02/17/2021
This past year’s events have allowed me to have access to something that has been in short supply: time.
I’ve had time to rebuild, reflect, and recalibrate.
I started Small Business Growth Engine LLC in January 2019 with an intention to help other businesses grow via marketing and gaining access to funding. Up until this point, I have done relatively little with it.
I aim to change that and do my best to help as many people as possible.
Today, I want to share with you the biggest mistake I made when building my business from 2013 to 2019 when I leaned heavily on paid advertising to drive sales.
I ran my first ever social media ad in 2013. Gaining exposure was dirt cheap. Followers that were gained as a result of running the ad. I usually made a post and then provided a link that sent customers straight to a buy now page with a PayPal link.
Due to the large amount of cheap paid traffic, sales rolled in and I didn’t track on the amount visitors versus purchases. All I tracked was money spent versus purchases made. Return on investment was easy.
Fast forward to 2016 and that formula did not work anymore. Social media companies and search giants increased the cost for exposure dramatically. Posts on social media pages began to reach to just a few hundred people on a page that had 60,000+ followers.
Then counterfeit parts manufacturers copied items I specialised in selling and entered into the US market. The combination of dirt cheap fake parts competition combined with increased cost of social media ads created a very challenging environment for me.
I kept following the same formula of paid social ads to e-commerce sales till I hit break even. Then things got even worse. I was forced to pull the plug on what had been a profitable setup because I was losing money.
Here’s where I went wrong: I never made an offer in exchange for obtaining a prospect’s information.
Obtaining a potential client’s data (name, email, phone) should be one of the primary objectives of utilising paid advertising.
Why is this? It’s because once you have this information, you can constantly market to them till they hit that unsubscribe button in their web browser.
Statistics vary, but industry experts agree that the average person needs to hear about a certain product or service multiple times before ever spending a single dollar. A potential prospect may only see your online ad or post just once and then forget about it.
If there’s any takeaway from this, I’d encourage you business owners who are engaging in paid advertising to focus on building your virtual Rolodex of contacts.
This list becomes a massive asset that you can draw upon to generate sales time and time again.
In an upcoming post, I’ll show you a simple way to obtain customer contact information that works.
