By Madelene Ragno, Your Marketing Unicorn | Made Creative Co.
Whether you’re new to the game or have been running a business for a while, you would understand the importance of finding new clients, increasing conversions and ultimately growing a sustainable stream of income.
But without marketing, in particular paid advertising, these things can feel out of reach, too difficult and like you are riding a bike up a steep hill… bloody exhausting!
Whatever your businesses’ goals, paid advertising can help you reach them quicker. Whether you’re after increased foot traffic, lead generation, introducing new products, bringing traffic to a web page or simply improving brand awareness and sales, paid advertising is a must!
As a business, there should never be a point where there is nothing to advertise. Advertising should be done on a continual basis.
No business is too big or too small for paid advertising. Full stop.
What Types of Paid Advertising Are Available
Paid advertising can be executed across an array of platforms, my favourite being Meta ads (Facebook and Instagram). These are a great option for businesses that are looking to educate their customers about a particular product or service, that have great visual assets to be showcased, or that are new to the market. TikTok ads are also a fantastic way for businesses to showcase their brand through video content.
For businesses who have a product or service that consumers know about such as a plumber, dentist, or florist, Google ads are the way to go. Consumers who search using Google are problem and product aware meaning they are just trying to find the right product or service that meets their needs.
Next are Pinterest ads, fantastic for e-commerce brands who have high quality imagery or video of their products. Similarly, LinkedIn ads are great for Business to Business (B2B) companies who need to target specific organisations.
To get the most value, omnichannel advertising works best. This involves allocating budget across all platforms, however, it can be challenging when you don’t have a lot of money to play with. I suggest starting with one platform and slowly scaling to implement more and more into your strategy as you grow.
What You Need to Get Started
Before you begin your journey down the path of paid advertising, you need to ensure you have a few things sorted first:
- Proof that your product or service sells or that others in the market have successfully sold something similar.
- An offer. This does not necessarily mean a monetary discount but rather something you can offer potential customers which will make them choose you – free shipping, free quote, money back guarantee, available 24/7, the list goes on.
- An advertising mindset and a bit of patience. Money will be wasted. Fact! No ads guru can guarantee 100% success so you need to understand that paid ads take time and that potential money wastage may occur until the winning formula is found.
- Your back end needs to be set-up correctly. This means your pixel (Meta ads only) are firing and collecting data and you have Google Analytics installed including the new GA4 version. As of June 2023, this will be the only version available to businesses so you want BOTH firing for before next year. You will also need Google Search Console and Google Tag Manager set-up.
- An established Avatar so you know who your audience is, their deepest pain points and how they speak, act and feel.
- Assets such as video and static images – an abundance of them (especially e-commerce).
- Social proof including photos and videos of people using your product or service, testimonials or case studies.
- Organic marketing tactics to support your efforts – a social media strategy, email marketing and SEO. Remember, ads should be the fuel to an already burning fire!
- Lastly, and most importantly, a converting website. This means understanding from your data where people are dropping off in the buyer’s journey and well… fixing it!
Why You Do Not Need A Huge Budget to Get Started
One of the biggest misconceptions in marketing is that you need a huge budget to get started. Obviously, a larger budget will allow you to get the sales you need quicker and more easily but there are other ways you can start advertising that will not break the bank while also preparing your business to hire an ads manager, like me, to take full control of your account.
Here are a few affordable ways you can advertise on Facebook and Instagram (I’ve gone with the most commonly used the platforms):
- Brand awareness/reach campaigns: FANTASTIC for putting spend behind an organic post that has performed well and showing it to thousands of users. You can direct people to your social media page where you provide more value. $5.00 a week is all you need to reach thousands of new prospects. I suggest always having these ads running and mixing up your selected post every couple of weeks.
- Traffic campaigns: just as the name suggests, this drives traffic to your selected webpage. Great for businesses who do not get a lot of organic traffic to their site. This strategy also helps ads managers in the future as it allows us to retarget interested prospects and create lookalike audiences based on their profiles.
- Video views campaign: if you have a great video, you can run a campaign to share it with a wider audience. Again, super affordable – $5.00 to $10.00 a week is fine! Another great starting point for future retargeting.
- Messenger campaign: more suitable for service-based businesses, these ads allow potential prospects to chat with you in your DMs. This type of ad can sometimes be more successful than conversion campaigns as Meta likes keeping people on their platforms.
Now, I bet after reading this you are convinced that paid advertising is for you… but you have no idea where to start! Never fear, your Unicorns are here to help.
If you do not have your Google Analytics and Pixel set-up, I strongly suggest that you DM me today so we can get you up and running, creating magic!
If you are ready to take the next step and invest in paid advertising, Made Creative Co has two options:
- Done-for-you complete management: let us run the ads for you. Our management fee is $1,400 (exc. GST) per month plus advertising spend.
- Ads consulting: let us teach you basic advertising tactics that you can apply to get your account ready for an agency takeover. Consulting sessions run for 1.5 hours and give you the necessary frameworks to implement straight away. We also discuss setting your business up for omnichannel marketing success. These as-you-need sessions cost $450 (exc. GST) and get you personalised service from my team (unicorns) and me who will guide you for a week after to ensure you are on the path to success!
You can book your strategy session with us here >> https://calendly.com/madecreativeco/the-unicorn-path-to-purchase.
Paid advertising does not need be as scary as you think, but it is a MUST for any business looking for longevity. Before you invest, make sure your business is set-up for success and that your fire is already burning… so we can create fireworks!