Pay Per Call Marketing Guide to Making Money with Phone Leads (2023)

I think you’ll agree with me when I say it’s tough to find new leads without burning a ton of money in the process.

One of the biggest concerns that I see clients have is, will pay per call work for my business?

The short answer is... It really depends. Throughout this post, we'll dive into how to generate high-quality calls for your clients or your own business.

But first we must answer:

What Is Pay Per Call?

Pay Per Call is an advertising, billing, and performance marketing model that connects businesses with inbound customer calls. Advertisers can require specific parameters to be met before a call is paid for, such as caller location, connection length, and keys pressed on an Interactive Voice Response (IVR).

Want To Have Success With Pay Per Call? Learn About My Private Mastermind

How Pay Per Call Works

Advertisers create a tracking number and specify the requirements needed to be met for a call to be credited. Publishers who send prospective customers meeting these requirements through their unique tracking number are then paid.

pay per call makes money

How to Promote Call Offers

  1. Choose a Niche/Vertical.
  2. Signup to a Pay Per Call Affiliate Network
  3. Get an Offer for Chosen Niche/Vertical.
  4. Promote the Offer.

In this guide, we'll go through all these steps, so if it seems intimidating, don't worry!

What Are The Best Pay Per Call Verticals

Due to the nature of caller intent, verticals that generally perform well are verticals that are time-sensitive.

I stick with mostly “local” campaigns, such as:

  • Auto – Tow truck, Locksmith, Windshield repair
  • Home services – Emergency plumber, Handyman, Carpet cleaning, etc
  • Health – Dentists, Personal trainer, CrossFit
  • Legal – Lawyer, Bail bonds

But,

I have several buddies that run large national pay per call campaigns, as well.

  • Financial – Debt, Tax services, Mortgage/Personal loans,
  • Love – Dating, “Love” hotline
  • Insurance – Auto, Life, Health, Home
  • Entertainment – “Love” and Psychic hotlines
  • Travel – Hotel, Car rental, Destination entertainment (Surfing lessons, Ziplines, etc.)

Honestly, the opportunities are endless. The point is, if a person is able to book a service over the phone, then there is a pay per call offer available for it.

Pro tip – not sure where to start? Use a spy tool such as AdPlexity to get an idea of the kind of ads running in a particular niche.

pay per call crazy ROI

Sourcing Pay-Per-Call Campaigns

You have two options, you can either grab offers from an Affiliate Network (National), or you can create your local offers by generating leads for small businesses.

Both options have their positives and negatives. I’ve mostly gone to the “local” route.

Disclaimer: What I am teaching in this guide is how to build a real business. Because of this, it is your responsibility to obtain the proper licenses required to run a lead generation business legally. Running lead generation for some companies that particular service industries may be required to obtain a permit. Examples of this include running leads for a real estate agent, which may require you to obtain a mortgage or real estate license. You can contact your secretary of state or your local chamber of commerce to get more information on what is required for your chosen niche.

Lower Competition, Huge ROI

Pros

Once you have found a few clients in your area and have been continuously sending them good quality leads, the campaigns can last years.

There is also the benefit of making a lot more per call by going direct as long as you are sending quality calls.

Dominating a local market also has the advantage of drowning out any potential competition from entering the market.

Cons

Local does have downsides, however. You are responsible for everything from signing clients, billing, etc.

This may include collecting payment from several different businesses at a time in many cases.

less competition in pay per call

Have Clients Come To You

Now, as you may know, it’s quite difficult to sell services to a local business.

This is because they already get bombarded with spam, cold calls, etc. on a weekly or daily basis.  These calls are usually from call centers claiming they are Google and can get their business to the #1 spot, etc.

The problem is that small business owner is very untrusting of any “internet marketing” type of pitch because of this.

Like most businesses, all they care about are results. So instead of selling them on terms like pay per call, SEO, etc., ask them if they are interested in driving more sales and customers to their business.

