From $100 to 3M Customers: Lessons Learned in PPC & Affiliate Marketing Growth

Are you using paid search advertising (one form of PPC) alongside your affiliate marketing or referral program? If not, is it time to start?

We’re going to examine a stunning success story: Event Tickets Center’s growth from a tiny $100 startup to acquiring 3 million customers. We’ll share ideas and best practices for PPC advertising and examine how to run effective PPC ads alongside other marketing campaigns, like affiliate marketing, influencer marketing, and referral programs.

How Adam Young Grew Event Tickets Center Using Paid Search Advertising

Adam Young is an entrepreneur with deep expertise in search, digital marketing, and driving organic traffic to websites. When he founded Event Tickets Center, he used advertising to link consumers to tickets available in the marketplace. 

As an interview with Adam explained:

The brilliance of Adam’s strategy is to shift risk from the classic model of acquiring tickets with the expectation of selling them later for more to a model in which the risk upfront is the cost of advertising, which may or may not lead to a sale, but it usually drives data aggregation, and that data can be used again in the future to help boost demand.

In this way, Adam used PPC to keep risk low while growing his business fast, gleaning insights from the data gathered to clear a “data center” for  Event Tickets Center that could pinpoint seasonal trends and optimize around peak times. 

In addition to using online ads, Event Tickets Center converted as much of its site as possible to AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) to speed up the browsing experience—seeing “a 25-30% conversion rate lift for the AMP self-hosted landing pages.”

Event Tickets Center also has a thriving affiliate program. It supplies branded banners and encourages affiliates to share their own photos and reviews about events.

With ongoing testing, analytics, and a data-first strategy, Adam was able to scale Event Tickets Center rapidly. They now have more than $100 million in annual sales … and over 3 million customers.

So, what can your company learn from Event Tickets Center’s growth?

10 Best Practices for PPC Growth (With Detailed Strategies)

As we’ve seen, PPC can be a fantastic way for even the smallest of businesses to scale rapidly. You might also be concerned, however, about wasting money on ads that simply don’t convert … or about going all-in too fast and making mistakes.

Here are 10 ways to make sure your paid search advertising (and other PPC advertising) is sustainable.

1. Start With a Small Budget and Test Different Ad Formats and Platforms

Adam built his company from a starting budget of just $100. You may want to invest a little more to get data faster, but a modest budget of $100–$500 is enough to test out different ad formats, platforms, and targeting methods without running your business into the ground.

Instead of worrying about making your ads profitable straight away, focus on what you can learn from the data. How are users interacting with your ads, landing pages, and offers? What keywords are driving clicks? What audiences are most responsive to your ads?

Don’t rush into scaling up your ads until you’re confident you know what’s working. 

2. Research High-Quality Keywords Related to Your Product/Service

Use Google Ads Keyword Planner (or a paid tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs) to identify keywords that are highly relevant … and that don’t have too much competition.

It’s really important to have a good grasp of search intent, too. Just having a high search volume isn’t enough if users are nowhere near ready to buy. Look for keywords that suggest buying intent.

For instance, “concert tickets” suggests someone just browsing. “Cheap Olivia Rodrigo concert tickets” shows much more buying intent.

3. Craft Compelling Ad Copy That Hooks Potential Customers

When your affiliates promote your products, they might send out multiple emails and messages. But with a paid ad, you only get a couple of seconds to grab attention.

That means your ad needs to make an irresistible offer. Perhaps it’s a discount, an exclusive experience (like a sold-out event), or a discount.

It sounds basic … but do make sure your landing page actually reflects what the ad promises. Don’t offer “50% off” if that might be misleading or even if it’s simply unclear on your landing page. 

4. Track the Metrics That Matter When it Comes to PPC Ads

From the moment you start running ads, make sure you’ve got a keen eye on the metrics. The big ones to watch are:

• CTR (Click-Through Rate): How many people who see the ad are clicking on it? A low CTR suggests your offer or targeting isn’t quite right.
• CPC (Cost Per Click): How much does it cost to get one visitor to your landing page? If you have a high CPC, you’ll need a good conversion rate on that landing page.
• ROAS (Return On Ad Spend): The big one! This looks at your total spend on ads vs your total revenue gained.

Ignore “vanity” metrics, like high impressions. These can be exciting, but they don’t necessarily translate to conversions and sales.

5. Bring in Outside Experts as Needed

Adam is lucky enough to have “core competencies in search, digital marketing and driving organic traffic to websites”. But if your own expertise is in influencer marketing and running affiliate programs, you may not feel all that confident about delving into paid search advertising and PPC campaigns.

If necessary, bring on board an outside expert or consultant. It will cost more upfront, but could save you a huge amount of both time and money in making rookie mistakes. Make sure that you hire someone reputable and that you have a good contract in place, e.g. using contract management software, and you’ll have nothing to worry about.

6. Run A/B Tests of Your Ads and Keywords

When you’re running a PPC campaign, you want to keep testing to see if you can get even better performance. A small gain could translate to a large increase in profit.

You can A/B test (split test) every single part of your ad:

• Ad headline
• Visuals or images
• Call to action (e.g. “buy now” vs “get tickets”)
• The length and writing style of your ad

By testing each of these separately, you can figure out exactly what works best to drive sales.

7. Gradually Expand Across Different Platforms and Channels

Google ads is where many companies like Event Tickets Center get a huge chunk of their traffic. And that makes sense: if you’re looking for ready-to-buy prospects, Google Ads is a great place to be.

