Solved: Recommendations for Advertising/Marketing Companies?

Hi there,

Happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on your paid advertising based on your request. I understand you're open to advertising, and want some advice and guidance on where to get started.

First things first, let's think about your goals and your target customer, then we'll look at your website and the best ad platform to use. I'll break it down into sections to keep things structured.

Your ideal customer and your ideal ad platform...

Who is your target audience? Where can they be reached? Think about your ideal customer persona and which ad platform they can be reached on. This is important as the best ad platform is where the target audience can best be reached with the ad platform’s available targeting options. Wrong ad platform = wrong targeting = difficult to achieve results.

For services like yours, you'd usually want to reach people that are already looking for help. So in terms of online advertising, you'd want to go with Google Search Ads or Google Local Service Ads instead of social media. Social media ads might work if you're targeting something very specific like pregnant women, but I'd say those platforms are better suited for raising awareness and longer-term strategies.

I'd always optimise for conversions if conversions are the goal. And to optimise performance, I’d always split test creative and targeting within the same campaign.

We'll need to look at traffic quality and your website...

With Google Search Ads, look at your performance metrics. Where do people drop off? Do you have really low CTRs and high CPCs? -> Your ad copy likely needs work. Do you get visitors to your start page but they bounce straight away? -> You're either getting the wrong type of traffic (look at your ad targeting/keywords) or maybe the services you offer aren't a good fit. Or worse, maybe your website isn't doing a good job of converting visitors into leads.

If you want people to actually convert, you're going to need a good website, so I'd start there.

Think about your sales process. What do you want people to do to become a qualified lead that you can turn into a customer? Usually, the first step is to either fill out a lead form or to schedule an intro meeting or consultation. Depending on what the first step is that people need to take, this is what your website's start page should lead people to. Optimise this page with sales copy, make it really persuasive to take the first step. - Some professional copy could really go a long way.

Some trust badges could help: reviews and testimonials from customers, links to Etsy, Amazon, and other places where you sell your products, social profiles, publications you've been featured in, your address and maybe more ways to contact you. The more ways people can verify you're a real business, the more comfortable they'll feel contacting you.

I'd say you need to give it more time...

With B2B it's worth pointing out that any advertising will be difficult and more costly as there's no immediate ROI and B2B sales cycles can be much longer. You need to give it more time. However, you also need to make sure you're getting the targeting right - targeting the correct person in the businesses and the correct businesses.

For high ticket offers and B2B marketing, a funnel and fixed offers might not work that well. This strategy usually works better for B2C marketing and/or lower ticket offers. For B2B, you might see better results generating leads, having an intro/sales call, and offering a custom service to address their unique needs.

Costs you can expect...

Just did some research. You're probably looking at about $10-$50 per lead but it can be more expensive if you are in a competitive market or cheaper if you’re lucky and your services are in high demand. We're running a campaign for an HVAC company currently, they are in a bit of a competitive area, and they are seeing costs of around $60/lead. We’ve run ads for childcare services where the CPL was around $10 per signup. And our best consumer services campaign was for a home cleaning company which got a cost of £5/lead.

I usually recommend a budget for ad spend of $1-$2k per month to start with - but this depends on how many leads you need (number of leads you need x cost per lead = ad spend).

Here's an overview of actionable steps:

Expert help...

As you can see, there are a lot of moving parts, and it can be tricky to get it right. That's where someone with expertise in scaling service campaigns can really help. For instance, we've achieved a cost of £5/lead for a home cleaning company, so we know what it takes to get those costs down.

If you'd like to discuss your specific situation in more detail, feel free to reach out for a free consultation where we can delve deeper and see if we can help grow your business.

Regards, Team @ Lukas Holschuh