try with a similar offer tho. If its related to your creatives or bids, there is still something you can do. It also true that campaigns sometimes die without any obvious reason and there is no way to make the profitable again, so if you are sure you tried everything possible and it still doesnt work, just let it be and move on, there is no point in sticking to something that simply wont work.
Make an easy cut-off rule for yourself.
1. IF campaign loses money for 2 days (sequentially or not) --> optimize banners and landers + put a $ cap on daily spend
2. IF campaign returns to profitable, then increase daily $ cap. IF NOT, cut it after two more days and ask for a payout increase during those two days
Originally Posted by cbrughmans
Hi Matuloo, not sure what you are trying to imply with the parenthesis. This is just my experience after 7 years in affiliate marketing (1 year at Vistaprint and 6 years at Addiliate.com)
Its my experience that affiliates continue a money-losing campaign for too long just because it used to make money in the past. And then they burn all their winnings on trying to make it profitable again instead of moving on to the next campaign(s). Like with gambling, you have to stop when you are winning I think. You need to have a cut-off rule in order to avoid losing all the profits you made.
I understand and respect that your opinion might be different on this matter.
Originally Posted by cbrughmans
On the other hand, I totally agree with you that its pointless to chase once-perfoming campaigns and loosing money on them day by day, instead of moving to new ones.
This is the problem with the way you are posting sometimes, first you post totally valuable info that makes perfect sense and few moment later you kill it with some nonsense, sometimes its like 2 people posting under the same nickname.
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