What is your media buying style? Not everyone's buying style is the same. For example, some time ago we had an individual working with us who had a very specific way of buying media (and they seemed like they knew what they were doing). They were very detail-oriented, had wildly long lists of properties that did well and a list of properties to avoid. Their campaigns were profitable, but they were completely unable to scale anything to significant value.
The problem was that this specific buyer's style was to focus on very small but profitable buys and bidding very high to achieve their traffic flow. That doesn't scale. Taking a wider approach at a lower bidding level would have yielded comparable profits, and without cherry picking the very most primo spots, it would be possible to scale the effort across a wider audience.
It won’t matter what you buy or how you buy it — if the offer sucks, you’re going to lose money every single time. Test, talk to people and pay attention to the ecosystem you are promoting in.
More and more we see the success of companies who advertise and buy traffic being determined by the person who is handling their media buying. Quite frankly, many companies don't know that their media buyer doesn't know what they're doing. On more than one occasion, we see campaign managers from companies making great profits here at JuicyAds, who then disappear because they've left the company, been promoted or fired. When they are replaced (for one reason or another) with them goes their skills and profit-making abilities, and the campaign profits sag.
It doesn't have to be that way. While our platform handles all small buyers and those who want to manage their own campaigns, we also provide full-service management of campaigns. We act as your media buying team. Going beyond this, our new Adsistant™ auto-optimization, as part of our Sexy Technology suite of smart advertiser tools, can handle most of the time-consuming tasks automatically.
Regardless, if you're going to handle your own advertising and marketing, it’s important to know what your buying style is, in order to understand where your success and ROI comes from.
Risk-Taking Whale
These are the buyers who take big risks with big bankrolls, who reap the biggest rewards and largest earning potential. This is not for everyone. It requires a high tolerance for risk and to be very smart about where you place your budgets. Generally though, these are people who have reached this position of success by having a large bankroll through their intelligence and trend spotting.
These are the type of people you see on the YouTube videos "teaching" or selling courses online on how to make tons of money online. This type of buyer spends a lot of money quickly, sinking deeply into the red with losses. However, as often it turns out, they have a long-term earning product that will make money for a long time on repeat sales or recurring billing.
They generally play the long game, and when the money starts rolling, it’s like an avalanche. They always prefer promotion of revshare and similar programs (combined with the right traffic), which will have a slow ROI cycle. It takes patience to be this type of buyer in a sustainable way.
Bootstrap and ROI Buyer
This marketing type is the one that expects instant results on their $100 buy or they're taking their business elsewhere. Their bankroll is small because they will only risk the smallest amount possible, and if their buy doesn't work out they may change their methods and strategy constantly trying to find what is profitable.
Sometimes they lack patience and stamina to test and optimize. They generally make money, but it’s the easy and quick money. They have trouble scaling due to aversion to risk, but they're often profitable. Instead of Lamborghini money, they buy a nice BMW with their profits instead. They want the biggest payouts, and they want them now, preferring payouts per signup, per lead, per install, etc.
Data-Obsessed Buyer
While the Whales are buying everything possible and the Bootstrapper is buying as little as they have to, there are people who spend most of their days digging deep into data rather than digging into just their sales and results. These are the buyers who find trends and patterns in their data and are disciplined in their optimization and methodology.
They are aggressive with their buying, but only when the data supports it. They are calculating and don't waste a thing (except their initial test budgets). They love the newest technology and crave sales data from S2S Postbacks.
That Adsistant™ tool I mentioned earlier (available on JuicyAds) is the kind of auto-optimization this buyer lives and dies for. It’s common to see them put in an amount that makes sense, and if the data shows promise, they will scale up progressively, like a gambler increasing their bet when their chips are growing.
They will test both per-signup and revshare alternatively, and promote whatever the data shows them is working. They are the type of quietly collect their millions without blowing it on parties, booze and fast women.
Absent Buyer
These advertisers set up an account, set up their initial campaign settings and enable them. They then disappear and show up a few weeks later when their budget is gone. Instead of optimizing and working on their campaigns and paying attention to it, they expect to come back to huge profits without doing anything. Unfortunately, these types of buyers don't last long.
They blame their failure on others. According to them, every click is a hitbot (because if they were human they definitely would have bought something). It’s not uncommon for their links to be broken, stats to be misconfigured (or missing entirely). They complain to everyone they can. Sometimes these people are immediately successful and get lazy. Over time their campaigns slowly convert less and less (due to saturation) and they ultimately lose money by not keeping things fresh.
None of these media buyer types are bad, they're just different (except maybe that last example). Media buying types are mostly associated with their level of comfort with risk and their budgets. They all have one thing in common — they test new things and they scale up when they are comfortable with it. No matter what style you are, the most important thing is to have an offer that sells. It won't matter what you buy or how you buy it — if the offer sucks, you're going to lose money every single time. Test, talk to people and pay attention to the ecosystem you are promoting in.
Juicy Jay is the CEO and founder of JuicyAds, the Sexy Advertising Network. You can follow Jay on Twitter @juicyads, JuicyAds.com or Facebook.com/JuicyAds.
