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Hey guys, every dollar that's wasted on ads that don't work is a dollar that could be going in to fuel your business. So if you're ready to stop the leaks in your ad spend, let's jump in together right now. Okay. Ad campaigns can be a gold mine or just as quickly they can be a money pit. And I can't tell you how many people I talk to on a weekly basis that feel like they have just burned money on advertising and gotten zero or very little result, and it can be incredibly frustrating. The difference, of course, is strategy and what I'm always telling people, which is great, creative and messaging is the cornerstone to doing a good job. So today we're going to cover six ways to stop wasting ad spend and start making every single dollar count. So let's start with targeting component of the advertising business, and even retail customers can go right into Facebook or Google's advertising dashboards and get all geeked out on targeting and everything.

And here's what I'll say to you, and this is a warning that I tell everybody. Targeting is not going to fix bad ads, bad offers, bad creative or bad messaging. So you got to start there and you have to do a good job with that stuff first before you can start targeting. Now, one way to limit budget, and this is kind of the flip that you might want to approach targeting with targeting is not necessarily where you spend money. Think of targeting and apply it in a way where you don't spend money. You see how that flips that around, and that also clears your head about what's important about your ads, which is the creative, the messaging, the copywriting, the pictures, the video, whatever the format is, that stuff's got to be on point. And think of your targeting more as is an exclusionary process, not inclusive.

So yeah, you're going after people, but at the same time, think about all the people that you're getting rid of by using targeting. So you're going to use data to define your ideal customer, and in the same token, you're going to use data to get rid of all the people that are probably not good customers for your business age, location, interests and all these other specifics can be tapped into. But again, it's not going to fix crappy messages, crappy offers and bad creative or just poorly worded, unclear, uncon, concise and unactionable ads that you put out into the market. So don't get frustrated and start blaming, targeting when things don't work. First, go back to your creative and start cross testing. Next, let's talk about what the whole thing is. Don't just advertise without each ad having a purpose. If it's to get clicks, leads or sales, then it better have something enticing a lot of intrigue or a really juicy offer on it, or it's just not going to generate that kind of activity.

Or it could be an awareness ad or a reputation ad or a brand narrative, brand control ad. But just make sure that when you start out, you know what the clear goal is, what the campaign's goal is, what the focus is, and that'll drive the type of KPIs that you're hoping to look for. And then you can monitor the stuff that's important and not get bogged down in numbers that aren't important for that campaign. Either way, you want to make sure that everything is measurable. The next thing I'll say is not all platforms are created equally. We can go to all these different places now to advertise. We can go to TikTok, we can go to Facebook, Instagram. Google's ads are keep evolving and you have PPC, but they also offer some display in there. And of course, one of my favorites is YouTube and YouTube retargeting because we can get a lot of impact with video ads.

And I've always said video ads are kind of the big hammer in the advertising world. So if you want to swing for the fences, yeah, it's a pain in the butt to make 'em, but they are totally worth it if you can do it well because they're so memorable and leave such a powerful impact with our buyers. So either way, you have to make sure that you understand where your ideal target audience is hanging out and what kind of media they're consuming. Are they readers and researchers? Are they thumb scrolling, doom scrolling teenagers, et cetera, et cetera. And you got to figure out how to get formatted ads on the platforms where your audience is aggregating and connect the dots there to make sure that that also supports all the other things you can do with targeting. But again, even if you're on the right platform, even if you think you're getting in front of the right people, if you don't have a good message, you're completely in no man's land.

Okay, let's remember also that small changes can have a big impact, and I mean down to almost one word, especially on call to action type words and so forth. So you're going to want to make sure that you're testing your headlines, your images, your calls to action, and even color treatment and so forth inside one set of targeting. And of course, it can be kind of frustrating and it seems like it's a slow process, but we really don't want to trade out or change out more than one or and or two variables at once. Don't just start swatting around out of frustration, changing everything because you don't really know what it was that you did that resulted in different outcomes. So you got to be careful with just blowing the whole thing up and starting over again because you don't actually learn how to become a better advertiser in doing that.

