INVESTING IN ONLINE ADVERTISING: A waste of money

How to Invest in Online Advertising Effectively?

When we talk about Investing in online advertising, whether it’s onsocial media or onsearch engines, three types of entrepreneurs orbusiness owners emerge:

1. There is the one who believes it is a waste of money.
2. Then we find the one who believes it is important for gaining more followers, reach, and interaction.
3. And then there is the one who understands and knows how to use online advertising as a powerful conversion tool.

Who among the three is right? Definitely number three.

In this article, I will present my arguments on why I believe that the one who thinks it is a waste of money is wrong – although I understand why they think that way – and that the second option is missing out on achieving a real and systematic impact on their business sales.

In this article we will see:

• The problem of investing in the internet for business owners and entrepreneurs.
• What a sales funnel is and why it is important for online advertising.
• VERSUS: advertising WITHOUT a sales funnel vs advertising WITH a sales funnel.
• FREE guide on how to run successful ad campaigns.

Let’s get started!

THE PROBLEM THAT REPRESENTS INVESTING IN THE INTERNET FOR BUSINESS OWNERS AND ENTREPRENEURS

Those business owners and managers who say that advertising on social media and on Google is an EXPENSE may have two reasons:

The first refers to those who have a traditional business mindset: they firmly believe in traditional advertising, word of mouth, and cold calls. They have done well in the offline world and think that is enough, that they don’t need more. In this case, it depends on them being more open-minded to new and more effective ways to attract customers and sell.

The second, which is what worries me and why I say that “I understand a bit why people don’t believe in online advertising” is related to a bad experience with this tool:

It could be that this entrepreneur or someone on their team decided to do the advertising themselves, intuitively; or worse yet, they paid a “professional” who lacked sufficient knowledge about the platforms and best practices, lacked a strategy, and did not understand basic elements such as the audience and the campaign objective.

What did they get then? Nothing more than a few likes. A spike in their statistics, which then fell back to normal (at Trópico Digital we call this a Peak of Hope). An action without results reflected in sales or new prospects.

If this is your case, it is obvious that you will have a barrier to investing again in Facebook or Google. Why continue “throwing” money away when I can use it for other purposes?

STOP RIGHT THERE! I WILL CHANGE THIS THINKING FOR YOU, give me the chance to convince you, read until the end of the article.

Before giving you the solution, I ask that we analyze the second case, where the entrepreneur believes that investing in online advertising is important for gaining more followers, reach, and interaction.

ADVERTISING ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND GOOGLE TO GAIN MORE LIKES?

• Increase followers
• Increase interaction
• Expand reach

These goals may seem very attractive to some, and indeed, these numbers are valuable in terms of brand positioning and in the process of building a DIGITAL COMMUNITY that supports us, helps us grow, and legitimizes us. But it is also true that they do not have a direct impact on the business; one more like or one less like is not a guarantee of the success of your products and services.

Therefore, it is necessary AND POSSIBLE to achieve that investment in advertising, whether on social media like Facebook or on search engines like Google, to have a tangible result that impacts the core of the business.

Imagine this scenario:

“DIGITAL CHANNELS ARE THE MAIN SOURCE OF SALES AND PROSPECTS IN MY BUSINESS”

Andrés Pérez. Owner of company X

 

This would be ideal. You would love for this to be your testimony, right?

The good news is that yes, the internet can make your business profitable, increase it, and even this channel can surpass the sales you achieve with other traditional strategies.

And to make this scenario possible, ADVERTISING ON SEARCH ENGINES and SOCIAL MEDIA is key. It is already proven that with simple organic actions, it will never be possible to achieve sufficient reach and impact on digital platforms. (see how algorithms work)

But be careful! Not an ad run as an independent action; but as part of a complete CONVERSION strategy, based on a sales funnel or marketing and sales funnel which, broadly speaking, is a system that works in an inverted cone, whose goal is to attract, prepare, and convert internet users into customers of your business. Making a perfect mix between: the knowledge of natural human behavior, the knowledge of your ideal customer, and the most appropriate digital marketing elements for your case.

Listen to WHAT IS A MARKETING AND SALES FUNNEL

Think once again:

Don’t you think you’re wasting the great opportunity that the internet gives you to get, besides likes, an increase in sales and prospects for your business?