But it’s also worth considering other platforms for their unique features, including:

• Bing ads: Lower competition and usually an older demographic
• YouTube ads: Ideal if you want to tell a story with visual content
• Facebook or Instagram ads: detailed demographic targeting

Expand your ads consistently but sensibly: Wait until you’re running profitable ads on one platform before adding another.

8. Use Automation to Make Your Ads More Efficient

Once you’re running a lot of ads, it’s going to be next to impossible to keep track of and optimize everything manually.

Google’s Smart Bidding (plus third-party tools) will help you streamline things like bid management, audience targeting, and campaign optimization.

These tools’ algorithms can do things like adjusting your bid based on factors like device, location, and the time of day. They also help avoid human error when you’re managing a massive list of different keywords.

Of course, you don’t want to take a “set it and forget it” approach to automation. It’s still important to monitor your automated campaigns, making sure they’re remaining profitable.

9. Invest in Retargeting Ads to Drive Even More Conversions

Retargeting is when an ad appears on a website or social media for a user who interacted with your site previously. Perhaps they clicked on a Google Ad but didn’t convert … and now you have the chance to recapture their interest.

These users are warm leads: they know your brand already, and they may just need one little nudge to buy. 

To make your retargeting ads as effective as possible, you can use strategies like:

• Delivering personal offers (e.g. “you left X in your cart…”)
• Using urgency (“Last chance! Tickets almost sold out!”)
• Layering your audiences, so you can avoid targeting people who’ve already converted

10. Don’t Ignore Organic Traffic

Organic traffic is like free advertising! It takes longer to build (paid search traffic is pretty much instant) … but it’s still well worth investing in, as you’ll see more and more gains over time if you have plenty of pages ranking high in search engine results.

To grow your organic traffic, you want to focus on three things:

• High-quality content, optimized around a keyword that your target audience is working for.
• A fast, secure, and well-structured site that Google and other search engines will want to prioritize in search results.
• Relevant keyword backlinks from other reputable websites. 

Balancing Paid Search Advertising With Affiliate, Influencer, and Referral Marketing

Chances are, you already have a thriving affiliate program, you’re using influencer marketing, or you’ve got a referral program. So how does paid search advertising (or PPC advertising more broadly) fit with this?

The first thing you should know is it’s common practice for brands to ban affiliates from bidding on their brand keywords (e.g. “Tapfiliate” or “Event Tickets Center”). Otherwise, affiliates will be cannibalizing your ad sales. If you’re just getting started on PPC advertising, you may need to add clauses to your affiliate terms and conditions to restrict keyword bidding.

On a bigger picture level, it’s important to think about how your PPC ads will interact with your other forms of marketing.

Some great win-win strategies are to:

Use Influencers to Build Awareness, Then Retarget With PPC Ads

Influencer marketing is a fantastic way to drive brand awareness … but it will often generate TOFU (top-of-funnel) traffic that needs nurturing.

Using PPC advertising, particularly in the form of a retargeting campaign, can help you move those prospects down the funnel.

PRO TIP: For instance, if you get a ton of traffic from an influencer’s post about your product, use retargeting to re-engage those users with a specific promotion (e.g. “20% Off for First-Time Customers”) to get conversions.

Use Your Referral Program to Help Reduce PPC Costs

Got happy customers? Turn them into more! By encouraging your new customers to share your product/service with their friends and family, you’ll be getting double duty from your ads.

You can do this by using PPC to bring on board high-value leads, then promote your referral program through personalized emails to those customers. You’ll grow your customer base faster, without running extra ads.

Plan to start your own referral program and manage it with minimum effort?

🚀 Try Tapfiliate free for 14 days! 

Build Consistent Messaging Across Channels

Suppose you’ve got multiple campaigns going on at once. In that case, affiliates promoting your products through online reviews, influencers showing off your products on Instagram, customers referring friends for a discount, and paid ads running on Google and social media—it can be really tough to keep your messaging consistent.

Aim for a unified tone, branding, and call-to-action across different platforms. You want the same look and feel for all the different touch points that a customer might encounter.

Paid search advertising can be a fantastic addition to your marketing arsenal. It doesn’t need to be in competition with what you’re already doing—instead, it can enhance the other areas of your marketing.

If you haven’t yet tried PPC ads, here’s a simple plan to get you going:

• First, set a budget. You could start with as little as $100.
• Next, sign up for Google Ads and use the Keyword Planner to find suitable keywords to bid on. You’re looking for keywords that aren’t too competitive or expensive … but that are relevant and show buying intent.
• Create several different versions of your ad, with different headlines, copy, and/or CTAs.
• Run your ads for a week, then assess how they’re doing. (Don’t worry if you’re spending more money than you’re making at this stage.) Is one ad performing better than the others? A/B test its different elements so you can create as profitable an ad as possible.
• Continue experimenting and implementing what you’ve learned … and your business could be on its way to 3 million customers too.

Wrapping Up

Event Tickets Center’s journey from a $100 startup to a 3-million-customer business clearly shows that a wise approach to PPC advertising spiced up with affiliate marketing really works. Adam Young managed to build a scalable growth engine by starting small, leveraging data, and continuously optimizing campaigns.

So, whether you’re just getting started with paid search or looking to integrate it with affiliate and referral marketing, these strategies will definitely help you scale efficiently while minimizing risk.