- If you don't understand this one simple thing
about advertising your business,
you're gonna lose a lot of money very quickly.
And that is that advertising is an accelerator,
not an initiator.
Meaning that advertising can take something
that you already have.
A good offer, a good product,
a good service that's already selling well
and can help you get it in front of even more people
just like your best customers.
But what advertising can't do is take a new offer,
a new idea, or a new product or service,
something that hasn't been proven yet
and just magically make it sell.
Sure, anytime you launch something new to the market,
it might sell right away.
After all, these are the stories that you hear that all
of the ad gurus like to shout from the mountaintops.
About how Johnny Marketing made a million dollars
from his very first launch or how Cash Makemoneyman,
that I don't know, sold out in 24 hours
thanks to a simple ad he wrote in five minutes
from his parents' basement.
I mean sure, these things happen
but they're the exception, not the rule.
The reality is that advertising is like any other kind
of marketing and your ability to succeed
with ads and make serious bank comes down
to just a few simple factors that I'll cover
in just a minute.
Unfortunately, most people don't know about these things
or they ignore them completely.
And then just start pumping money into the ad platforms,
hoping that they'll get lucky
and something will just mysteriously click.
But that's not marketing, that's gambling.
And the odds are not in your favor,
especially if you're new to the online advertising world.
Hey there my man.
Step right up.
Place your bet.
What's it gonna be?
I don't know.
I'm kind of new to this whole thing.
What should I choose?
Well, you got your Facebook, your Instagram,
your Twitter, your Pinterest, your YouTube, your LinkedIn,
basically you can't lose.
What do you mean I can't lose?
Well I mean, you could lose, I guess,
but don't worry about it.
And what's that huge stack of paper you're holding?
Oh, this?
This it's just a fine print.
There's nothing really important in there.
Yikes.
So let me explain how things work.
Most online advertising is auction based and the winner
of the ad auction is determined by three things.
Bid, which is what the advertiser is willing to pay
to achieve a desired outcome.
The better you know your numbers,
the more you're willing to pay
because you can be confident that you're gonna
make your money back.
Estimated action rates, which is an estimate
of the probability that someone who sees the ad will engage
or interact with it.
In other words, this is the ad platform
making sure that you're putting the right message
in front of the right people.
So they don't just block or unfollow or worse,
leave the platform all together.
And ad quality,
which measures things like feedback from people who view
or hide the ad and a bunch of other algorithm based quality
metrics that try to only show
the highest quality ads possible.
The scores from these three things are then added up
and the winner is the one with the highest total value.
This is why if you want your ads to work, you need to
one, spend enough money to outbid your competitors,
as well as make sure that you have enough budget
to give your ads a sufficient time to optimize
and work out any kinks.
Two, create a highly targeted and relevant ad
that speaks directly to your ideal target market.
Three, make sure that your ad is interesting
and enticing and valuable.
And lastly, four, make sure that you know your numbers,
like your CLV or customer lifetime value,
which is going to show you how much a customer is worth
to your business over their lifetime
and will allow you to determine what you can
and cannot afford to spend on ads.
And while obviously getting all of these things right
isn't impossible, it happens all the time,
but it's also not as easy
as you may have been led to believe.
Especially today, as advertising costs
have risen substantially.
Tracking and the ability to pixel people
with retargeting cookies has gotten progressively worse
and competition is at an all time high
with more than enough people willing to step in
and pay whatever the ad platforms are charging.
In fact, if it's any indication of just how much
people are spending on ads.
Well, last year Facebook made 114.93 billion on ads.
Google, 209.49 billion on ads.
Amazon, 31.16 billion just on ads.
And even TikTok's ad revenue is expected to triple this year
up to 11.64 billion.
So what should you do?
What's the alternative if you wanna reach more people,
make more sales, and grow your business?
Well, I'm glad you asked my friend.
The solution is to use a combination approach
known as PESO,
which stands for paid, earned, shared and owned.
So let me break those down for you now.
Paid media is, wait for it.
Anything that you pay for.
So think of advertising like banner ads
and display ads and social media ads
and basically anything with the word ad in it.
Advertising will always exist in the marketing world
in some way, shape or form.
And it's an amazing way to accelerate your reach
and get in front of new people
and new audiences by just buying ads.
But there are some drawbacks.
Namely, when you stop paying for ads,
they stop showing them.
So you need to constantly keep running your ads
to keep traffic coming in.
Plus, as we've seen, it's getting more competitive
and therefore more expensive to keep using the big players
like Facebook and Instagram and Google.
Next is earned media.
Earned media is made up of relationships
and word of mouth and your network.
This is where having a good product or service
and building up goodwill in your market
and investing in your brand can really pay off big.
It's also something that's hard to do and harder to track,
which is why so many digital marketers just ignore it
but don't be one of those people.
Next is shared media.
Shared media is organic social media,
as well as any partnerships or a community that you have.
Shared media is valuable,
but it's also a little bit sketchy
and kind of like building your house on rented land.
And if your entire business is reliant on shared media,
like say through a single social media platform,
well all it takes is a few tweaks and changes
to the algorithm to completely wipe you out,
which is why the next thing you wanna focus on
is owned media.
Owned media are the things
that you have complete control over.
These will be things like your website and your podcast
and your email list.
My goal with all of my marketing,
whether it's for myself personally,
for my clients or for my students,
is to try to build up their owned media
as fast and efficiently as possible.
The one thing that all of these have in common though
and the main marketing strategy that I've been using
and suggesting for more than 10 years now
comes down to content marketing.
Content marketing that I can use as shared media on social,
earned media to get back links and interviews
and other PR opportunities.
Owned media because I can also share my content
on my website and share even more specific
and more valuable insights with my email list.
And yes, finally, paid media
because after creating content for a website
and social and podcasts and videos and more,
well you get a pretty good idea of what's going to work
and what's going to connect and what's not.
And it changes advertising from being a risk
into a calculated and strategic business decision.
One that's likely and probable to deliver
a very tangible return on investment.
In other words,
the money that you invest in advertising
is actually going to deliver some positive results.
Shocking, I know.
And that's the secret.
You start by creating content
that you think your audience would find valuable.
You then leverage the best pieces across earned
and shared and owned media.
And then you choose the very best from that
and turn it into paid media like ads.
And the best thing you can do to improve your content
is making sure that you have
a solid content marketing strategy in place.
This is why the next thing you're gonna want
to do is check out the video I've got linked up right here
on the ultimate content marketing strategy.
So make sure to check it out now
and I'll see you in the next video.
Now, the way to do this is to create that content
with the following structure in mind.
First, you need to start with a very clear
and very easy to understand headline or title.
That's part one.
Then you need to...