When dollars make sense

This is the fifth email in an eight part series, to help you evaluate your existing platforms or whether it's time to add a new one to the mix.

Hi Reader,

Ads are a great way to get in front of more of the right audience, with a message and offer that works. They drive traffic to your site, within super specific contexts and allow you to curate great experiences from the outset.

They are an investment though, not only in your time, but in the sense that even if you DIY them, they require a budget.

There's so many situations in marketing where more eyeballs means more knowledge, traffic and over time, more revenue.

Maggie Simpson making the hand signal for "More"

Search Ads

When you want to find something online, you head to a search engine, and the first few spots are often paid listings. Search ads are all about ranking on the correct search terms, in those top few spots. Your budget and cost per click will differ depending on the search volume and competition of your desired searches, and how you set up the various types of ads. As you work on these, you’ll be wanting to optimise showing in front of more of the right people, with the right message to improve your volume of clicks, and the sales from those clicks.

Discovery Ads

Sometimes you want to show up for people who don’t have an instant need, but who should know about you or your offer. These ads are based on a message you think a certain type of person would resonate with. That might depend on their location, whether their online traffic shows they likely own a home, or have kids or are married. While some targeting might be based on qualifying them for the ad content, others might be because certain sub groups perform better against other paid demographics or because they relate to your offer. These ads might be run on social media platforms, Google Display ads, smaller ad networks or YouTube ads.

Retargeting Ads

Once someone has engaged with your content, or visited your website, you have enough information about them to present them with an ad that is the natural next step. You can equally exclude people who maybe watched a certain video or viewed your signup confirmation or logged in pages. This means you’re not ad-stalking the person who just signed up for your discovery call, or already purchased the thing you’re presenting in that ad. You might even like to include an ad for people who likely purchased an item 3 months ago, but not since, if its a repurchase-able item, or a similiar item. You could promote subscriptions to those who bought over a month ago and not again. The specificity should be reflected in the content, but theres not need to call them out. This adds familiarity, without being overbearing.

Offline Ads

I know I mostly talk about digital around here, but real life experiences are still key. If it suits your business, a billboard, radio ad, podcast read, poster or mailbox drop might suit your audience and message.

Once you evaluate your options, it’s time to decide whether they’re a good fit for your business, and what analytics you want to optimise for

Do you have capacity to fill, or want more product sales?
What kind of awareness do you need to build around your brand, offers, or pricing?
How can you best hook someone in?
What might they be searching for?
If you are concerned about your budget, are there other marketing efforts that you could try that don’t require the same financial investment?
What stage before a sale can you track so that you can ensure these ads are attracting the right people?

Choosing your budget

You’re best to start small, this allows you to slowly build the budget to find the ceiling for your targeted audience. For any location and set of keywords or audience segments, there’ll be a limit of people. That goes for social media and search ads. If you choose to add to the budget beyond that, it’ll only cost you more per click, with the likelihood the same people see the same ad more often, in an unnecessary way.

Start small, and when you find that ceiling, expand the area, the audience matching, or try a whole new ad type with more content, and a focus on your brand. This can be a slight generalisation, but assuming you have a small business, this will often be the case. Even larger companies with a broader audience can start to waste budget on their existing customer base.

Ensuring profitability

More money could mean more traffic to your website but if they're not the right people, or you over promise in your ad, it may not result in revenue. Every part of you marketing should remain profitable after a short testing period.

If you have a bigger budget, that might be used to test content and language. This consistent testing allows you to improve, so you’ll be balancing the budget to make sure you’re still being profitable while you invest in advertising

Over time, you’ll gain the best results by constantly carving out a small chunk of your budget for testing things. This means you can always be looking for the next great thing, and can replace an outdated or underperforming tactic with this new one.

Even when you run ads, it will be beneficial to work on other content in those same placements for organic reach. Organic SEO will mean you rely less on those ads, and can choose to run to the search queries you aren’t likely to show on. Organic social media means you gain reach without ad spend.

Brand building advertising can grow the momentum beyond just the offer, and start to grow brand confidence and loyalty.

There are other ways to spread the word, some of which also include a financial investment. You might prefer affiliates, referrals for a kickback, PR, or even having your own show on a podcast or YouTube that is inherently discoverable and shareable.

On that note, I’ll dive into having your own show (and guesting on other’s shows) in next week’s email.