Show Notes

Should I run paid ads or just stick with organic?

I thought I’d take this episode to run down the benefits and disadvantages of each. As a digital marketer who focuses on paid traffic, I obviously am a bit biased on which I think it more effective. However whenever I’m asked this question I have the same response. BOTH are essential for a thriving online business.

Take the Marketing Matchmaker Quiz

Want to Work with Jennifer and her Virtual Marketing Experts Team?

Are you a coach, consultant, or online course creator who are looking to grow your business, increase your income, and scale your impact? Connect with me at YourMarketingMatchmaker.com I look forward to hearing from you.

Watch the Podcast Here:

Hey there. Thanks for listening and welcome to the marketing matchmaker podcast. If you're looking to grow your business, increase your revenue and scale your impact all while staying true to who you are and the people you serve. This is the show for you. I'm Jennifer Tamborski, digital marketing strategists, fractional CMO, and founder of Virtual Marketing Experts. My team and I work with six and seven figure coaches, consultants, and online entrepreneurs who are tired of playing the guru game of one size fits all marketing. They're ready to create a business and marketing strategy that actually builds relationships with their ideal clients creates massive shifts in their business and rapidly increases their revenue. As your marketing matchmaker, I'm going to help you find the perfect marketing match for you. This show will teach you how to reach your ideal client, connect with your audience, build that perfect relationship and generate more revenue. All through a process I like to call dating your ideal client. Now let's go have some fun!

Hey there, welcome back to the Marketing Matchmaker today is one of my favorite topics. Well, honestly, marketing in general is something that I can talk about endlessly, which is why I have this podcast. And this topic is something that we'll probably chat about over the course of several podcasts. This week, we are chatting about paid traffic.

I have to say Virtual Marketing Experts specializes in paid traffic. Now we focus primarily on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn ads, because that is where our clients' audiences are. So all of that to say, I thought the best place to start with today's episode is some frequently asked questions that I get when it comes to paid advertising. 

So we'll just dive right into that first question, which is, should I run paid ads or just stick with organic marketing? 

I know there's a lot of opinions when it comes to this. There are coaches out there that are going to tell you to only do organic marketing, not to waste your time and money on paid ads, because you'll never get your return on your investment. And then there are other coaches out there that tell you that organic marketing never works, just focus on paid ads. The truth of the matter is that both have distinct advantages and disadvantages. And reality is, as a digital marketer who focuses on paid ads, I'm obviously going to be a little bit biased when it comes to which one I think is more effective. However, whenever I'm asked this question, I always have the same response.

Both.

Both are essential for a thriving online business. You cannot have an online business without organic posts, without organic content; this is your free content that you post on your business page. Or maybe you have a YouTube channel, or maybe you post LinkedIn articles, whatever it is that you do, this is the content that you're doing it through. It's true that only about 10% of your audience is actually going to see your posts. So in my opinion, posting organically and then focusing and banking on the fact that you're going to get leads and sales that way... Well, honestly, it's going to end up with you being disappointed. Because organic marketing just doesn't work that way anymore. 

Now, that's not to say that organic marketing doesn't work at all, it absolutely does. When you're marketing, you have two options of investing in your marketing, either time or money. If you don't have money, you invest your time, all of your time, in organic marketing to go into groups or build your own group to communicate, to do whatever it is that you're doing in your organic marketing. That's where you spend the majority of your time because you don't yet have the budget for paid traffic. 

However, when you get to the point where you're ready to invest in your business, and really scale it to that next level, you need to consider paid ads. The reason being is that you are never going to reach the number of people that you want to impact through just organic marketing. 5-10 years ago on Facebook. Yes, absolutely possible to do that. In this day and age with the algorithms the way it is, it's just not possible. So all of that said, having consistent posts to your business page or to your LinkedIn profile or your Instagram page is incredibly important. Because even if you're running paid ads, oftentimes people go to your page to find out about who you are. And if they go there, and they see nothing has been posted for the last year. I don't know about you, but for me that kind of indicates that somebody probably isn't in business anymore. I mean, there's all kinds of judgment that comes along with that. 

So I know I've done it before, search for XYZ company, their Facebook page comes up, it's been dead for six months to a year, I really start to wonder about how invested they are in their business. So all of this really boils down to organic marketing is essential to a business. 

However, it's not the only way to run ads. 

And so when it comes to creating your organic strategy, you really want to make sure that you're choosing an avenue that you feel comfortable in, whether that's blogging or podcasting, Facebook Lives, groups, whatever that is, make sure it's something that you're going to be able to do and stick with. 

