Introduction

Though digital marketing opportunities are constantly coming, going, pivoting, and changing, there’s one strategy that has consistently proven its worth to ROI-minded marketers - and that’s Cost Per Action (CPA) marketing.

CPA marketing, and more broadly affiliate and performance marketing, have proven to be successful models for B2C marketers that are ready to move beyond awareness campaigns and into a customer acquisition strategy. With CPA marketing, an advertiser only pays after a user has completed a desired action that you have pre-determined. Whether you have goals higher in the customer acquisition funnel, like promoting trial sign-ups or lead form submissions, or lower-funnel goals like increased sales or mobile app installs, CPA marketing provides a scalable and ROIpositive model for achieving your desired results.

This guide will give you the background on CPA marketing, the decisions you must make to get started, and help you build the foundation of your strategy.

$8.2B

US affiliate marketing spend estimated to hit $8.2 billion by 2022

68%

68% of marketers stated that paid advertising is ‘very important’ or ‘extremely important’ to their overall marketing strategy

Over 1 3

Over 1/3 of marketers feel affiliate marketing is one of the strongest forms of acquiring new customers

If at any time you need a quick refresher on CPA Marketing terms, check out our industry term glossary here!