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Most of my readers are affiliate marketers located in the U.S., and largely focusing most of their campaign targeting on U.S. user demographic. This post is for most of you who do, although the principle remains the same for targeting any larger country.

When you run a large (high-volume) campaign targeted to the U.S. as a country, you really should consider optimizing that campaign even further by breaking it up into a split-test between each state to see where you can get more out of your money. For a lot of general CPS or even CPA type offers, it’s a common assumption to think that the country as a whole converts the same as long as you target the right demographic (age, genders, interests, etc). After all – you’re seeing a steady 127% ROI on that campaign. You’ve done all your homework, and through months of split-testing you have found the very best ads giving you an awesome CTR and conversions. Things couldn’t get better, right?

Uhmm, right. Or perhaps they could? You see, with your campaign running across the 50 different states – they are giving you an AVERAGE ROI of 127% in this example. But…all the states convert about the same for the most part, right? Wrong! The differences can be greater than you think.

The beauty of split-testing can reveal the truth to us in cold hard facts.  (If you’re running traffic on Facebook Ads or Plenty Of Fish and think it’s too much work to set up a split-test like this – then make your life simpler by using either the Facebook Ads Manager by 4HourAffiliate, or the POF Ad Uploader by Mr. Green).

Now, let’s take a look at a campaign that has a fairly stable ROI of 130% day in and day out. Mmm…we’re getting over double our money back for every $1 we put in. Cool, yes?

Well how about we study a state-by-state breakdown of our campaign – data we have gathered split-testing our campaign in each state;

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Whoa…ok, so here are some interesting numbers. Little did we know that some U.S. states were actually losing us money! And a few others are hardly breaking even. Now granted, some of the states appear to kick ass, pulling the overall average ROI up. We’ll get to those in a little bit….

How come my campaign is losing money in some states?

The 309 million population of the United States is very diverse, and differences exist on various levels. For some states the variations can be big – but it all depends on what factors we are looking at. It would be naive to make generalizations and label each state with a certain “conversion or ROI value” regardless of market/niche/offer. Research prior to launch can get you better prepared and reduce losses, but only hard test data and numbers will speak the actual truth.

It doesn’t matter whether you are running ads on Facebook, Plenty Of Fish, PPV, Media Buys, or traditional search – here are some of the factors that can cause one or more state to turn your campaign;

• Average household income
• Unemployment rate
• Socionomic factors (ratio of married families with kids vs. single person households, divorce rates)
• Rate of population growth in the state
• Cultural “attitude” and values (it’s not a secret that some southern states for example are far more religiously conservative than some more liberal states. This is something you really need to consider when you approach niches like dating for example – or when running creatives that could be considered offensive to certain people)
• Geographical location (even though online stores offer “fast shipping to all 50 states” doesn’t mean people won’t prefer a local online seller over a more remote one)
• Cost vs. Convenience – local (offline) availability of the same or similar products
• Sales tax (for higher-end items, people often consider how any state sales tax may affect the final price)

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So what can you do about the states that are dragging down your ROI?

Once you have identified the ‘loser’ states for your campaign, break them out into their own campaigns and try to come up with a different strategy if possible. Perhaps some of them just aren’t worth running in, but give them a chance using a different approach.

Identify what factors (see above) could be affecting the performance in these states and look for a common pattern.

The best reliable source for most of this information is the U.S. Census Buraeu. Check out the free data they provide here. It also doesn’t hurt to check out how popular some of your niche keywords are in the various states. The easiest way to do this is with Google Trends.

Then – set up different ad creatives, targeting, budgeting, and landing pages (perhaps even for different offers) that might be better suited in those states. This may or may not get you any further but it could be worth the effort! Sometimes in this business – small changes can make a huge difference – and it all really comes down to selling the right product to the right people the right way.

As for those states in your campaign that kicked ROI-butt? What are you waiting for? Scale them out even further with more traffic sources! Maybe even dig deeper into them to see if you can squeeze out more profits by breaking the state up by its largest cities. That 200% ROI state could become your 500% ROI state with just a little testing effort.

Have you ever gone deeper to see what states are robbing you of your profits? Image may be NSFW.
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