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This works the same the other way around… if you have an amazing Customer Journey, but
your ads suck, your product or service will never get the attention (or customers) you deserve.
So, how do you become a darn good marketer while tactically practicing media buying?
These are four lessons I wish I’d known when I first started.
1. Understand that Scaling Paid Traffic Campaigns Involves More than Just Increasing Your Budget
When most people think about scaling a paid traffic campaign, they imagine increasing the budget and, in return, proportionally receiving the same results.
For example, imagine you were spending $100 a day on a campaign and generating 50 leads for $2 a lead. Most people would expect to increase the budget to $200 a day and in return receive 100 leads for $2 a lead.
Unfortunately, most of the time, that’s not how media buying works. Especially on Facebook.
By increasing the budget, you are asking the platform to show your ad to more people.
Platforms like Facebook and Google have algorithms that factor in…
- Your budget
- Your targeting
- Your desired end result
…and much more.
All to help you get the best results possible (and to create the best experience for the end user).
Just because you feed the machine more money does not mean that they can guarantee more of the same results.
Especially if you’re targeting a smaller audience.
There may not be many more “qualified” people left for Facebook to show the ad to. People who are most likely to take the action you desire.
Remember that we are advertising to humans, not robots, and that your target audience can be easily and quickly saturated.
Just because you’re willing to invest more money does not mean that there are more people in the audience you’re targeting that are wanting to take your desired action based off of the messaging and selling system you’re using.
Facebook and Google are not money machines that you can predictably put a dollar into get a dollar back at ANY scale of budget.
I call increasing your ad budget vertical scaling.
It’s usually the only type of “scaling” that media buyers use… but I feel it’s the least predictable.
Of course, I still increase the budget of campaigns that are working, but I also scale media by horizontal scaling, which involves showing your ad(s) to more people in your market in different ways. Such as:
- Testing new ad copy variations or “hooks”
- Introducing new offers and selling systems
- Scaling out to other people in your target market via new targeting
If you think of your target market like a pond of fish…
2. Change the Way You Describe and Research Your Target Market
When asked, most marketers or business owners would describe their audience as….
- Women who live in Manhattan
- Teens between 16-18
- Young professionals making $40,000-$49,999 annually
…and so on.
As humans, we are taught to describe people by generic demographic information… age, gender, income, etc.
As marketers, we have access to WAY too much data to be that generic in 2018.
Instead, describe your avatar based on their INTERESTS and INTENT.
For example…
- Interested in canning peaches
- Read Rich Dad, Poor Dad
- Needs a new car
- Wants straight teeth
- Attended SXSW
- Is the Director of Marketing at a tech company
- Fan of David Bowie
Really get into the mind of your avatar. What do they read? What do they buy? Who is this person… way beyond any generic demographic information?
This will allow you to be very specific in your targeting…
To target people who are AVID in your market via what they’re interested in on Facebook.
To target people who are searching Google about a specific problem they’re experiencing that you happen to solve.
It’s also important to think of triggering events that may lead someone to the purchase of your product, especially if you’re selling more of a commodity. Triggering events are things like:
- Job change
- Birth of child
- Marriage
- Divorce
- Major system/utility failure (AC in Summer or CRM for business)
- Holidays
- Graduation
- Aging
Triggering events create windows of opportunity where your prospect is far more likely to act. Triggering events can help you decide on your targeting within an ad platform.
Let’s say, for example, we were selling suits…
3. Put More Thought into Your Creatives
I believe that now, and especially as we go into 2018, the look and feel of the images or videos you use in your advertising are more important than ever.
Your ad creative should act in two ways…
- As a visual representation of your hook, whatever message you’re wanting to portray to the end user
- A trust-building mechanism with your brand
Consumers expect things on the internet to look high end in 2018.
Invest in graphics and videos that look as good as you know your brand and product are. But, also make sure you’re putting thought into your creatives and that you aren’t using irrelevant images like cats or women to catch someone’s attention.
The goal of your ad is more than to catch someone’s attention. It’s to catch the right person’s attention, portray a message to them, and then, if it’s relevant to the end user, they will take action.
4. Realize that Nothing Ever Really Changes but the Medium
The biggest lesson I’ve learned over the past four years is that nothing really ever changes about marketing except the medium.
Quit chasing shiny objects!
Study and practice to become a darn good marketer. You will transcend the passing of time.
I love this quote from Roy H. Williams on this subject…
“Five minutes in an old book quickly reveals that most of what is being sold today as new insights into human behavior is merely the rediscovery of knowledge we have had for centuries.”
We are standing on the shoulders of giants who have been marketing to humans for hundreds of years… we just have new technology and mediums to deliver our marketing through.
On the same hand, you must keep up with the new mediums.
What will be the “next big traffic source?”
Wherever the most people are aggregated. If a platform has a ton of users and has a way to collect data on said users, it becomes a gold mine for marketers.
That’s why Facebook messenger marketing is the future of advertising.
With over 2+ billion active monthly users and a ton of data from the Facebook platform, Messenger will become an even more important traffic and acquisition source for brands.
But, never forget, we are always selling to humans.
Craft an appealing offer, articulate the benefits (in different ways, to appeal to different types of humans), put those messages in front of the right people, and you will win in 2018!
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