Now, even this will likely end with you getting the door closed in your face, or having the phone hung up on you.

But,

I got a ninja trick that will allow you to get close to the majority of your prospect clients without any hard selling.

Okay. Brent, how are we going to do this?

Simple! We are going to deliver results FIRST.

pay per call clients need leads

What I do is find businesses that are currently advertising with Google PPC but are not presently ranking organically.

The reason we want to find companies already advertising on Google is simple.

It means that they are already interested in driving more business and, more importantly, actively trying to do so through the use of the internet.

Now, depending on the niche, it is doubtful that the business owner is running these ads themselves.

In most cases, it will be a competing local agency that has already locked this client in as a “PPC client.”

Usually, this includes them charging the local business owner per month based on total campaign spend or some other arbitrary number.

We, however, are merely going to call the business owner, tell them we are getting a ton of calls from people who would be interested in their services, and ask if they’d like us to send these calls over to them FOR FREE.

Now

I don’t know about you, but if someone told me they were going to send me potential paying customers for free, I’d say what the hell let’s do it.

And the money?

Yes, I know sending someone free stuff isn’t going to make us productive, but hear me out.

The goal here is to wait long enough until we’ve sent them a few PAYING customers.

After a few weeks or amount of calls we send the business owner, we are going to contact them again and ask how the calls have been working out.

Hopefully, at this point, you’ve been sending quality calls to them.

If they sound happy with the calls you’ve been sending, it’s time for phase 2.

We are going to tell the business owner that we have a lot more call volume available and ask them if they are interested in purchasing more calls.

Look,

at this point, how we get paid depends on the business you are trying to work with.

For example, I’ve had dentists pay me anywhere from $10-25 for a simple phone call. But, I’ve also had dentists who were willing to pay $150-200 if I delivered people who booked a free cleaning.

The point is if we are sending quality traffic, it is almost always better to get a commission based on the sales made, rather than getting paid per lead.

We have the potential to make a lot more money while also lowering the risk that is presented to the small business owner.

Being paid a commission structure can have its drawbacks. If for whatever reason, your client turns out to be untrustworthy and claims you have not delivered any sales, this can cause problems.

However, with the use of some pay per call tools that we’ll be going into in more detail, we can mitigate this risk with the use of proper tracking.

If you do want to do cold outreach, however, in an automated way, I suggest Ninja Outreach to speed up the process.

Easy To Access Offers

Pros The benefit of going with a national campaign through an affiliate network comes down to speed and ease.

What I mean by that is, it’s much easier to get access to an offer through an Affiliate network over signing your own clients.

Payments are also much more manageable when dealing with an affiliate network.

Cons

There are downsides by going this route.

Due to the low barrier to entry that is involved when running with an affiliate network, the competition is usually much more intense.

There is also the downside of getting a lot less revenue per call generated as there are several middlemen that take a piece of the pie.

Regardless, I suggest signing up with a Pay Per Call Affiliate Network, so you don’t limit your chances to access offers.

Tip: Most Pay Per Call Affiliate offers to convert based on connected duration. This means that the timer doesn’t kick in until the call center agent starts talking. pay per call affiliate manager pushing home service offers

Pay Per Call Affiliate Networks

I haven’t run many Pay Per Call campaigns with Affiliate Networks.

But I do have quite a few buddies that do very well with these pay per call affiliate networks.

Pay Per Call Affiliate Network Palo

  • Pros – Some of the best legal pay per call offers on the market. Access to a buddy of mine Gene Morris as your AM, be sure to use this link: https://palomobile.com/sell-calls-page/ use code gene17 to get Gene as your AM.
  • Cons – Limited offer selection, but from what I’ve been told, this will change.

Comission Junction Pay Per Call Marketing Affiliate Network

  • Pros – Great high paying offers
  • Cons – Low amount of offers

RingPartner Pay Per Call Marketing Affiliate Network

  • Pros – A lot of good offers with excellent customer service (Proactive AM’s)
    • Cons – Some offers are not as advertised. For example, when testing a Handyman offer, I was connected to a Highway Construction company!!!

