In the ever-evolving world of digital marketing, businesses are always on the lookout for new
ways to attract more leads that will convert into sales. One approach that’s been gaining
significant traction lately is pay-per-call marketing.
In this article, we’ll explore the fundamentals of pay-per-call marketing, its importance, and
where the industry is headed.
What is pay-per-call marketing?
Pay-per-call (PPC) is a performance-based marketing model in which affiliate marketers
(publishers) are compensated for every qualified call they generate for advertisers (offer
owners).
You can think of pay-per-call marketing as a form of lead generation, where instead of being
paid on simple lead submits, you are paid on the amount of qualified calls.
A qualified call is essentially any call that meets specific criteria set by the advertiser
beforehand. This can include factors such as call duration, caller location, and more.
Inbound pay-per-call campaigns are the most common within the industry. In this scenario,
the prospective customer is the one who calls the advertiser.
Is pay-per-call marketing profitable?
Finding high-quality leads remains a top challenge for businesses today. In fact, 44% of sales
reps report being dissatisfied with the quality of leads they receive.
This is why more and more businesses are willing to pay a lot of money for qualified, high-value
leads, making this a very lucrative opportunity for affiliates.
However, generating high quality leads is more difficult than most traditional affiliate marketing
methods. It requires a deep understanding of how pay-per-call marketing works, where to find
the best offers to promote, which channels to use to generate leads, and how to track your
campaigns in order to optimize them for better results.
How does pay-per-call marketing work?
The most simplified explanation of how pay-per-call marketing works is that a buyer
(advertiser/business) pays you (the affiliate/publisher) for each qualified call.
As an affiliate marketer, it would be very time-consuming to look for businesses that are
interested in pay-per-call advertising, reach out to them, and arrange a deal on a one-by-one
basis. This is why most affiliates join a pay-per-call affiliate network or affiliate program
Various advertisers who need help to generate leads for their offer will create their pay-per-call
campaign on the network.
Through your affiliate network, you will be able to see all available offers, and apply for the ones
you would like to promote.
You can promote these offers on different ad networks (e.g., Google, Facebook, Taboola) and
encourage viewers to call the number of the advertiser.
Through a unique tracking number, the advertiser can assign all inbound calls you generated
to you, and pay you a commission for all calls that fulfil the qualifying criteria.
What type of offers work best for pay-per-call marketing?
Generally, pay-per-call marketing works best for more complex services, often including a high
level of commitment from clients. This is because prospective clients usually need more
assistance and convincing when deciding on these services.
A few examples include:
1. Health: fitness, dental care, weight loss, supplements
2. Financial services: debt, tax, mortgage, loans
3. Insurance: life insurance, health insurance, auto insurance, homeowners insurance
4. Home improvement: contractors (e.g., plumbers, electricians, roofers, landscapers),
solar panels, remodeling, appliances
5. Legal services: lawyer services, claims
What are the best pay-per-call affiliate networks & programs?
As mentioned earlier, the easiest way to find pay-per-call offers is to apply as a publisher on
various affiliate networks or programs. There are many networks you can choose from, but
some of the most popular ones are:
1. OfferVault
If you’ve run affiliate offers before, you probably know all about OfferVault. You can find
pay-per-call offers from different affiliate networks, all in one platform.
You can filter based on specific verticals and countries, and find information about the payout of
each offer.
2. ClickDealer
ClickDealer has been around for over a decade, which means that thousands of advertisers
have placed their offers (including exclusive offers) here.
3. Marketcall
Marketcall specializes in pay-per-call offers, and while they are newer to the market compared
to the first two, they have rapidly grown over the years.
You can find offers from various verticals, including all the top verticals we mentioned previously
(e.g., home improvement, finance, travel).
4. Aragon Advertising
Aragon Advertising has been an award-winning pay-per-call network for six consecutive years.
They stand out by offering high-quality offers from different verticals, and high payouts per call.
5. Goojibear
Goojibear is a click-to-call network, and its sole focus is pay-per-call marketing. They also offer
a large selection of offers to choose from, and they are known to be reliable and quick with
payments.
6. PALO
They have been in the inbound pay-per-call industry for almost 15 years now, with their main
verticals being healthcare, legal services, insurance, and financial services. Due to these
lucrative offers, PALO is known to reward higher payouts.
7. Digital Market Media
This California-based network prides itself on delivering “ridiculously high quality leads”. This
means that you can find high-quality offers from top verticals, and expect very high commissions
per call.
Because they promise such high-quality leads to their advertisers, the vetting process for
publishers is also stricter.