Because with organic content, consistency is key. Putting out posts on a regular basis is essential. 

Now we're going to switch into paid traffic, right? Because just as a poll, as important as an organic traffic is, paid traffic -  when you are trying to grow and scale your business -  is going to get you there so much faster. So I often get asked, When should I start running paid traffic? And this, my friends, is actually a harder question to answer than you might think. Because, frankly, there's no clear cut timeline or monetary amount that you should make before you run ads. It is when you are ready to invest and scale your business to the next level, that you're ready to start running ads. However, there are some things that you need to have in place before you run ads so that they are successful for you. 

If you're running lead generation ads, you must have a funnel built, and ready to go. So most coaches and consultants have that top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel aspect, we've talked about this in previous episodes, the top of the funnel is generally that free content that you're offering, whatever that free thing is that your ideal client is going to find valuable, so that they move to the next step in your funnel. When you're running ads, you have to have that already in place and ready to go before you start. 

Because quite honestly running ads to just build awareness in your business, it's not effective, right? 

If you don't have a call to action for them, then they're never going to know where to go. And they're not going to give you their email address or they're not going to be interested in your product service or solution. So making sure that you have that funnel built before you start the ads is critical. 

The other thing that you have to have is really what I call proof of concept. And what that really means is that you have a product, service, or solution that you have successfully sold before. And that ideally, you have that social proof of that product service or solution so that you can use them successfully in the ads.

It is essential that you know your target market and really have a clear description of who your ideal client is. This really helps us to focus on the people who will actually purchase your product, services, and solution rather than those who may not. So really becoming clear on that is one of the biggest things that you're going to need when you go to run ads. Realistically, there are a ton of type of ads that you can run. There's you know, we have everything from your top of the funnel, which is really about awareness ads. So brand awareness reach and those are important. 

Don't get me wrong because you should be spending a portion of your budget on those awareness ads. 

What they do is build that audience for you. So people who have watched your video or clicked on your podcast and land on your landing page. Those are people that you can retarget at a later date. There are also what they call consideration ads. So these are ads like in traffic ads or engagement ads, video ads, on Facebook lead gen ads. 

So there's a process in Facebook, where they'll collect the information for you. And that is absolutely a potential option when it comes to those ads. All of these ads, what Facebook is tracking is, are your audience doing what you say like for traffic traffic ad? Are they clicking on it and going to your landing page, or for an engagement ad, are they liking your page or liking your post, anything like that. So those consideration ads are again, a way to build your audience on Facebook or on LinkedIn. 

Then we have what are our conversion ads, these are the ads that really, they're tracking how many people do what they ask them to do on your page they land on. So whether that's buying something from you, or it's giving you their email address, that's what they're really tracking. That is the ad that most people start with, which is cool. And they often miss the top of the funnel, which is really that brand awareness. So you start with brand awareness, you drive them down into that middle of the funnel, which is asking them for their lead magnet. And then you drive them all the way through the rest of your funnel through either retargeting ads or email sequences.

That's basically how paid traffic on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram work. And those are the things that you really need to be aware of when you go to run ads. So whether or not you're ready to run ads, that's all up to you. If you're ready to invest, and have a funnel in place that you can drive these leads through, you're ready to run ads.

Another question that I get a lot when it comes to paid traffic is should I run Facebook ads, or Google ads or LinkedIn ads? Or can we can just keep going on the different types of ads? And the answer to this question is really twofold. 

First, you need to be very aware of where your ideal client spends the majority of their time, meaning if they're spending their time on Facebook, and you are a b2c company or a b2b company, but your ideal target market spends a lot of time on Facebook, you're going to want to run Facebook ads. However, if your ideal client spends their time on LinkedIn, you're going to want to go and focus over there. You may be a b2b company or business to business company, and be wanting to target just businesses. LinkedIn is a great way to do that. And it's a really effective way to target those types of audiences. 

You can absolutely target consumers on LinkedIn. If your target market is professionals, LinkedIn is a fabulous place to start running ads. 

Now, should you run Google ads? That's all really going to depend on the second type of the second part of this question, which is the type of campaign you're running? Are you running a search engine campaign? So Google ads, something that I don't do, I explain this to people a lot. So Google ads are what are considered search engine ads, which means someone must be actively looking for your product. 

I like to compare Google and I'm probably showing my age a little bit here. But I like to compare Google to the Yellow Pages from when I was a kid. People would open the Yellow Pages and look for a specific thing. Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn are what's called interruption marketing. So again, showing my age, before we spent all of our time on Netflix, and we're watching TV, there were ads, so that McDonald's ad would come up and you would see it and you're like, ooh, I kind of want a Big Mac. Those are what's called interruption ads. 