Blending

Now, as you’ll learn throughout this guide, you don’t have to pick one or the other.

If you are starting, I almost always recommend that you start with national offers while you work on building up your local client base.

Or, if you have a severe budget and excellent quality, go after the national clients directly 😉

This will allow you to test out different niches quickly, without much risk.

After you have determined a particular market to be an excellent opportunity, you can then go after local clients to see if you can boost up your revenue per call.

Finally, with the use of a few tools, you can even use your national campaign as a backup offer if, for whatever reason, your local client isn’t answering the phone. This allows you to attempt to connect every caller with a “live” client.

Pro Tip: Many small business owners don’t have their own dedicated office and receptionists.

Because of this, it’s sometimes best to have someone answer the phone on their behalf and collect information from the caller before sending them off to your client.

Once you scale up your operation, you can hire freelancers to provide warm transfer services.

This is great for local clients who may be on a job site and not available to answer calls.

If the above statement discourages you, remember that the higher barrier to entry something has, the less competition there will be. pay per call tracking tools

Pay Per Call Tracking

Call tracking is essential when running performance-based pay per call campaigns.

It’s honestly one of the most significant advantages in your toolkit.

No matter if you are running an affiliate pay per call offer or working directly with a client, you will have competition.

Lucky enough for us, however, the majority of the competition just puts their cell phone or office number as the “call” to action.

This means they cannot correctly measure which of their marketing channels is active.

With call tracking, however, we can know exactly where a call came from.

It gets better!

Call tracking platforms to allow you to:

  • Track search, digital and offline marketing campaigns
  • Record and listen to incoming phone calls
  • Get the name, phone number, and city of the caller

Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

Interactive Voice Response Source: Plum|Voice

An Interactive Voice Response, known as an IVR, allows you to connect the caller with the person they are seeking correctly.

For example, if all your ad says is “hire a plumber,” the caller might be looking for a specific type of plumbing work.

We can set up a calling survey asking them what they need before sending them off.

Press 1) for emergency plumbing services Press 2) for general plumbing work Press 3) for water plumbing Press 4) for gas services

This can be informative and as long as you’d like, but do remember this is a live person on the phone, so try to keep it short and concise.

Then depending on what the caller presses, you can connect them with the right person for the job.

This allows you to have multiple clients who are looking for particular types of call leads, which both improve user experience by connecting them with someone who can help them. In turn, this improves your lead quality for the same reasons.

When working with National level campaigns, they almost always use an IVR for what is referred to as call treatment.

Based on where your calls are coming from, the advertiser will usually direct their request to the correct salesperson, call center, or service agent.

This improves the overall profitability of the campaign by increasing the advertiser’s productivity while also improving the caller experience.

Call Treatment Metrics Include:

  • New or repeat callers
  • Time or day of the week
  • Keypress
  • Caller location
  • Referral source

Pro Tip: When running pay per call affiliate campaigns, always perform a “Test call” to see how the advertisers IVR is setup.

This will allow you to better word your marketing material to fit in-line with the advertisers messaging.

Now, as I mentioned, almost all advertisers and pay per call affiliate networks use call tracking. I highly suggest that you use them as well!

Call Tracking

When running campaigns for a client or even as an affiliate, it's important to have a pay per call tracking solution.

One I'm currently looking into is Ringba, which is an inbound call tracking platform for pay per call.

Ringba also has a per call training, which is free to enroll in that you may want to check out.

Other Call Tracking Platforms Include:

I will also be making future videos on how I set up the rest of these tools.

Front End Tracker & Analytics

Front end trackers allow you to track your actual marketing creatives, such as your pay per call landing page.

When you are running a pay per call campaign, you can definitively get away with just having call tracking.

But,

It’s almost always best to also have a landing page or website with your phone number.

This will allow you to convert potential customers and clients who otherwise would not have saved if they only had access to a phone number.

