We all know the state of online ads. I have been vocal about it. If you are a first-time reader of my blogs and posts, here are the few links you might like to read first. If you are following my posts, I will assume that you already know a lot thus you may skip to the next paragraph.
There is a possibility that you might have bought some product through an ad or have shared that product link with your loved ones to buy it. On the other side, the number of ads you ignore is maybe 100x of it. We see a whopping 5000 ads a day. Yeah, it’s difficult to believe. We ignore it right, so we don’t remember how much we ignore it.
If you have bought through an ad because you know the brand earlier or you have consumed their content(video, blog posts) earlier.
If both of the conditions have not been met, you have still bought because it is low ticket size, low risk, free trial, near no loss or great offer or you already have paid(the ad is just a trigger to consume it – Netflix shows). One or more reasons have played there to make the purchase by you. Not a very preferred method to rely on ads.
Here is a pyramid diagram of where online ads work. We exactly ignore online ads because it doesn’t fulfil the prerequisites it has to meet.
The first place where it will work is the network of your existing customers.
Second place, your audience who have consumed your content. Because they have consumed your content, they are likely going to buy through that ad. That ad is a nice trigger.
The golden rule for online ads to perform is this,
The first time your brand should be known to your target audience through your customers or through your content.
And the content is best amplified by your existing customers.
This is the reason why the online ads are above your customers and your content repository in the pyramid diagram.
[From the book, The cold start problem by Andrew Chen]
Putting the online ads first without building the foundation is the reason why online ads bring negligible results. Publishing ads is one of the easiest things in marketing and that is the reason why people run(behind) ads.
As Rand Fishkin puts it, IDGAF. I don’t Gamble Against Fallacious Metrics.
Some of you will be seeking some examples,
Ankur Warikoo – A personal Brand
SEMRush – A SEO SaaS Brand
Why did I choose them? Because both of them do effective paid ads campaigns.
Ankur Warikoo has BUILT
60K + email subscribers
1.5 million subscribers on Linkedin
1.5 million subscribers on YouTube with 539 videos – 1st video on Sep7th 2017 ~ 4+ years ago
He achieved these numbers because of the 100s and 1000s of pieces of content he created and published on multiple platforms.
He offers paid courses and more courses are in the making.
Because he has built and is building his content repository, email communication, social channels with a variety of content sizes and formats, he is running paid ads with great success and at scale, like below. I’m sure his paid ads conversion rate is about 10x of what the industry average is.
The advantage Warikoo has is, he is super casual in front of the camera. Everything else remains the same for most businesses. Content needs to be created and published as if it is part of your operations, at least a fraction of your operation.
You can bring “n” number of reasons to not build your content or for Warikoo’s success – It doesn’t change anything. This is what modern marketing demands and it is to be seen as an opportunity.
SEMRush
SEMRush is known for its blogs, Ebooks and video channel. They have created tons of content and their followings are below.
YouTube – 98K subscribers with 419 videos – 1st video on May 2014 ~ 7+ years ago
Highly audience-centric and numerous Blog posts and Ebooks.
They have their services offered in 5 languages.
SEMRush does run paid ads.
Whenever you want to go about paid ads for scaling up, remember the below formulae.
1. Your content, 2. Your social media channel(s) 3. Only at 3rd place, paid ads. In that order. Paid ads to the network of your customers and those who consumed your content.
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Contact us to adapt to a sustainable & compounding marketing strategy.
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