Three Secrets to Paid Growth Marketing That No One Tells You
"We need to turn off the paid advertising. Conversions are down today! We're paying too much per conversion - what did I even hire you for!?!"
Paid marketers have probably encountered some variation of the above conversation with their boss or client at least once in their careers. Paid advertising seems to bring out the drama in companies both big and small. Since digital advertising can be measured more closely that the marketing of yesteryear - it gets an exceptional degree of scrutiny. Ironically, the same company that throttles their paid spend up and down as the bidding environment changes slightly is often the same company that spends millions on TV ads. TV advertising where the brand department shrugs its shoulders, and there is a big question mark floating in the air about whether it works.
Let me tell you a few secrets about paid advertising. Paid advertising tends to bring out emotions. Brand departments wring their hands in worry about their carefully messaging butchered by "sell sell sell" ads. Heads of departments stay up at night thinking about how they will show the investments paying off. Paid marketers are afraid of senior management marching in and demanding to know how the campaigns are performing before tests have run their course.
From years of experience of doing it right - and a lot of times doing it wrong, I present to you my key secrets to running paid advertising that wows companies:
Kill Your Emotions
Don't have an emotional reaction to everything that happens in your business. If you have a big sale day, analyze it, don't invest more immediately. If your paid performance is down for a day or a week, wait with curiosity instead of turning it off.
Cutting out the motion in paid advertising is easier said than done. The easiest way to do this is to create a plan and stick to it. If you plan on investing $1000 a month on Google Ads and have your goals in mind - stick to it! Let your paid team or consultant do their work and evaluate it at the end of your plan. I've seen way too many paid campaigns cut short before the marketer has the chance to optimize and refine.
You may say, "but we can't afford to run things that don't work!" If you can't afford the budget for a new channel if it doesn't hit your goal KPIs precisely - YOU CAN'T AFFORD IT - Period. Which leads me to my second secret:
2. Paid Advertising Isn't Magic - Don't Pay For It Like It Is
I can't speak to if this is the shortcoming of marketers overselling its capabilities or companies misunderstanding how it works, but paid advertising won't hit your targets right away. Getting high converting campaigns takes time. Time for the marketer to evaluate the bidding environment, play with audiences, tweak ads, optimize landing pages. If you can't afford to see a few months where the conversions are low, you should focus on your organic growth first. Once you've proved your business concept, you can tackle paid.
The companies that squeeze every cent out of their paid are ones with teams of 10+ paid marketers and expensive tools to help them optimize every single bid. For smaller companies, start with budgets that make sense for your company. While ROI is tempting to obsess over because it's there (see the above on TV ads), focus on what you can *afford* spending on paid ads and set reasonable goals. You might want a 120% ROI for your campaigns - but that doesn't mean it's possible. A good marketer should be able to give you a range based on the competition in your industry that would be reasonable - but it's still just a range. Factors like the quality of your site, value propositions, and more will give your company a unique position and possible outcomes.
3. You Pay More If You Invest In Paid Before Optimization
All this talk about return on investment brings me to my next point. If your website is sh*t with a bad checkout flow, or your content is non-existent, you will need to pay more for your paid advertising.
You can't fix your company's problems by having great Google and Facebook ads. It's a lot like a marriage that is failing, and the couple says, "Hey, maybe if we get a dog/kid/hamster/house together, it will fix all of our problems!" If you have serious problems converting customers online already, those problems won't change when you pay for ads. *Those problems will just be more expensive*
You may say - what to do now? You're telling me I shouldn't do paid - how will I grow my business!? Don't despair - there are plenty of ways you can invest in improving your business that will set you up for killer paid growth in the future. Such as:
Audit your website speed and technical performance.
Evaluating your market position [do people actually want our product? Is there too much competition?]
Look into optimization to improve your user experience.
Write great content to back up your products.
Go back to the basics of marketing budgets and strategy to find where you can spend the least for the most impact.
If you still have doubts about where to get started and if you're ready for paid advertising, drop us a line. We’re always happy to help.
Interested in learning how to create a marketing budget based on your own data? Checkout our webinar on "How to Create Data-Driven Marketing Budgets".
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