By having a landing page, you can give your visitors the option to convert into a lead in other ways, such as joining an mailing list, submitting a point through a web-form or even merely getting more information about the offer before making a decision.

Suggested Reading: Marketing Tools: Roadmap To Proper Marketing Analytics**

For my frequent blog readers, this should come as no surprise.

Make sure you understand your target audience before you even think about launching a pay per call campaign.

Unlike some CPA campaigns, a pay per call campaign won’t work by sending broad, untargeted traffic to it.

Even if somehow you did manage to get calls,  you would likely be kicked off the offer.

Problems? We All Got Problems

The first step when defining your target audience is first to understand what problems your offer helps solve.

To do this, identify the features and benefits of your offer that motivates people to buy.

After identifying what benefits your offer has to your target audience, only then can you begin to identify common characteristics of them.

Demographic Information:

  • Age: The average age of your target audience. What you prioritize in life and your values usually have a lot to do with your age.
  • Gender: If your product or service is valuable to both genders, skip this step. Who is most likely to need what you have to offer?
  • Relationship Status: Is your target audience single, in a relationship, or married?
  • Profession: This usually only applies to B2B, but it can also be beneficial in B2C.
  • Education: How educated is your potential buyer? Knowing this will help you perfect your marketing message later on.
  • Financial Situation: Annual income is significant for offers such as payday, biz opp, etc.

Psychographic Information:

  • Values: What does your target audience consider essential or beneficial? Understanding their values will allow you to customize your marketing message.
  • Buying Decision: Not understanding this can lead to some serious problems down the road. What does your prospective buyer look for in a product or service before making a purchase? Features, price, customer service, etc.
  • Shopping Habits: What else do they spend their money on? Knowing their shopping habits can help you piggyback on similar marketing campaigns.
  • Free Time: Not only how, but where do they spend their free time? Knowing this will help you identify which TV shows, websites, and apps to advertise on.

What Can Blue Do For You?

Facebook Insights Logo

Yes, I’m talking about Facebook, you know that website that kills your hopes and dreams?

It’s no secret

Facebook collects A LOT of demographic data.

The best part is you can access this data if you have a Facebook Ads account.

Once you have an ads account, you can access Facebook Audience Insights, which is extremely powerful.

Location-Based Demographics Data All For Free

Another great tool that allows you to gain access to a large amount of demographic data based on zip code is ZipAtlas.

ZipAtlas allows you to pull up reports based on different zip codes, area codes, city, and state demographics such as social and economic profiles.

Suggested Reading: PPC Marketing Plan – 2019 Ultimate Guide To Campaign Planning

Extremely Easy To Find Keywords

With Pay Per Call, you are almost always going to want to advertise on paid search.

To do this, however, you will need to know which keywords your target audience is actively searching for.

The first method is to visit Google.com and type in the root phrase of what your offer provides.Google Search For Plumber Pay Per Call AdsIn the example above I Googled “Plumber” and allowed Google suggested search to show me keywords.

As we can see, “water header repair + city” is the most needed service for Plumbers in this area.

It gets better

Granted, our particular offer can provide water heater services, the next step is to Google “water heater”Google Search For Water Heater Pay Per Call AdsWe now get the most searched services for water heater – repair, replacement & installation.

Repeat this process for any other service that your offer provides. Create a list of highly targeted and valuable keywords.

That’s not all.

A trick that most people aren’t aware of is the Google suggested search modifier “_.”

Perform a search while putting _ in front of your term, such as _water heater.

Google will now provide us keyword searches that are performed in front of the primary keyword.Google Search Modifier For Water Heater Pay Per Call AdsWith the example above we just got a couple of new keyword ideas “tankless,” “hot” and “solar.”

Look:

If a user is searching for something like “Can a plumber fix a toilet.”

It’s probably best to send the visitor to a landing page that provides more information on what services a plumber can provide.

Instead of trying to advertise to them a call-only ad.

