Promoting International Dating on Facebook
If you still haven't made money off international dating you clearly have not been paying attention to our newsletters. Dating has been one of the biggest verticals on EWA and we have been pushing the international niche for ages now. EWA carries over (550) dating offers including some killer international gems, international niche landing pages, and coverage for over 70 countries. Facebook is the absolute best source for international dating traffic because to a certain degree it's already pre-qualified. Single guys and gals are on Facebook doing one thing: creeping on girls and trying to choose their next target. You're only doing them good service by providing them a dating offer targeted directly to them, right? Besides the massive ROI, for people just getting into dating campaigns starting off with INTL campaigns is actually one of my most suggested methods to people because there is so little competition, you won't be competing with the big dogs and you have a lot budget less to risk when testing.
Do International Dating Offers Convert?
You won't know the answer until you test it! To be honest, when I first started testing these offers years ago I was pretty skeptical. I had to step out of my comfort zone: it was a lot easier to write ads in English and target the easy countries like United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. After hitting huge success in English markets, I decided it was time to at least give it a try. When I first started I used Google Translate to duplicate my ads over and I almost instantly created profitable new campaigns that were generating far higher ROI's than in English speaking markets. This started my mission, and ever since then I've been focusing the majority of my efforts throughout all traffic mediums by hitting international markets.
Recently, I ran a campaign in a country where CPM costs were in the single digits. The ad had a 0.1% CTR and I let it take 100 clicks and I got 1 conversion. It converted at 1%, right? Who would want to promote an offer with such a low conversion rate? WRONG: That test was nowhere close to confirming whether the offer would profit big or whether it would lose miserably. A general rule that most people follow is spending 10 times the payout of the offer to test the offer. If an offer sucks, you'll know pretty soon and at that point you will have to forget about the 10 times rule! How soon is soon? If you have sent over 300 clicks to a CPA offer that would normally convert at over 5% and your affiliate manager confirms that there is no problem with the offer, you know what to do! Getting back on topic, I had ~200% ROI when I let my test run on the offer, but then the CTR went down and the conversion rate plummeted. I had to test and optimize further! Today the offer stands at a good 250% ROI after I've refined my strategy through years of experience, split testing, and learning the hard way.
I get it Birdman, it Converts. Now What?
You could either choose an angle of attack, like targeting people who play certain games and building ads around that,or you could generalize. For most international countries I would suggest hitting broader markets because the competition is just so little in comparison to English markets. Most publishers think one way and they are too scared to break into new areas in the first place, besides the fact that there are barely any offers for these countries (you're lucky EWA focuses so much energy in growing our international reach!). When building your ads make sure that you are using pictures of girls from their Country. Pictures of American girls for Asian countries might work well at first but won't work for the advertiser and you could get booted off the offer for poor quality. I've also found that in the long-term, CTR's drop if you take the easy way out and use the same pictures as you would domestically - so put the extra effort in.
For targeting, I choose age groups of 5 years each (3 years if you are looking to target better). Using the age in the ad is known to increase conversions. I prefer to have around 40-50 pictures for each test. I weed out the ads with low CTR once they reach 5k impressions each. As the campaign proves profitability, I will test at least 100+ images plus I add borders and gradients making good images turn out great! Most importantly: bid CPM! If you bid CPM, a .1% CTR would mean that you get clicks at least 50% lesser than the price you would be paying for CPC. If you would like more detail about bidding strategies on Facebook, contact your account manager for our most recent guide that should help better explain to you models.
- Get localized pictures.
- Bid CPM
- Pause losing ads once you reach 5k impressions each.
- Track and optimize, send huge volume to make up for the lower CPA.
- Once you find successful pictures enhance them with borders, gradients, and other effects.
Since most international dating offers pay relatively less, you will have to send volume to make the big bucks. Send high volume so that your profits are huge; maintain a low CPC and your ROI will always be in the green. Also, don't be scared if your first fully international and foreign language dating campaign tanks - there are a lot of different merchants for each country. Different brands convert completely differently: so give it a good chance before you give up.
