How to Invest Effectively in Online Advertising?
When we talk about investing in online advertising, whether on social media or search engines, three types of entrepreneurs or business owners appear:
- The one who thinks it’s a waste of money.
- The one who thinks gaining more followers, reach, and interaction is important.
- And the one who understands and knows how to use online advertising as a powerful conversion tool.
Who among the three is right? Number three.
In this article, I will explain why I believe that those who think it’s a waste of money are mistaken – although I understand why they think so – and that those in the second category are missing out on achieving a real and systematic impact on their business sales.
In this article, we will cover:
- The problem of investing in the Internet for entrepreneurs and business owners.
- 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.
- A FREE guide on how to create successful ad campaigns.
Let’s get started!
THE PROBLEM WITH INVESTING IN THE INTERNET FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND BUSINESS OWNERS
Business owners and executives who say that advertising on social media and Google is an EXPENSE can have two reasons:
The first refers to those with a traditional business mindset: they firmly believe in traditional advertising, word-of-mouth, and cold outreach. They have done well in the offline world and think that’s enough, that they don’t need more. In this case, it’s up to them to be more open-minded to new and more effective ways of attracting customers and selling.
The second, which is what concerns me and why I say that “I somewhat understand people who don’t believe in online advertising” is related to a bad experience with this tool:
Perhaps this entrepreneur or someone on their team decided to do the advertising themselves, intuitively; or worse, they paid a “professional” who lacked sufficient knowledge about the platforms and best practices, lacked a strategy, and did not clearly understand basic elements like 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 and everything returned to normal (at Trópico Digital, we call this a Hope Peak). An action without results is represented in sales or new prospects.
If this is your case, it’s obvious that you will be hesitant to invest in Facebook or Google again. Why keep “throwing” money away if you can use it for other things?
STOP RIGHT THERE! I AM GOING TO CHANGE THIS MINDSET, give me the chance to convince you, read the article to the end.
Before giving you the solution, let’s 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 GET MORE LIKES?
- Increasing followers
- Increasing interaction
- Expanding reach
These goals may seem very attractive to some; in fact, these numbers are valuable in terms of brand positioning and in the path to 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 is no guarantee of the success of your products and services.
Therefore, it is necessary AND POSSIBLE to make that advertising investment, whether on social media like Facebook or search engines like Google, have a tangible result that impacts the core of the business.
Imagine this scenario:
“DIGITAL CHANNELS ARE THE MAIN SOURCE OF SALES AND LEADS FOR 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 surpass the sales you make with other traditional strategies.
To make this scenario possible, ADVERTISING ON SEARCH ENGINES and SOCIAL MEDIA is key. It is already proven that simple organic actions will never be enough to have sufficient reach and impact on digital platforms. (see how algorithms work)
But beware! It is not advertising 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 as an inverted cone, aimed at attracting, preparing, and converting internet users into customers of your business. Make a perfect mix between understanding human behavior, knowing your ideal customer, and the most appropriate digital marketing elements for your case.
Listen to WHAT A SALES FUNNEL OR MARKETING AND SALES FUNNEL IS
Think once again:
Don’t you think you’re wasting the great opportunity the internet gives you to achieve, besides likes, an increase in sales and prospects for your business?
We understand the fear, ignorance, and denial one might have at the beginning. But it’s time to change that mindset. You need to learn more about the subject; document yourself and research from different sources.
From there, you will have the certainty of what steps to take to elevate 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. For example, Intymen, the men’s underwear brand of a client friend, managed to increase its sales by 500% solely through its website.
With this system, our vision of INVESTING IN THE INTERNET took on a 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 certain that when a client invests in a structured system, where we know very well whom we are talking to, what that person likes, how well they know you, and how prepared they are to purchase your services and products… the risk decreases and the chances of CONVERSION 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 |
|---|---|
| POSITIVE POINTS | POSITIVE POINTS |
| – Followers increase | – The numbers are known |
| – You also get interaction on posts | – You know how much to invest to reach your sales or prospecting goal |
| – The fan page’s reach also increases | – Prospects arrive predictably and consistently |
| NEGATIVE POINTS | – You have complete tracking of your user after a visit |
| – No strategy, isolated and limited actions | – The user is accompanied throughout the conversion process |
| – Acting under uncertainty | – It’s automated |
| – No automation or scalability | – Always has a positive ROI |
| – Higher costs to get clients | – High scalability |
| – Inconsistent | – You can optimize actions with analytics and strong arguments |
| – No tracking and follow-up of the user after the click | – You will have the possibility to buy more traffic than the competition |
| – Few efforts to convert users into clients | – The right ads are sent at the right time and to the right audience |
| – No positive return | – The cost per click can be optimized |
| – Low conversion rates | – Takes advantage of human nature to promote the brand, prepare them, and get them to buy |
| – High risk of sending the ad to the wrong audience | – It becomes a machine that constantly feeds the sales cycle |
| – Don’t know what type of content converts best | – All the budget is strategically invested |
| – Predictability? none, you know how much you invest but not if it will generate sales | – Business owners see the results reflected in sales and prospects, believe in the strategy, and invest more |
| – Very easy to burn the entire budget | |
| – Not feeding the sales cycle | |
| – Business owners become afraid and lazy about online advertising because they think it doesn’t work for their business | |
| – Not taking advantage of human behavior to your benefit |
Now that you know the above, let’s move 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 give you guidance 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 on Facebook and different digital platforms and search engines very precisely.
- Another point is to have attractive 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 former generates more action in 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.
Learn the step-by-step with this Guide we have prepared at Trópico so you can become a pro in this subject of online advertising.
That’s all for today, I hope I have broadened your perspective on the subject of online advertising. It is real that with proper use based on 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 to feed this cycle.
Remember that we have a service 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!
