PlugRush’s Top 5 Traffic Buying Tips for Intelligent Media Buyers

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Introduction

Every profession has some crucial aspects that are fundamental to being successful in it. Without, at least, basic knowledge of these fundamentals of the media buying trade it’s extremely difficult to be competitive.

Media buying is an art. One must first master the basic skill set required for proficiency, prior to striving for perfection.

At PlugRush, we want you to be competitive because it means you will pay the high-quality webmasters in our traffic network what their site visitors are worth.

This encourages them to ramp up the advertising efforts on their end to continue sending productive traffic into our ad network which, ultimately, leads to overall growth that is beneficial to all parties involved.

Tip #1: Split Test

Let’s start with a really simple tip: As a media buyer, you should always be split testing. This effectively means that you should be testing at least one particular angle about your marketing strategy for a product or service, at all times.

Example: With dating offers, your first split test could be to create a banner campaign promoting the same offer with six different creatives. This will help you find out a couple of things:

1. Which banners get the best Click-Through Rate (CTR) and should be kept in the campaign to continue getting traffic efficiently.
2. Which banners generate the most amount of conversions. This can be a great indicator of which banner creative matches best with the landing page you are using.

Virtually every angle of your advertising strategy could possibly be subject to some sort of split test. Becoming an expert media buyer means you need to do a lot of split testing over time in order to discover which tests are best suited for which offer types.

For example, we have found that placing emojis in the ad copy for push notification ads can be quite beneficial for some offer types, but for others, it’s not helpful to use them.

This is just one of the many things we’ve learned through the valuable media buying tool that is split testing.

Tip #2: Optimize & Scale

Mobidea and PlugRush make campaign optimization as a media buyer very simple.

All you need to do is to set up the conversion tracking as described here. Then, all conversions generated will be shown in PlugRush’s campaign statistics to make campaign optimization (e.g. using blacklists) a breeze.

Not all traffic sources are created equal and it’s important to optimize your ad campaigns with an effective blacklist customized for your particular ad campaign.

Some sources or sub-sources may work for one offer, but not for another one.

If you cannot use conversion tracking via postback URL, then we strongly recommend tracking the {$source_id} URL parameter in your campaign URLs with PlugRush.

This allows you to know which sub-sources your traffic comes from to make good decisions in your optimization process, before moving on to scaling.

Once your campaign is working well and it’s optimized a bit, you should scale it.

This is done by increasing your CPC bid on the ad campaign to a level where you’re still profitable but able to compete at the highest level for traffic.

Otherwise, you will continue to lose some of the available traffic for your advertising campaign to your competitors.

That’s no good!

Tip #3: Automate

In a previous article here at Mobidea about the automated rules system at PlugRush, we outlined the powerful time-saving ability that the automation of ad campaign optimization brings with it.

We very strongly recommend that you read it.

For many media buyers already utilizing this great free tool, it means the difference between being able to successfully run 5-10 campaigns at a time, versus being able to run 50-100 with success.

It’s very easy to set up rules to automatically optimize your advertising campaigns at PlugRush and it consumes far less time than manual optimization of conversion-based offers.

This one is truly a no-brainer and it’s a pity if you don’t take advantage of automation whenever possible because it can directly increase the amount of time you can spend away from the office to be with your family & friends, all while achieving better results.

Tip #4: Communicate

Always feed off of knowledge from others you trust in order to grow your business. You won’t learn all the ins and outs of media buying without some external help.

Not all information is written down somewhere for the general public to just look up and read on a website or in a book.

It’s important that you begin to form relationships with the people that will help you become better.

Related Content: Best Affiliate Marketing Forums on the Internet

Surrounding yourself with others that share this common interest of media buying is great (and important), but also make sure you reach out to account managers of the various platforms you utilize, once access to them becomes available for you.

Not all affiliate or advertising networks will assign you a personal account manager from the start, but you should set it as one of your first goals to reach a level where this is a possibility.

Once you’ve gotten acquainted with the basics of media buying, you should have reached a point where the companies you work with have someone on their staff who is willing to spend some time helping with your strategy.

The more you know and can share with them, the more they will be able to open up to you about potential secret tips that will skyrocket your success.

Acquire proficiency in the basics, hone your craft with any knowledge you can possibly obtain, and then reach out to communicate with the people that will help catapult you to the next level.

But remember, you need to bring something to the table as well, so prepare yourself properly.

Tip #5: Plan

It sounds really simple to have a plan, right?

And it is, but many novice media buyers we speak to on a daily basis do not have a plan.

At least not really. Not one that really helps them construct a road to success.

It sounds wonderful to just say, “I want to media buy to make more money”.

But this is an overall goal, not a plan to get there.

Being prepared with a concrete procedure for executing at least your short term plan is imperative and cannot be missing in your media buying strategy.

Your plan should at least answer the following three questions:

1. What is my goal? Your goal should be specific & achievable with a time limit component to it. An example could be, “Get profitable with dating offers in one month”.
2. What must I do to reach my goal? For most marketing objectives, you should outline the steps you need to take to achieve your set goal. Here you should decide how many angles you will split test and which optimization methods you will use as your advertising campaigns run.
3. How much am I willing to spend to achieve my goal? It’s important that you know what budget you’re willing to allocate to each test. You should also have an overall testing budget in mind before you begin testing. This way you know what you’re willing to spend in order to achieve your goal.

Conclusion

Mastering the art of media buying is not a simple task and it isn’t for everyone, but if you’re still reading this then it’s definitely for you.

You’re showing interest in being successful as a media buyer and this means you’re ready to take the plunge and use the tips provided here to begin improving your marketing strategy.

Of course, this article only scratches the surface of what is possible to learn as a media buyer over the course of years.

The way you split test, optimize, scale, automate, communicate, and plan will be adapted over the long haul, as you mold yourself into an advertising expert.

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