Getting Started with Pay Per Call How Pay Per Call Works

Ringba

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Learn how Pay Per Call works, who's involved, the technology used and what an inbound call flow looks like from start to finish.


Lesson Transcript

All right Pay Per Callers, let's talk about How Pay Per Call Works.

Pay Per Call Explained

Pay Per Call is an advertising model that allows businesses to buy inbound phone calls from consumers who are interested in their products and services. This model is amazing for the business because it shifts the cost of acquisition risk from the advertiser (the company that needs customers) to the Pay Per Call which can be a broker or directly to the affiliates (promoters) of their offer. Offers are their products or services or whatever that company needs to sell. This allows the advertiser or business to predict their cost of acquisition and stabilize their marketing activities while providing a unique opportunity for the brokers and affiliates to create large amounts of profit by leveraging their marketing abilities.

And what's amazing about Pay Per Call is the fact that it really truly creates a win-win situation for everybody involved. And whenever you can create a win win situation that's commission based, and has unlimited potential, that's how people can start with literally nothing and make tens of millions of dollars very quickly if they're willing to work really really hard. And so phone calls carry the highest intent of any consumer action. People only call if they're actually interested in the product or service offering and they know when they call that they may buy something. So when people pick up the phone, they only call when it's super important to them and typically when they're ready to whip out their credit card and buy right away and that's the exciting thing about phone calls and why it's really good for the businesses and really good for the brokers and affiliates.

For instance, if a company buying phone calls is paying ten dollars per call and has an average close ratio of 25%, they know their cost of acquiring a customer is approximately $40 every single time. And that changes the game for businesses. Because most of the time when a business owner or even a large scale business wants more customers, they have to figure out how to actually advertise to get those customers. And they don't always know what the cost of acquisition is going to be. And so Pay Per Call allows them to really understand what their cost of acquisition is so that they can have a consistent marketing campaign and can just focus on running their business.

And that means they don't have to take the risk of new advertising campaigns, learning new promotional methods, creating new promotional materials, and other skills related to marketing. The advertiser or business can simply focus on their business and leave all of the marketing and user acquisition to their partners. And that's where you come in. The fixed cost of a call also creates a huge opportunity for skilled clever marketers to come up with new ways to promote the campaign. And so the advertiser is never aware of the cost of acquisition so they have no idea what the affiliate or brokers profit margin is. Thus, once a successful campaign is designed and running, the promoters can reap the benefits for as long as the advertiser is willing to buy the calls or as long as the campaign lasts. And like I said before, that's a true win win for all parties involved.

It means once you figure out how to generate these phone calls for the buyers, you never let them know what your profit margin is and maybe you're selling a call for $25 and it only costs you $2 to generate and the vast majority of it is profit for you and then you can just continue to profit on an ongoing basis while working with your partners and they're super happy about this because they know what their cost of acquisition is. It is really an amazing advertising model.

Example Pay Per Call Flow from Start to Finish

So, what we're going to do here is we're going to cover an example of a simple Pay Per Call flow from start to finish so that you understand the journey of a consumer as they go through this process and what happens every step of the way.

Step 1) Advertiser Creates a Pay Per Call campaign

So first of all, an advertiser which is the business like we just talked about creates their Pay Per Call campaign. And this is for a product or a service that they want to sell. Now, these products or services can literally be anything from any industry all over the world. I want you to think about things you've seen before on billboards, TV infomercials, heard on the radio, seen online. Just about any time you're instructed to call someone to buy, this can be a Pay Per Call campaign. And so it can be for dentist office, it can be for plastic surgeons, lawyers, tow trucks, it can be insurance industry. I mean literally anything where someone can pick up the phone and make a purchase, you can create a Pay Per Call campaign out of it.

And the great news is Pay Per Call is still relatively new. And so the vast majority of campaigns that you can actually create for this industry and this billing model haven't been done yet. Which means you're moving into an industry that's on an accelerating growth path and that's exactly where you want to be and to position yourself to create a long lasting highly profitable business.

Step 2) Pay Per Call Network promotes the campaign to their Publishers.

Okay, step two, a Pay Per Call promotes a campaign to their publishers. So most of the time there are brokers that connect affiliates and advertisers together and affiliates are also publishers. These terms can be interchanged and so these brokers are usually called Pay Per Calls and they facilitate the relationships, the tracking, and the accounting between all of the parties. So essentially the broker sits in the middle and connects the advertisers and the publishers together so that neither party has to go through the process of managing all those connections. And so networks and brokers take a margin or a cut of that transaction between the advertisers payout and what they pay affiliates to facilitate this process and manage some of the set up, creation of the assets, and do all that business development work.

Step 3) Publishers apply to the Pay Per Call campaign and receive a unique tracking number.

Now, publishers come and apply for that Pay Per Call campaign and will receive a unique tracking number and so once campaigns are set up by networks, affiliates can apply and promote these campaigns and receive commissions for ever valid inbound call that they generate that qualifies for a commission. And so there's all sorts of different rules and requirements for every campaign and as long as a call meets those rules and requirements, it'll generate a commission. And so typically a network will provide an affiliate, a phone number to use in promoting their offer to route their phone calls. And so essentially what will happen is this broker network gives a phone call to their affiliate, the affiliate gives a phone number to their affiliate, that affiliate takes the phone number, they place it on their promotional materials on the internet, on websites, blogs, bill boards, whatever they're going to do, and then whenever someone calls the network tracks that.

