Are you making this mistake? Chances are if you are a small business owner, you are.
I meet about 5-6 new clients a week. They are either coming in after years of their business underperforming – or they are coming in because they are about to launch a new business. 90% of these clients have the same mindset. They think that doing one thing, like running one type of ad on Facebook/IG is going to rock their sales.
I don’t mean to be harsh but damn! You can’t just rely on one or two social media platforms. Especially if you are limiting yourself to one ad and only targeting one audience. Don’t forget to keep posting regularly! Your competition is working with professionals, they’re investing more and they are putting strategy behind their plans.
Let’s talk Facebook/IG ads. It hurts my brain when a client wants to run one ad for 30 days with the minimum budget. I get it, not everyone can put a lot of money into their marketing. But you can’t be okay with running one ad, targeting one audience and sett it and forget it. Let’s look at that a little further. Say you are running an ad for a new product/service. You should think of your target audience – primary, secondary and tertiary markets.
How can you adapt this ad to speak to the different audiences accordingly? Three different creatives (be it photos, graphics, videos, etc.) and three different audiences. You can send them all to the same destination but optimize and review the performance of these ads every day. If one is underperforming, drop it! Move that ad budget to one of the other ads.
Okay, so you’ve moved away from doing one ad to one audience with the minimum budget but are you only doing social media ads on one or two platforms? Test other platforms like LinkedIn or Pinterest! Oh and don’t forget to keep up with your day to day posts. You still need to create content while running ads!
Beyond that, are you doing anything else for your marketing/ads? Put on an event. Pair up with a like-minded business for a contest/giveaway or take over their social media account for the day – they can take yours over next week! Integrate working with influencers – bloggers, YouTubers, Instagrammers, etc. — now we’re talking.
Can you invest a bit more? Up your content game. Being on social media isn’t cutting it. You need to have professional, polished content. Maybe purchase a video or a photoshoot! Run a video on the Google Display Network. Test how well your ads perform as pre-roll ads on YouTube videos.
What about OOH? Out of home ads are still a thing. You can consider flyers, billboards, bench ads, bus shelters, transit ads and so much more.
Don’t forget other digital areas! You could sponsor a podcast, you could run digital ads from Google Display network and have your ads visible on their publisher partner websites.
It doesn’t end there – you can do event marketing, sponsorships, radio ads, tv ads! There are other social media channels as well – Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, TikTok.. oh my.
The one thing to take away is that you can’t just invest $150 a month on ad spend, run one add and expect your sales to skyrocket. A good marketing and ad strategy is a comprehensive, planned out and strategic plan.