However, if someone searches “need a plumber” or “call plumber,” then this indicates that the visitor needs to call a plumber right this moment and is not interested in doing any research.

Common sense

goes a long way when running keyword campaigns, which will help make you much more profitable.

I’ve seen keyword campaigns that rely on the dynamic text to rank for the keyword, and their landing page provides absolutely no value on what was searched.

Just be sure not to cause friction where it doesn’t need to be.

If the visitor's intent is to call a plumber, don’t lessen your chances of converting them by sending them to a page that may distract them.

Pro Tip: Look for buyer intent keywords and start with those when first starting.

Don’t bid on keywords such as “Plumber Supply” just because it contains the word Plumber.

pay per call traffic sources

Traffic Sources for Pay Per Call

Now, this should go without saying, but I know someone will screw this up and blame me.

Some of the traffic methods that I will be covering are NOT ALLOWED on some offers.

If you are running Pay Per Call campaigns with an affiliate network, be sure to check with your affiliate manager before running traffic.

This is also true when you are running campaigns for several local clients due to government restrictions and preferences.

Google Adwords

Adwords Logo

Running a pay per call campaigns on Adwords is going to be quite expensive because there is so much competition.

However, it will also deliver you a lot of high-quality leads if you setup your campaigns the correct way.

Think about this. If your toilet broke in the middle of the night, what would you do?

I’m guessing you’d search for something like “24-hour emergency plumber,” then either click or call the first result that popped up.

You would intend that you need a plumber now, and because of this, it’s incredibly likely that you’ll convert from a lead to a sale for the plumber.

But,

Do people call directly from search results?

The evolution of pay per call marketingSource: Matomy Media & Invoca

As I mentioned, quality comes at a price. I’ve seen pay per call campaigns for specific keywords cost more than what I’d even be paid for the call.

The Silver Lining

Setting up Adwords pay per call campaigns is both quick and easy and will be one of your highest volume traffic sources.

To have success with it, you must do your due diligence first, such as performing your demographics and keyword research. We will go over this in more detail further in this guide.

Facebook

Facebook Logo

When I mention using Facebook ads for pay per call campaigns, many people are confused – which is understandable.

How often have you made a phone call from a Facebook ad? Probably not often, if at all.

Using our same plumber example as before, it’s doubtful that someone will be scrolling their Facebook feed, stumble across a local plumber ad and then turn into a high-quality lead.

Here Is The Kicker

That isn’t to say that you shouldn’t take advantage of Facebook for some niches!

There is a way to make Facebook work even for a niche such as a local plumber, but it’ll take a bit more work.

Niches that do work on Facebook are non-time sensitive type offers; (e.g., “cosmetic surgery” or “commercial landscaping,” etc.)

Things that they may have an interest in based on demographics data.

For example, it’s more likely that you will be able to find high-quality commercial landscaping leads if you target people who are homeowners, higher income, age 35+, etc.

Facebook is the perfect traffic source to introduce the demographics that you need for your offer. It provides information based on where they are in the buying cycle.

If they’ve never shown interest in commercial landscaping before, try to capture their email by providing a checklist, guide or blueprint on things they need to know before committing to a commercial landscaper.

This will allow you to warm up the leads and send super high quality leads to your client once that point is warmed up and ready.

The average cost of commercial landscaping in the US is between $1,500 – $5,000. So these leads are extremely valuable and much harder to generate. Source

Linkedin

Linkedin logo

I haven’t run many Linkedin ads for Pay Per Call campaigns.

I did, however, want to mention Linkedin since it’s extremely powerful for some niches.

If you are running a niche that is based on B2B sales, Linkedin may be the perfect traffic source for you.

With any traffic source that has high-quality traffic, Linkedin is going to be quite expensive.

Linkedin’s high price may deter several businesses from even trying it, but Linkedin shows specific demographics data that many other traffic sources can’t provide.