We understand the fear, ignorance, and denial you might have initially. But it’s time to change that mindset. You need to know more about the subject; document yourself and research different sources.

From there, you will have certainty about the steps you need to take to take your business to the next level.

On our part, we have studied and tested it too much -TOO MUCH- and the results we have obtained have been CONCLUSIVE, it is shown by: Intymen, the men’s underwear brand of a client friend, managed to increase sales by 500% only through its website.

With this system, our vision of INVESTING IN THE INTERNET took on a new, more logical and efficient meaning. 

Before, when advertising without a sales funnel, we had to cross our fingers for someone to contact the brands for business purposes. But now, we are sure that when a client puts their money into a structured system, where we know very well who we are talking to, what that person likes; how well they know you, and how ready they are to acquire your services and products… the risk decreases and the chances of CONVERTING increase.

VERSUS: ADVERTISING WITHOUT A SALES FUNNEL VS ADVERTISING WITH A SALES FUNNEL

To make it clearer, I will compare advertising on Facebook when a business has a sales funnel and when it doesn’t. This example also applies to other digital platforms.

Advertising on Facebook WITHOUT a sales funnel

Advertising on Facebook WITH a sales funnel

POSITIVES Followers increase You also get interaction on posts Additionally, the reach of the fanpage increases NEGATIVES There is no strategy, they are isolated and limited actions. You act under uncertainty. There is no automation or scalability. Higher costs are paid to get customers. It is inconsistent. There is no tracking or follow-up after the user clicks. Few efforts are made to convert users into customers. There is no positive return. Conversion rates are low. High risk of sending the ad to the wrong audience. You don’t know what type of content converts the most. Predictability? There is none, you know how much you invest, but you don’t know if you will generate sales or not. It is very easy to burn the entire budget. You are not feeding the sales cycle. Entrepreneurs are afraid and reluctant to invest in online advertising because they think it doesn’t work or it doesn’t work for their business. You are not taking advantage of human behavior to your favor.

POSITIVES You know the numbers. You know how much to invest to reach your sales or prospecting goal. Prospects arrive predictably and consistently. You have complete tracking of your user after a visit. You accompany the user throughout the conversion process. It is automated. It always has a positive ROI. It has high scalability. You can optimize actions with analytics and solid arguments. You will have the possibility to buy more traffic than the competition. The correct ads are sent, at the right time, and to the right audience. The cost per click can be optimized. You take advantage of natural human behavior to make the brand known, prepare them, and get them to buy. It becomes a machine that constantly feeds the sales cycle. The entire budget is invested strategically. Entrepreneurs see the results reflected in sales and prospects, believe in the strategy, and invest more. “NEGATIVE” POINTS in quotes because they are more like necessary conditions to guarantee the success of online advertising. The design and setup of a good advertising campaign require a lot of research and time. It requires clearly and very specifically defining the user (reevaluate the target audience as THE IDEAL CLIENT) You need to have an advertising budget to start the strategy. It requires reviewing and optimizing the STRATEGY and digital platforms that the brand has to ensure that users who come through advertising follow a process that leads to the sale. As this process requires a lot of knowledge and time, the recommendation is to outsource it or invest in training.

Now that you know the above, let’s get to practice

Now that you know the above, let’s get to practice

HOW TO CREATE A SUCCESSFUL AD? FREE GUIDE

• The first thing always – repeat with me: ALWAYS – is to define your IDEAL CLIENT, even before designing your funnel. This is fundamental because it will guide you on how to talk to them, what they like, how they behave… and a lot of information that will allow us to segment our ads very precisely on Facebook and the different digital platforms and search engines later.
• Another point is to have engaging content: clicks on a video and quizzes are much cheaper than images with a flat composition because, one, we are very audiovisual, and two, the first ones generate more action from the user.
• All the elements that make up the ad must be coherent with each other, that is: the copy, the call to action, the content, the description, everything must be aligned for conversion.

Find out the step-by-step with this Guide we have prepared at Trópico so you can become a pro in the subject of internet ads.

That’s it! That’s all for today, I hope I have broadened your perspective on the subject of online advertising. It’s real that with a well-grounded use of a good sales funnel, the money you invest will have a positive ROI. Later, when the strategy is yielding good results, you won’t have to worry about the money you need to invest again because the same system will continue feeding this cycle.

Remember that we have a to know how your business is currently and what steps you should take to take it to the next level.

 

See you in another post!