5 things you need in place before implementing paid ads

I see a lot of marketing strategists on social media pushing paid marketing strategies, which can make new business owners feel like they need to rush into paid ads before they’re perhaps ready. It’s time to hold your horses! Without having some fundamental things in place, your paid ads are really just a waste of money. Let me take you through exactly what you need to do before entering your card details...

1.Check your website, then check it again

Wherever you’re driving your traffic needs to be in full working order. Does your user journey make sense? Are there typos on your homepage? Is your booking or payment method working? 

Finding a group of peers is vital when you start a business. Test each other’s websites and take that feedback on board, especially if they’re in your target audience. But don’t just stop there, get friends and family testing, checking, and feeding back as much as possible. We can often be blind to our own mistakes.

2. Set yourself up for organic

If your website isn’t optimised for organic traffic, don’t use it for paid. 

Make sure you’ve done the basics by creating meta titles, meta descriptions, and used keywords and longtail keywords that make sense. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Don’t worry, you’ll find an explanation here.

Some web builders assess the SEO performance while you are building your site. You can also use several free tools to establish the keywords you should be using. Moz for example allows 10 free searches per month. Try searching for your service or product to gain suggested keywords and longtail keywords that you can use. Make sure you only choose ones that are relevant to your business though. Just because certain keywords are relevant for a competitor, doesn’t mean they’re relevant for you! 

3. Know your audience

This can be particularly challenging for serial entrepreneurs who may have multiple strands to their business, or multiple active businesses, where the audiences are not the same. This may mean you’ve created a tone of voice or even a product that isn’t geared towards your target audience. 

Check out your competitors, try and carry out some market research, and make sure your tone, brand, and product are what your audience is looking for. 

Spend some time looking at your competitors’ sites and their social media accounts so that you’re familiar with how they market to their clients. Then, think about what makes you and your business different.

If you have a specific audience, for example, parents, join some forums and ask if anyone would be open to a coffee, either face-to-face or virtually, and ask them some questions about what they think about your product and also other brands they admire. Even if you’re a coffee brand and they discuss where they buy their clothes from, you’ll get a great idea of what tone of voice they associate with. 

4. Create a Google Analytics account 

It’s vital that you can track the success of your campaigns and the traffic that is coming to your site. That’s why using Google Analytics is essential. Make sure it’s set up in advance so that it can track things like when people are filling in a form on the site, who they are, where they came from, and where they’re located. 

With Google Analytics, you can see if the audience you’re getting from paid, is the audience you want. 

This is why having landing pages is so vital. You can track exactly where the people arriving on landing pages come from and where they go to next on your site. Make sure you have a landing page for each campaign.

5. Make a plan

Without a set budget, a plan for each audience, and a plan for the audience you’re targeting, ads (and costs) can spiral out of control.

Here are some of the basics you need to make a plan for in advance:

• Budget 

• Audience segments

• User journey (e.g. landing page driving traffic to where?)

Ready to get a grip of your organic marketing and make more money without paying for ads? My workshop How to turn browsers into buyers (and sell more stuff today) on 22nd June will help. Grab your ticket here (replay included if you can’t attend live).