* If you’ve run anything successfully on Linkedin for a pay per call advertising campaign, I’d love to hear from you!

man on toilet googling a plumber

Local Search Engine Optimization

Honestly, going into too much detail on local SEO is a bit outside the scope of this guide.

Once you determine which niche you’d like to focus on, I highly suggest you start to make local lead gen sites and rank them with SEO.

It will take a bit longer to see results than paid traffic, but it’s a great way to increase your ROI in the long run.

Pro Tip (2019 Updated): One thing I’ve been doing recently is making authority sites for a particular niche.

Now

This is a much longer-term strategy and will take A LOT of work.

But the payoff can be huge if done right for lead-gen & pay per call… or even selling the site later down the road.

To make an authority site, the easiest is to partner with someone that is an expert in their field.

If for whatever reason, you don’t want to do this extra step, you CAN do all the writing on your own... ...But it will rarely be as good as having an actual expert on your team.

My latest project is in the mold industry for both mold inspections and mold remediation.

Why would I make an authority site on the mold you ask?

Because one of my clients & later students have been a mold inspector for over ten years.

Not only that, but he has been learning marketing on the side.

So together we partnered up and made LookMold.

He does all the writing, and later when the site gets traffic, I’ll be in charge of monetizing it.

The best part about this strategy is it can make money over time, yes….

….but if the site becomes an actual authority, big companies may want to buy it.

Youtube

Youtube Video Ads

Similar to Linkedin, Youtube usually gets overlooked for pay per call campaigns.

Why would someone make a phone call if they are in the middle of watching cat videos?

Believe it or not, people look up all sorts of things on Youtube.

In fact, Youtube is the second largest search engine in the world!

The best part about it?

You can get HIGHLY targeted video views for pennies depending on your targeting.

For example, is someone searched Youtube for “how to fix tooth pain,” you could create an informative video that goes over the various causes of tooth pain, and throughout the video, watermark both your lead gen website & phone number for one of your dental clients.

Now I know this may seem like a lot of work, but a dull video can be created with tools such as Camtasia, Screenflow, etc. or even purchased on sites like Fiverr.

The best part about it is you only have to create the “content” section of the video only once.

Then depending on which city you are targeting, you can change the watermark of the phone number and website.

You can also test much simpler videos such as this Fiverr gig for a dentist explainer video.

Youtube videos are also precious for local SEO efforts with less competitive keywords. I am merely having a Youtube video adequately optimized can rank in the top 10 for the search term.

Yellow Pages

Yellow Pages Logo

According to YP, more than 80 million people visit the YP.com site (or use their app) each month where there are more than 20 million businesses listed.

Having success with the Yellow Pages is hit or miss. You have to jump through a lot of hoops to get your ads to show up, especially if you are a lead generation company.

The other downside of the Yellow Pages is the fact that most of your clients can already be found there.

Once in a while, you’ll stumble across a client that has NO idea about marketing, and there will be some opportunity with YP.com.

local news paper reporter

Local News Paper

Most people assume newspapers are dying off…

Around 40% of Americans still read a print newspaper in a given week, with the majority of newspaper subscribers in an older and more affluent group. If your small business is looking to target this demographic, then newspaper advertising is a good option for you. Source: FitSmallBusiness

But,

That doesn’t give you an excuse to skip newspaper ads.

The truth is, most of your competitors believe that it’s not even worth their time to set up an ad in a newspaper.

However, buying a newspaper spot in a local newspaper is EXTREMELY cheap.

News paper online rates for advertisments

Not to mention, you can buy both print ads to be included in their printed newspapers and also advertise directly on their site.

This is very powerful because a simple $10-30 a week ad can result in quite a few phone calls depending on your niche.

It’s also extremely cheap to test, so there really is no excuse not to test running them.

To figure out the pricing of running ads in a local newspaper, I only Google “Newspaper name + advertising.”

Google search for newspaper advertising

If nothing pops up, I’ll visit their site directly, and scroll to the bottom of the page and search for the word Advertising, Advertise or Ads.