Now, I want you guys to be aware that it's really important that you use your own call tracking. Now, a lot of affiliates in the space don't do this because honestly there's an additionally cost of using a call tracking platform. We couldn't create Ringba if people didn't pay us to do it. But if you do not have your own call tracking, then you cannot tell if the network statistics are accurate. You have no visibility into what's going on on that phone call, you don't know if the call was legit, you don't know if the call ever happened in the first place. And there's absolutely no way for you to know for sure how many calls you're actually generating if you do not have your own call tracking.

And so if you want to build a real business in Pay Per Call, step one is really truly to use your own call tracking to keep all of these people honest. Now there's a million other reasons why you need your own call tracking. We're going to cover that a little bit later. But first and foremost if you do not have your own call tracking, you cannot keep your partners honest which means they can steal from you, plain and simple.

Step 4) Publishers generate inbound calls through traffic sources.

Step four, publishers generate inbound calls through their traffic sources. So, publishers then create advertising campaigns on the internet or through traditional media or other channels to hopefully find consumers that are interested in the advertisers products or services. And so like I said a publishers going to take that number, they're going to put it on a blog, maybe an insurance blog where people come to find out information about insurance and then people see the phone number, call it, and when those calls happen, the publisher generates a commission.

Step 5) Customer sees tracking numbers and clicks to call.

Now next up in the chain is like I just said the customer sees the tracking numbers and clicks to call or they pick up their phone and call if they're on a desktop computer. So customers see the advertisement and if they're interested in the product or services that are offered, they call the affiliates unique tracking number. Sometimes affiliates use multiple numbers for each individual website or marketing channel they promote in. I highly recommend that and that's another reason why you need your own call tracking platform so that you can get your own phone numbers and place them all over the place to see what channels are working for you

Step 6) Call is tracked and attributed to the publisher that generated the call.

Now, the call is tracked in the networks tracking platform and attributed to the publisher that generated the call. So when a customer calls that unique tracking number, the networks call tracking platform whether they use Ringba or otherwise, credits the affiliate with the phone call and keeps track of all the callers information and commissions owed to the affiliate.

Typically networks use third party tracking platforms to provide transparency and insure that statistics are unaltered and what that means is networks will use platforms like Ringba that have Pay Per Call functionality so that you know that the network statistics are real and honest because we as a company guarantee that.

There are some networks that have their own tracking platforms and they create them internally and I cannot say truthfully whether or not their statistics are ever accurate because they do not let any third party audit their platforms. We can't see what's in the code. We don't know what's really going on and so if you're going to work with a network that has their own proprietary tracking platform, again you absolutely have to have your own call tracking so that you can keep these people honest. Because if you don't, there's no way to know what's really going on in those call flows.

Step 7) Customer is routed to the Advertisers

So, the customer calls, they call the tracking number. And now they're routed to the advertiser. So after the call the consumer is routed to the advertisers call center, through the network in real time. So literally they pick up the phone, they dial the number, and then within a few seconds are connected in real time. Now, depending on the network or broker, the call may go to any number of potential buyers based on the callers information, the concurrency available, the hours of operation of the buyers, the capacity, and other limiting factors. So just because you're driving calls to a pay per call network or a broker, doesn't mean the same buyer answers the phone every single time. Those calls are getting load balanced all over the place and we're going to talk about that later in the program.

Step 8) Publisher receives commission for calls that meet the payout criteria for the campaign

So next a publisher receives commission for calls that meet pay up criteria for the campaign. When a calls meets all of the required qualification criteria, the affiliate is credited their commissions through the call. Now, every campaign is going to have unique qualifications, the callers have to meet geographic location, certain demographic information, the duration of the call, IVR choices, and a whole slew of other things that have to be met depending on what the call is. For instance, if you're running a campaign for debt consolidation, and one of the requirements is the caller has more than $10000 in unsecured debt, well if the caller answers an IVR choice that's do you have less than $10000 in unsecured debt please press one, you probably aren't getting paid for that call because it did not meet the requirements. Or if it's an insurance campaign and the company is only licensed to take calls in California, and you send them a bunch of calls from Massachusetts, those calls are probably not going to get paid for because they don't meet the criteria of the campaign.

Pay Per Call Flow Diagram

And so here is what an actual flow looks like for a very simple standard Pay Per Call campaign. And I'm going to walk you through it here from start to finish:

Example Pay Per Call Flow - Diagram.png

So the network starts out by creating an offer. They're going to go and find an advertiser, a buyer for their phone calls, and maybe five or six buyers, or maybe 50 different buyers if they're in insurance and every state is licensed separately. And then they create an offer and that offer goes to the publisher or the affiliate. And so for the sake of this example, we'll stick to the debt consolidation offer. So they create an offer where they're looking for people who have more than $10000 in unsecured credit card debt and they will pay $30 a phone call for that.

So you're signed up on their network. You see this offer. You get approved to run it. The network gives you a tracking number. Now, you're smart enough to have your own call tracking so you route your tracking number to their tracking number and you put your tracking number on a mobile advertisement. And then a consumer searches for I need help with debt on Google and your ad pops up. They go oh wow this company can help me with my debt. They click it. And then they accept the click to call and an inbound call is generated through your tracking number on Ringba which routes to this Pay Per Call which eventually routes to their buyer. Now once the buyer is on the phone with the customer, they qualify that customer and if it meets all the payout criteria and it's a qualified phone call, they issue a payout to the network, the network then issues you your $30 in commission.

And that is how a Pay Per Call Campaign works start-to-finish.


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