So the type of campaign you're wanting is really essential to understanding which platform you should be on. If people are actively looking for you. If they are typing in something that will find your product, service, or solution, you should absolutely run Google ads. However, if people are not actively searching for your product, service, or solution, interruption ads, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube ads, those are the types of ads that are going to get their attention because they may not know that they have a problem. They definitely don't know that you're the solution to that problem. So putting up that problem in front of them allows them to recognize that they have an issue and that you're a potential solution. 

So whether you should use Facebook and LinkedIn or you should use Google, all depends on the type of ad you're running. 

Now there is a third type of campaign that everyone should be running. And those are retargeting campaigns. Those can honestly be run on every platform, you can run ads on Facebook, and then retarget them with Google ads if you want. Just like you can run Google ads and retarget them with Facebook. It all depends on how you set that up. retargeting ads are ads that go back to people who have already done something with your company. They may have watched a video on Facebook, or they may have clicked on a link on Google and landed on your landing page, they may have given you their email address, or they may have come to your store and not done anything. 

All of those things give you the ability to retarget them and send them either back to the top of your funnel or to some other place within that sales cycle. That is really an essential part of paid traffic that I think a lot of people miss. 

The next question is really how do I get good results with paid traffic. So there are three things that you need to be aware of: the first is your audience. I touched on this a little bit ago. You need to understand your audience, where they're hanging out, what they're doing, who they're interested in, what their pain points are. All of those things allow you to target people using paid traffic. If you are not detailed enough with your audience, you may be getting the wrong type of leads. So always make sure that you are incredibly aware of what your audience is doing and who they are. The second thing is your creative. So this in Facebook and LinkedIn specifically, is your copy and your image or video.

Your copy needs to speak to your audience, it needs to speak to their problems, their pain points, and then show them that there is a solution to it. Your image or video needs to stop them in their tracks and grab their attention. Because no matter what platform they're on, whether it's Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube ads, all of them need to be attention grabbing. The first thing they see is your image or your video before they see your headline, before they see your copy. 

That's what stops them in their tracks. 

So make sure that that image is something that will grab their attention. And the last thing is your offer. Oftentimes, when we run paid traffic, we get to recognize pretty quickly whether or not your offer is solid. If you know your audience inside and out, and your creative is getting a response, meaning people are clicking on the ads and they're going to that other page. It is often the information on that page that is the problem. 

It may not necessarily be your offer itself. It may be how you're describing it, or what you're saying about it. It may be the price point, it may be a million pieces that it could be. You need to be very clear about your offer.

Also, I know I said this a little earlier, make sure that you have successfully sold this offer in the past. It is incredibly difficult to sell an offer that you have never sold when you're just starting out with Facebook ads. Not impossible. It's possible to get in there, have a fantastic offer, and sell the stuffing out of it. And you're investing your money in this. So make sure that you have something of quality that people are going to want to purchase that your ideal client is going to purchase. 

The last question I want to talk about today is why? Why would you want to run paid traffic at all? So the thing is, is that social media has become less about interaction when it comes to marketers as it is about conversion. So gaining clients through simply organic traffic is incredibly difficult and time consuming. It's possible and time consuming. So when it comes to your marketing, you have two options, you can either pay with your time, or pay with your money. 

If you are ready to move outside of spending all of your time, because let's be honest, you can spend 10 hours 20 hours on social media very easily. I know we've all done it. You start on that Facebook page, and then 12 hours later woke up and realize that you've spent all day on social media. That time could be better invested in other portions of your business. 

So when you're tired of expanding your time and energy and not getting the ROI back from organic traffic, paid traffic is a fantastic option. It allows you to really grow at a faster rate, and also allows you to discover and gather data and start analyzing that data and really understanding what it is that your business can do. Let's be honest, there is not one millionaire out there in the coaching industry that doesn't run paid ads. 

That's because paid ads work. 

So when you're ready to stop investing all of your time and really focusing on just what it is that you do best and what it is that feeds your fire, paid ads are the way that's going to be able to scale your business and accelerate the growth.

Thank You for listening to the Marketing Matchmaker podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love to hear your feedback. Please head over to iTunes and leave a review so we can hear from you. And if you are a coach, consultant, or online course creator who are looking to grow your business, increase your income, and scale your impact connect with me at yourmarketingmatchmaker.com. I look forward to hearing from you.