Newspaper advertising link in footer

Pro Tip: Several newspapers are still locally owned and are having trouble generating enough profit to stay in business. Use this to your advantage by negotiating longer time slots at a discount if your ads work out.

Ninja Tip: Pay the newspaper to put your retargeting pixel on individual sections of their site. This may take a bit of explaining, but if you can get a pixel placed on a targeted local newspaper section, you can run some extremely profitable retargeting campaigns. You can also do this with local bloggers, depending on the topic of their blog.

women in charge of a directory

Directories

I’ve already mentioned a few of the directories that you’ll want to target in this post.

Not only are there national directories that you can advertise your business or offer, but there are local directories as well.

Now 

To find these types of directories may take a bit of searching or scraping (Scrapebox, anyone?).

But once you find a few with a decent amount of traffic, they can bring in several leads a month.

Local directories are less common now than they use to be, but some areas still have them.

A lot of times, the local newspaper will have a directory section where local businesses can advertise reasonably cheap.

These sites aren’t going to have a ton of traffic, so be sure to request a demographics report if available. Also, do your research on sites such as Similarweb.com to see if it’s worth your time to test.

An example of city directory:

local business directory

bored local blogger

Local Blog

Similar to local directories, another great place to advertise is on blogs that are about a specific area.

A great example of this is; AroundIowa.com, which, as the domain name suggests, is about the Iowa-based news.

Sites such as this are great because it’s very likely that the majority of the traffic will all come from the particular area that they cover, in this case, Iowa.

Several of these sites sell advertisements in the form of a banner, email blasts, and even text-based links.

I highly suggest finding blogs that capture their visitor’s email addresses.

Mom Blogs

Do EXTREMELY well, especially with coupons or discount type offers. Free teeth cleaning anyone?

Pro Tip: Many of these sites are always looking for great content, so if you are focused on a particular area, you could even request to become an author for the blog.

local mail man

Local Mail

Local mail or “junk mail” as contrary to what many of you are probably thinking DOES still convert!

Direct mail is not “dead.” But, it sure has declined in volume over the past ten years. However, more marketers are adding mail to their array of integrated marketing tactics because the engagement is growing as the clutter declines. Personalization and relevance are key. Costs are high, but scale and ROI remain strong when direct mail is delivered to a well-targeted audience. Source: TheDMA.org

The best part about it, most pay per call affiliates don’t even know what I’m about to show you.

The only reason I even know about it was from my local SEO business back in 2008.

If you live in the United States, you can gain access to some basic demographics data directly from our post office!

The tool is USPS Every Door Direct Mail.

every door direct mail order summary

What is incredible about this tool is not only can you do basic demographics research such as age, income, and amount of homes or businesses,

but it also gives you an estimate of how much it would cost to send a direct mail campaign to that area and how many addresses would receive it.

To take advantage of USPS EDDM, you’ll need to either create or purchase your brochures.

Here is an example of where to get some brochures: 55Printing

USPS EDDM, however, is only ONE way to take advantage of direct mail….

Let's be honest

When is the last time you took action based on a brochure you got in the mail?

I bet it’s been a while. I would wager that you subconsciously throw away the junk mail without even registering what it says.

Make It Convert

You have to put a little extra work into this method to make it work, but if you crack the code, it can become one of your primary traffic sources.

The goal with direct mail is to get the recipient to pick up and READ your offering.

If it’s instantly getting thrown into the trash, that can become a little tough.

Imagine this, though, as you are rifling through your mail, and you felt something substantial in the envelope.

What would you do?

I bet you’d open it and see what is inside.

This method should only be used for getting customers or clients in high paying niches.

The trick is to put a dice or some other cheap but heavy object in the envelope to improve open rates.

A few other tricks include:

  1. Weirdly shaped envelopes
  2. Handwritten name & address
  3. Different color envelope such as red or orange

Just be creative and different.

bandit sign pirate

Bandit Signs

Bandit signs are illegal in most cities in the US IF you put your signs on public property without permission.

