I came up what I thought was a good analogy for paid ads versus marketing.
Paid ads are kind of like a juice cleanse.
Juice cleanses (and paid ads) give you a boost.
Maybe your weight loss has plateaued or you’re feeling sluggish. Juicing for a few days can help your body reset, in part because it is something different for your body to be doing that’s also healthy.
If you are in a rut with Facebook likes or want to get people to your newly launched website, some paid ads over a short period can do the trick. It’s not bad for your online presence to do ads, mainly it’s just not something most people do often.
Juice cleanses (and paid ads) intentionally restrictive.
In giving you relatively few options, juice cleanses allow you to isolate some variables. How does the cucumber versus the berry juice make you feel? You aren’t comparing other variables in your life like exercise and amount of sleep; you are seeing how certain juices effect how you feel.
Paid ads can allow you to concentrate on the words you are using or the demographic you are targeting versus performance. Sometimes in trying to track too much, we can’t isolate data from our websites, Facebook pages, and other online properties. A paid ad over a set period allows us to look at a limited set of factors on our bottom line.
Juice cleanses (and paid ads) are most helpful if you are already relatively healthy.
Much like you need to live your life in a healthy way for the juice cleanse to make a meaningful impact, you have to be maintaining your website and other online platforms for the paid ads to help anything. Otherwise, you are just signing up to be hungry.
What do I mean? If you are paying for Google Ads to send people to an ineffective website or Twitter Ads to go to a Twitter profile that hasn’t been updated in six months, you’ll definitely be wasting your money in addition to your time.
Juice cleanses (and paid ads) not meant to be something you do forever.
No one expects you to consume juice only, every meal, for the rest of your life. It’s not only too restrictive to be realistic, it could also become a little boring.
Paid ads aren’t meant to be a continuous large part of your marketing efforts and budget. They are meant for specific testing (Ex: How does ‘specialty tea’ versus ‘premium tea’ perform in my target market?) or a specific campaign (I want more new people to see my month long contest.)
Much like doing a juice cleanse, if you don’t get why and how to use paid ads, you aren’t going to get a ton out of the experience except a dwindled bank account and dashed expectations.
I’ll say it before and I’ll say it again, when I work with people, paid ads (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) are less than 10% of any budget I work on. They have their place but I’d rather spend money connecting in meaningful ways with customers and potential customers than paying warm bodies to click on a link.
There are times and places for juice cleanses. And there are times and places for paid ads.