The Four Things You Need Before Working With A Digital Advertiser.
Marketing is not a magic bullet.
Good Digital Advertising is based on good foundations that work together to become greater than the sum of their parts.
So if you’re considering working with a Digital Advertiser, here are four things you will want to have in place already.
A Product Or A Service To Sell
It’s hard to keep a business going without a product or service to sell. No sales, no money. No money, no business.
For those considering marketing those products or services, there are additional concerns beyond their mere existence – namely the clarity of the product itself.
Marketing your business is essentially telling a story about it, or a particular part of it.
We’ve all been stuck in conversation with someone who is very keen on entertaining but is a bit fuzzy on the details, stumbles over locations, names and even points.
Whenever gaps are left in stories, disinterest is ultimately what fills them.
Marketing is all about creating and capturing interest, and this requires details and definition for us to effectively tell that story in effective and compelling ways.
So let’s restate the headline. Before working with a Digital Advertiser like ourselves, you need a clearly defined product or service to sell.
Because if what you’re selling is clearly defined, so is the potential customer for that product.
A Landing Page That Sells That Service Or Product
A landing page is a dedicated page on your website designed to convert visitors into leads or customers.
It’s the destination where your audience will learn more about your offering and take action, whether that’s newsletter sign ups, product purchasing or form fills.
On a basic level, it’s hard to convert customers without a function on your website for them to interact with.
Looking beyond that basic requirement, the landing page represents clarity of direction for your potential customers journey.
When capturing demand for a product or service, its important to remove as many obstacles between the converting action and the customer as possible.
While your business is incredibly important to you, that may not necessarily be the case for your potential customer. When your potential customer is already searching and clicking on ads for the product and service you are offering, they are ready to commit.
They do not need educating about the brand, business history or the full range of services they could potentially need. They want what you advertised and they clicked on.
A Landing page is simple, direct and clear. It exists for one purpose, executing on the marketing campaign and converting potential customers into sales.
A Willingness To Grow Your Business
Growth requires effort, adaptability and persistence.
Marketing campaigns are not ‘set and forget’ projects; they demand continuous optimisation, testing and investment.
A willingness to grow reflects a mindset that’s open to scaling up operations and making necessary adjustments to achieve long term success.
It’s also about honestly assessing the limitations of the business, and what the space for growth actually is.
There is no point scaling up a successful marketing campaign when the capacity to fulfil orders isn’t there. It doesn’t matter how many inquiries for your plumbing service you get if you’ve only got one plumber who can do a maximum of 3 jobs a day.
Before working with a digital advertiser you have to both be willing AND able to grow your business from where it is today.
A Marketing Budget To Spend
Marketing requires financial resources to drive traffic, generate leads, and convert sales.
Whether it’s using paid ads, SEO, content marketing or direct to customer emails, you’ll need to allocate a budget that matches your business objectives.
At its most basic level you need to have cash flow to spare. There is little point paying for ads if it puts your business financial health at risk.
In a more detailed sense it’s important to know how much you’re willing to spend for each customer or lead. This changes depending on the profitability of your particular product or service.
It will never make sense to advertise a $20 item that requires $21 worth of ad spend to sell.
The true cost of customer acquisition can be hard to predict prior to advertising, but having a firm understanding of what the limit of that cost can be is what allows you to understand whether to stick with your marketing strategy or not.
Cash flow is fundamental to a healthy business and if you don’t have that sorted, you’re better served addressing that issue before approaching a digital advertiser.
“I’ve Got All Four Of These Things, What Next?”
At Ladder & Co we believe in adding value and meeting people where they’re at, so we can help get them to where they want to be.
If you’ve got a clearly defined product or service, a landing page for it, a willingness and capacity to grow your business and a sustainable marketing budget, we’d love to hear from you.
And if you don’t, we’d love to hear from you too and see if there’s a way we can help get them into place for you.
After all, if your presence doesn’t add value, your absence won’t make a difference.
