How and when to start running ads
Hey guys!
Today I want to talk about how to know if you should start running ads for your business where you should run ads what you're going to need to know to get started. I know a lot of people have been thinking about building creating digital products to sell you have print on demand storage, you have a lot of businesses that really rely on running ads, but then you also have a lot of business types who maybe you've been running your business for a few years now.
You're really looking to start growing and scaling and you're wondering if ads are going to help you if it's the right time to run ads, and maybe you've even tried to run some ads on your own in the past and you ended up wasting money and getting no results or you've maybe even had someone else or your VA help you before and gotten really lackluster results. So something something to think about when you're wondering if you should start running ads is first one good thing to think about is is your business local or not local. If you're a local retailer if you're a local brick and mortar business, starting off with Google ads is usually a really good bet. Right? So if you are a Local Wellness Spa cryo therapy place if you are a juice bar if you're any of those places that someone would go to a lot of times running Google ads is going to be a super easy way to get started with ads and start driving traffic to your business or getting appointments, things like that. Right. You can add on other platforms as well. But usually that's going to be a really nice, easy way to get started and running. Your own local Google ads is actually not that hard. It's you need to know which keywords you're bidding on things like that and make sure your tracking is set up correctly. But it's actually not that hard. You can also find someone to do it for you for not a ton of money.
Now say you are an online business or you don't have a specific location. If you're wondering if Google ads are right for you, or if you should be running ads on Facebook or Instagram or tick tock or any of those things. What you're going to really want to think about is do I have an existing audience that I can market to that's going to be one question that you want to ask, what timeline and money am I willing to put into this to see a return? Right? A lot of people start running ads and they want to see a return on their investment within one month. But if you have zero audience that you have that you can remarket to, that is not always going to be possible for you. Even if people are sitting here trying to tell you, “oh, hire me. I'll get you a return on your investment in the first month.”
That's not always going to be super realistic. If you have a huge Instagram following 10,000 or more followers, that's a great audience to get started with because you can actually run retargeting ads to them on Facebook and Instagram, right? Those are going to be a lot cheaper. If you have a nice sized email list like over three or 5000 people that's also going to be a really great opportunity to remarket to people. Okay, if you have the Facebook pixel installed on your website, and you've had it installed on your website for a while and you get a live traffic to your website, you can get those people with ads. Okay. All of that is a pre existing audience that you are going to be able to serve ads to. Now if you don't have a big Instagram following if you don't have a big email list, if you don't get much traffic to your website at all. That means that you are going to be relying on those ads to create an audience for you so you are going to be using different targeting techniques to reach people that are most likely to buy your product or service. Okay. And then once you get those people into your audience, by going to your website or following you on Instagram or what have you, then you will be able to remarket to them. Because the thing is, if I've never heard of you before, and I see an ad on Facebook saying, oh, you should buy this thing from me and I've never heard of you before. I'm not very it's not very likely. That I'm going to buy from you right? Like who the hell are you? Why would I just give you my money? I don't know who you are. I don't know what you're about. I don't know if your product or service is even going to be valuable for me or good quality.
Why would I just right off the bat give you my money, right? But this is a mistake that a lot of new advertisers or business owners who have never run ads before make because they think oh, we can just run ads to all these people who you know having a high income and we can just make money right off the bat. No, they are going to need to see your ads and become familiar enough with your brand and build some trust and brand awareness before they're more likely to purchase from you. So you're going to want to build some of that trust build some of that awareness before you ask for the sale. Now how do we do this? A lot of times we do this with some sort of incentive or freebie. So if you are a if you are a coach or some sort of service provider or anything like that, you might offer a free webinar or a free ebook or something like that, that relates to the paid product you want them to buy, but maybe it's just a little bit less information a little bit less hand holding, but it's still valuable to them. So they would then see that thing and interact with your brand in that way so that then when you serve them an ad that says hey, I have this program and it's related to that freebie that they already got from you. They're going to be much more likely to say Oh, I know she uh, she had that really great webinar. I do really need this. So I'm going to go ahead and buy it or I'm going to think about buying it right. If you are a product based business that could be some sort of incentive in terms of a coupon a Bogo, some anything like that, right? Something that is going to build trust there so that you can come back in with the purchase ask and they're gonna be they they know you, right. There's some familiarity there. So this is something that is really, really important to think about. Because if you are working with no existing audience, don't expect to be able to spend $100 A month running ads and see a really strong return on your investment, because that's not going to be enough. When you're running ads to people who have never heard of you before. That's what we call a cold audience. They're more expensive. Once someone has already heard of you or interacted with your brand in some way. It's a lot cheaper to run an ad to them, because they're much more likely to click. So your cost per click is lower. Okay. So if you have no audience to speak of, you're gonna need to make sure and plan to probably spend. On average, I would say you're going to have to look at a minimum minimum of $500 a month in ad spend if you're running Facebook and Instagram ads to call the audience, and then you would be able to remarket to them later and that will bring down some of that cost there. But that's going to be super, super important for you So if someone's coming to you and saying, Oh, we can run ads for $200 a month and it's going to be so great. Be wary of that. That's a red flag for me.
You want to be really realistic about what your ad spend is going to need to be. Because starting ads now with not enough budget, you might as well just throw your money away. You would be way better off saving that money for six more months so that you can actually start your ads with enough budget. I would also save up enough budget to where you know, have enough cash flow to be able to plan to run those ads for at least three to four months to start. If you cannot run those ads for three to four months to start. If you have no not much of an audience to speak of. If you don't have enough budget to do that, you are not ready to run ads and that's totally okay. But I would so much rather you wait and instead of trying to jump the gun and run ads to get easy sales and then you spend all this money and you get zero results and then ads put a really bad taste in your mouth. Because ads can be so effective and so great for so many businesses, but you really need to make sure you're doing it in the right way.
If you have any questions about running ads for your business like should I shouldn't I? What would that budget look like? Definitely let me know. We do full service Ad Management at SamDiNicola Digital, but we also do ad audits so we can get your ads started and going for you and then you can take them over to start running them by yourself. Or if you've been running your ads by yourself or your VA is running your ads and they're not quite running as well as you would like them to be. We can hop on a call and walk through your ads with you to show you how you can optimize them how you can make them perform more effectively.
If you have any questions on any of this, just definitely let me know because ads can be so amazing if they're done the right way and you have to have the right expectations for them. So I hope this was really really helpful and as always, make sure you go ahead and leave a review if you haven't already every single month we choose one person to win a free coaching call with me and this is the easiest, best, cheapest, fastest way to get my eyes on your business. So make sure you go ahead and leave a review for No Fluff Small Business Simplified and I will see you next time.