8. Lead Smart
Unlike the other affiliate networks we discussed so far, Lead Smart focus on home improvement
service offers in the US.
9. Wisdom Companies
Wisdom is an affiliate network, and their key selling point is that they connect targeted
consumers with relevant service providers. They are mainly active in the mortgage, credit,
insurance and education verticals.
10. Digital Media Solutions (DMS)
DMS is another provider that connects advertisers with publishers and consumers in real time,
providing valuable insights into campaign performance. They pride themselves on high quality
traffic and top-notch support.
Regardless of the network you choose in the end, you need to research them beforehand to
ensure they are trustworthy and reliable when it comes to payments. Also, newer networks
tend to offer faster account approvals, while industry veterans have stricter acceptance
criteria.
What are the best paid traffic sources for pay-per-call campaigns?
When it comes to promoting pay-per-call offers, paid traffic has the highest scalability. You can
essentially promote these offers on any search, social, or native ad platform, as long as it
complies with the platform’s guidelines.
A few of the best ad networks you can buy traffic from are:
1. Google Ads
With Google Search campaigns, you have the ability to target users who are actively searching
for the product or service you are promoting.
With targeted keywords and location-based settings, you can reach potential customers at
the moment of intent, increasing the chances of driving high-quality call conversions.
Google Ads also offers features like call extensions and call-only campaigns. This means
you can easily display your advertiser’s phone number within search results, allowing users to
directly initiate a call.
2. Meta (Facebook & Instagram)
What makes Facebook & Instagram suitable for your pay-per-call campaigns is their advanced
algorithm and targeting options.
With demographic and interest-based targeting, you can reach a highly relevant audience
likely to engage with pay-per-call offers.
3. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is especially useful for pay-per-call campaigns within the B2B (business-to-business)
sector. LinkedIn's advanced targeting options (e.g., industry, job title, company size) improve the
precision of reaching the right audience.
4. Native Advertising Platforms
Platforms such as Taboola or Outbrain could also be used to promote your pay-per-call
campaigns. With their content discovery engines, you can engage users with native-style ad
placements seamlessly integrated into the user experience.
How to track your pay-per-call campaigns with accuracy
Once you have found high-quality pay-per-call offers and pinpointed a few ad platforms you will
buy traffic from, you also need to figure out how to track and monitor your campaigns.
Tracking will allow you to figure out what is losing you money, and what is working well. Based
on this information, you can optimize your campaigns to improve results.
One of the most popular inbound call trackers in the industry is Ringba. They do an amazing
job at tracking calls and call-related data. Ringba boasts a massive amount of data - you
could spend days analyzing it, and still not get a full picture.
While Ringba excels at call tracking and offers basic conversion reporting back to your chosen
traffic sources, its capabilities for analyzing ad performance are limited. A traditional click
tracker, like ClickFlare, is still necessary to gain full understanding of your campaign
performance.
How to use Ringba and click trackers together
As we mentioned before, the ideal tracking solution is to use Ringba and a traditional click
tracker alongside each other.
Integrating most click trackers to Ringba is not an easy task. It requires manual configuration,
which involves defining the query parameter the Ringba script should catch, and then defining a
postback. This process would need to be repeated for each individual campaign.
This process can be simplified if the two platforms are directly integrated via API. Currently,
ClickFlare is the only click tracker to have a direct integration with Ringba.
In this scenario, you simply need to connect your ClickFlare account to Ringba through an API
token, and the job is done. No postbacks needed. ClickFlare will automatically start to pull
conversions and revenue data from Ringba.
How to build pay-per-call landing pages
Another crucial part of succeeding at pay-per-call marketing is being able to create
high-converting landing pages quickly.
An easy way to do this is by using a landing page builder, such as LanderLab, that allows you
to create landing pages using ready-made templates, without requiring any prior design or
coding skills.
The best news is, LanderLab is also integrated with both Ringba and ClickFlare. With this
integration, you simply need your Ringba campaign ID, and LanderLab will automatically inject
the Ringba script into your landing page.
With the built-in ClickFlare integration, you will be able to track how your landing pages are
performing with ease.
Pay-per-call marketing: Conclusion
Pay-per-call marketing is growing, making it a very profitable niche for online marketers.
To get started, you simply need to apply for a few pay-per-call affiliate programs or networks,
select offers from top-performing verticals (e.g., health, finance, home improvement), and
promote these offers on various ad platforms (e.g., Facebook or Google Ads).
You can use top industry tracking and landing page tools to simplify your workload and improve
results. We recommend using Ringba, ClickFlare, and LanderLab in combination to achieve
optimal success with your pay-per-call campaigns.