As an affiliate, it has been a really challenging journey on running stuff on FB. With all the unreasonable things happening (increasing CPM in Tier 1 GEOs, daily budget limitation, BM ban…) it is really tough to maintain a healthy ROI, as there are only so many things you can control as an affiliate. Namely, accounts, ads, landing page…
Moreover, if you’re running on FB. There is something else that you gotta take into consideration… The account game… which wasn’t really an issue in the past until recent years. Like it or not, we gotta admit that it has become part of the advertising cost, doesn’t matter if you’re running BH or WH.
Hence, it’s really important for an affiliate to identify and grab on ANY, (yes I mean any), opportunity that can help to increase the ROI on campaigns.
The fundamental of this game is really counting one’s ability to control this: EPC > CPC (eCPM>CPM). In other words, the bigger is the gap between EPC and CPC, the higher room of ROI it is. So today, I want to share with you a case study which I think is the direction going forward in 2020.
COD in South East Asia
If you guys can recall the success story which I shared 9 years ago in Stack That Money Forum… I am always a big believer in Blue Ocean Strategy. (Click here if you have no idea what Blue Ocean Strategy Is)
Why SEA?
If you do a comparison on the CPM on FB between Tier1 gets VS SEA, you can see a clear difference in them. In the US we’re talking about at least $20/CPM. However, if you switch the geo over to any country in SEA, we can see as low as $5/CPM here. In short, by switching the geo to SEA, we are reaching at least 2-3x more eyeballs that we do in the US, by spending the same amount of money. The more audience your ads are exposed to, the higher the chance for your campaigns to get more conversions. Another BIG reason to run in SEA is that it has an insane amount of traffic! You can really scale like crazy here!
Why COD?
As SEA contains many countries that are still under development, the habit of using a credit card as payment isn’t really mainstream over here. Instead, the majority of the people here prefer using online payment or cash. Take Indonesia as an example, a country with ~260m population, out of which only less than 5% of people who own a credit card. In order to tap into this country, your best bet would be COD. The Same goes for other countries in SEA.
The Magic of CMD+C and CMD+V (Copy&Paste – I’m a Mac user lol)
There’s a saying… Do not reinvent the wheel. Since a lot of the existing campaigns are already saturated in Tier1 and 2, I have decided to port them over to this new market. I am gonna take a Weight Loss offer as an example in this case study. Keto is like the most popular method of weight loss out there and hence I have picked a similar offer that is available in SEA.
Offer: Keto Boost Weight Loss
Countries: SEA
Targeting: Female, 25+
LP:
It is actually not necessary to go aggressive in SEA because most of the funnels are still new to the people here (no you don’t have to use ST lander) – by using a very tame LP I can still get a very healthy LP CTR ~ Average of 15%. *FYI I got this LP from spying.
*PRO tip – Make sure the people you use in the LPs are Asians/local people. Localization is key here.
The COD offers get paid when the leads have been confirmed. With an average confirmation rate of 70%, I am able to obtain a very healthy EPC/ROI here.
It’s 21st of February 2020 as I’m writing this and I guess I am on par to break $300k by the end of the month.
Overall, I am seeing an average of 70% campaign ROI since the launch of this campaign, which is not bad after all, consider the traffic in SEA is really cheap, and the campaigns can be scaled.
Most importantly, it is as simple as porting over what’s working in Tier1 to the SEA market.
Reasons Why This Campaign Can Be Successful:
- Cheap traffic – there are plenty of opportunities in the SEA market, and since there aren’t many advertisers available at these geos… The market isn’t really saturated and hence the cheap traffic cost. We are talking about as low as $5/CPM here.
- Scalability – With a total population of more than 655million… you can really scale something to the moon when you find something working here… Especially an offer that can cover all these geos.
- High Converting COD offer – It is meaningless to have cheap traffic if there is nothing to monetize them. Fortunately, I have found some offers that do accept SEA traffic and have a high conversion rate (in this case, high confirmation rate). Do take note that, for COD offer, it is VERY IMPORTANT for you to work with offers that have at least 70% confirmation rate, because that’s where you can really have higher EPC and become profitable confidently. When you have the option, go with these because anything lower is simply not worth your time. Having the right offer can decide if your campaign is a home run or not.
In this case study, I have demonstrated how one can simply expanding the range of EPC and CPC in order to achieve a healthy ROI. It isn’t always necessary to go after competitive geos in order to have healthy campaigns… I suggest trying the Blue Ocean Strategy instead. 🙂
That is it for my sharing. Till next time! Cheers.