However, getting permission from someone that owns private property such as a small business owner or perhaps even a personal residence, then it’s completely legal!

Just before you invest money in bandit signs, make sure that where you are putting your signs matches the demographics of people that would be interested in the product or service you are promoting.

For example, if you are generating leads for a real estate agent who is interested in buying houses, then offer to pay homeowners $50-100 to place your sign on their lawn.

It’s best to find a house that is on the corner of the primary entrance/exit main roads.

This will improve your chances that a vast majority of homeowners in that particular neighborhood see your sign.

Google maps bandit sign locations

In the picture above, there are only four exits for a subdivision of over 400 homeowners.

The same can be done with small businesses!

For example, if you are generating leads for a local pool cleaner/repairman, one of the best places to put your bandit sign would be in a pool supply store.

Now

If the particular store is a large national brand, the manager of the store won’t have any control over being able to allow you to have bandit signs or not.

If you find a locally owned store, there is a much higher chance that you can agree with the owner.

Bandit signs for pay per call campaigns take a lot of leg work.

Because of the barrier to entry and the relatively low cost, you can make a serious ROI if you do them right.

radio ad operator

Radio Ads

Like many other forms of advertising listed in this post, many would assume radio ads are “dead.”

Surprisingly, according to a study by Nielsen, radio boasts a 93% weekly reach among Americans.

That is even larger than Americans browsing the internet and also watching TV.

Radio ads are going to take a bit more work than setting up ads on the internet, but depending on your niche, you can make some serious ROI.

Ask yourself, who and when do most people listen to the radio? Mostly in the car! That means they either: A) Have a job (have money) B) Going shopping (have money)

This means that your ads will be heard by people who can afford your product or service that you are promoting.

I’ve never tried Radio ads for any pay per call campaigns, but I did hear about a guy making over $100k/week JUST with Radio ads.

So you best believe I’m going to be testing some radio advertising this year and so should you!

Pay Per Inquiry Radio Ads

After further research on Radio advertising, I’ve learned that pay per inquiry radio ads is the way to go!

PPI radio ads are similar to CPA since you only pay when interest is generated from your ads in the form of a phone call, etc.

crashing into billboardBillboards

I haven’t run traffic from a billboard as I’ve found that they are quite expensive. In most cases, advertisements are better for brand awareness over something performance-related.

I did want to mention billboards in case your region may offer a good deal on billboard advertisements in a high traffic area.

One thing to be aware of with billboards is circulation is not the same as total impressions. Circulation is how many pedestrians pass your ad each month. While impressions are how many people see your advertisement.

A great example of this is, if your ad is in a location where people are stuck in rush hour traffic, they will most likely see your ad.

However, if they are passing by at 70 mph, likely, they won’t see your ad long enough to register your message.

So be aware that yes, you can use billboards, but I would use them as one of your last traffic sources to test, once you’ve already had success elsewhere.

Some ideas that come to my mind for running Billboard ads are work from home opportunities where people will be stuck in traffic or a real estate opportunity for a new apartment complex looking for residents much closer to their job.

retargeting like crazy

Retargeting

Last but not least, retargeting!

Personally, retargeting is one of the most overlooked ways to generate leads, especially in local pay per call campaigns.

When dealing with local level advertising, you need as much exposure as you can get to make any sustainable amount of money.

Retargeting is great for this because it allows you to “follow people around” and show your advertisement.

This happens only after they’ve already shown interest in what you’re promoting, so your ROI should do very well.

Learn how to set up a retargeting campaign in one of my previous posts.

Get Started

If you read this entire guide, pat yourself on the back.

Get up, give your back a good stretch, make some coffee…

Then, leave a comment down below with any feedback on the guide and any questions you may have!

Also, if you are already running pay per call campaigns, I want to hear about it.

I will be keeping this guide updated, so any questions you ask in the comments will help improve this guide.