As annoying as the above model is, it’s the truth.
Last month, we spent $1.2 million on marketing. Most of that went to paid ads. After 7 years in business, we’re acquiring more customers at a lower cost than at any time in the past 3 years.
Our market didn’t change. Our team didn’t change. We just applied the fundamentals of the game better.
The three reasons why most people fail at paid ads.
#1 – Poor organization
The whole game of paid ads is that you put a bunch of stuff out there — ads, pages, etc. — until you find something that works, then do more of that.
That game becomes very hard when you can’t see what’s working because your ad account looks like a TK.
Start with a clean, simple, well-organized account. It will be much easier for you to know what working and for anyone you hire in the future to know.
For example, start with only 1 or 2 campaigns, a few ad sets within those campaigns organized by what you want to test, and 1 or more ads in each ad set.
#2 – Too many tests
If you have one product, three buyer personas, and five ads per persona you want to test, that’s 15 (1 x 3 x 5) product-persona-ad combinations.
If you add in two more products, that’s 45 combinations (3 x 3 x 15).
If you add in sales page copy tests, offer tests, and audience segmentation tests, the number of combinations explodes into the hundreds or thousands.
Test only a few things at a time.
My recommendation is to start with one product, one sales page, and 10 to 20 ads. Those ads should be as different as possible, including different buyer personas, angles to speak to those personas, and proven ad formats based on what works well for others who crush it at ads.
#3 – Not facing reality
Today, it’s hard to scale with paid ads unless you can afford to spend around $100 to get a customer.
If your product sells for $25 and nobody ever buys it again after an initial purchase, you’re going to struggle.
More ads, more pages, more people are not the solution. You need to change your product. Either price it higher, package it with something else, or replace it with a more premium, more proprietary version.
Paid ads can be tough. You have to resist the urge to treat it like a gambler pulling the lever of a slot machine. Treat it more like a scientist hypothesizing about what might work and testing to see if the hypothesis is correct.
If you stay organized, test smart, and face reality, no matter how annoying that reality is, you will eventually succeed.
—Matt