How to take a "small winner" and making it a "big winner"? (6)
So I have a campaign now in a tough geo that is running at about 0-10% profit.
I guess my question is how can I take this "small winner" and get it into the 25-40% ROI range?
My thinking is at this point I got something already kind of working, so am I looking for just a small tweak somewhere?
I am hesitant to change my landing page/angle as again I'd feel like that's almost starting over.
At this point am I just tweaking things like images/headlines etc?
Divide your campaign in 3 parts and see where you can win;
- ads: you running at lowest cpc possible or is there room to improve? ask experts here regarding your geo/type of traffic/placement etc
- pre-landers: how is the CTR on your landers? going from 5 to 10% makes a huge difference already, and isn't "that hard". If you on a decent 60% for example it's a bit harder to make real progress ofcourse.
- offer: is the conversion rate as it should be (ask AM, compare with similar offers)
Analyze these 3 parts seperatly and pretty sure you will find some points of improvement somewhere. Maybe show us some insights so experts can place some feedback here!
Focus on your offer first.
I don''t even bother with extensive landing page/ads/.... testing or improvements , until i know i'm running the best possible converting offer.
Here's checklist i like to use:
- Maximum Payout
- Custom Payout (Network ask for a custom payout from the advertiser based on quality or quantity)
- Guaranteed EPC from the network
- Run Direct with advertiser
- Split test similar offers (from same advertiser or different advertiser)
- Split test similar offers with different conversion flow
- Split test same offer on other networks
- Ask for custom, similar offer pages from other Advertisers
Hello jabong82,
Building and running campaigns isn't too hard. The challenge is getting to the next level.
First of all, make sure you got a solid campaign first - means you got a solid offer, solid angle, good placements/pubs — and you have to find them FAST before you start scaling. You can achieve this by removing lousy pubs and testing more offers from different networks, different angles, banners, landers. Just make changes - one element at a time so you can isolate the impact of each change on your campaign.
1. PAUSE BAD PLACEMENTS - make sure traffic is good
2. FIND THE BEST OFFER. Test different networks. Use the same campaign to test many offers using your best banner + landers (assuming you have found the best combination already and enough data to conclude).
3. FIND YOUR BEST CREATIVES + KEEP IMPROVING CTR - If you have found best angle, test different landers around it. End goal is to find best lander + offer combination and get higher CTRs on your ads and pages.
4. BID HIGHER - Then I will clone the same campaign and bid higher to get more traffic and higher quality pubs. LOW BIDS CAN WORK TOO - I will also clone and create a lower bid campaign. You may be getting lesser traffic but you can get higher ROI. Just dont bid really low cos quality will be low too.
Once you find the winning ad + lander + offer, you can start scaling to different traffic sources too. Good luck and keep me posted of your progress!
Ok, so we got quite a lot of advice posted already, but since I know you're talking about adult dating, let's check out what parts would actually apply to you.
First of all, I assume you already did the basic optimization steps - you've cut the worst placements (or you're running on the proven ones only - is it TrafficJunky still?), you've tested loads of banners/LPs and offers ... so right now, you have somewhat profitable and optimized campaign and you're asking about how to take it to the next step, in other words, how to increase the ROI.
1. You can certainly do what "stickupkid" suggested - which means basically tweaking the funnel more, you can certainly make a better banner or a better LP. Assuming that you are running on TJ - when targeting such large sites, it's possible to make site specific funnels - mimick the design of the site, use similar colors/fonts/borders as the site uses and apply it on the LP too. You might take it as far as searching an offer lander that looks the most similar to the site yo are advertising on. I have also found out that some traffic works better with chat style landers, while different traffic works better with plain design and some email collection box - this was always tied to really big sites that had a lot of bookmarkers and organic traffic.
2. "abcd" gave you some good pointers too - paybumps can really help you a lot, but don't push for them too early or it will actually hurt you, leads need time to mature ... but I'm sure you already know it. Going direct is an option too, just be prepared for "usually" less favorable payment terms (time frame) and it's quite easy to get kicked for quality too - this is a good option in case you master some GEO or niche and want to stay focused on that, because direct advertisers usually don't cover as much GEOs and NICHEs as an affiliate network can. Testing the same offer, or similar ones, from another network is also a must-do - even if you did that before with not good results, make sure you re-test this from time to time - especially when you manage to put together a new solid funnel.
3. "machix" basically summed up the standard optimization process, so I guess you're familiar with all of it, but there is one tip you might want to retest now - different bids. With a new solid funnel, you should always try bidding really high to see whether it can still perform well.
There are more options you can test : play with the capping, keyword/category targeting, taking the funnel to a different traffic source ... You should also look at your past campaigns now and analyze the funnels - maybe you had a great banner some time ago, which didn't work good enough with your old funnel, but it might be a killer with the current one. Try to find good "pieces" from the past and make them part of the new funnel - this relates to offers you tested before too.
Let me give you one advice : it's still possible that this funnel isn't the one you are looking for, definitely try to improve it with small tweaks here and there, but in case you can't drive the ROI up ... you simply need to start from scratch again and do bigger changes. Do not waste your time on something that simply can't work better. I know it's tempting, cause it looks like you need to make just one more small step, but sometimes it's best to simply give up and restart again 
Wow thanks for all the advice guys. That's why STM rocks! lol
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