So we want to make one change at a time, ideally or small changes at a time, and then move things forward. One of the things we do here for our advertising clients is when we do creative, we do lots and we immediately start with sometimes dozens of different ad variations, and I mean different pictures, different copywriting, different colors, different layouts and so forth. And it's something we're able to do, but I would certainly encourage you to start with that because you can learn a lot by spraying a lot of creative right away and seeing what the audience is starting to respond to. So if you can handle it and you're willing to do that kind of heavy lifting, go for it. Either way, make sure that you're willing to test because that's where you start to save money over the long term. I would also add that advertising is kind of like a tricky business because we all hope that we're going to make one ad click, one button and we're going to make a dollar.

That's what the whole thing is like. It's like magic. We just send an ad, we make money, we send an ad, make money, and there's plenty of people online that are pitching that, selling that and selling systems and doing all this stuff. And I'll just caution you, that's not realistic. It's not probably what you want to hear either, but the reality is sometimes you're dealing with a lot of money, and in case the stuff that we're doing here that is always true and caution is the name of the game, being thorough, testing, watching everything on every 24 hours, not just walking away for a week and smoke $3,000 or something silly. So you got to really be audit in the beginning. And then when it starts to get better and you get indications of data that is in your favor and you're getting the KPIs moving in the right direction, things can get a little easier and then they can start to run for quite some time.

But in the beginning, especially if you're just starting out, don't think you're going to just pop an ad walk away and suddenly you're going to just see this pile of money in your bank account, not that simple. And really to do it well, you have to make a dedication to being consistent. I always say that one ad done with a massive budget or one ad here and there is not going to build a business. There are big national brands and multinational companies. You see do a big special super ad campaign, super Bowl or something like that. Okay, great. That's not our business. That's not most businesses. And that's also on top of thousands and thousands of other campaigns and dollars they've spent to raise awareness and become present in the marketplace in whatever way that they want to. And if they do a big pop like that, it's like an add-on deal, but big pops like that are not where regular people started, where regular people start.

And it's certainly not where those businesses started either by the time they get to Super Bowl ad or something spectacular like that, they have done years and years and years of consistent market messaging to get to the point where the business can sustain that kind of expense, but also enjoy a big pop on top of the big foundation that they've created from years of being consistent. So approach your business even no matter how small of a scale you are on in that way in that you're going to build consistency, ritual, you're going to get good at it on a weekly basis, daily basis, monthly basis, quarterly basis. And then year over year, you're going to build something up and you're going to keep messaging into the audience segments and the targeted demographics that you want to because people only buy when they have a problem and they don't have a problem every single day.

So you want to be there when the problem strikes, when the pain becomes unbearable and they are ready to part with some money and engage you with product or service or whatever it is that you're into. Okay, and that leads us to the next sort of reality that we all have to face is that most people do not convert or purchase on the first visit or click or interaction with a brand or an ad. So we always recommend that you use retargeting ads to bring them back and get that top of mind space occupied so that you can then close the deal on the third, fourth, fifth, and sometimes could be even the 10th touch. And I personally can say that a lot of things that I purchase on my own in my personal life, I kind of wait. I kind of shop. I kind of don't want it.

I kind of do want it. I kind of think about it, and all along vendors like Amazon and stuff are retargeting me with a little thingy, little picture reminding me that I was interested and so forth. And it just starts taking up that mental space and then whatever shifts or I decide that it's going to fit into my life, and then I'll make that purchase. And we're all kind of that way, and so are your buyers. So as an advertiser in a business who wants to earn more customers, we are responsible duty bound to stay in front of our customers until they are ready to buy. We can't just assume that they remember. We can't assume that there isn't a competitor trying to get the deal. Also, we can't assume that they're super nice and they're going to call us back someday when they want to.

It just doesn't work like that. We have to be in front of them and ready to help them when they need the help that our product or service provides. Okay? So retargeting is the best way to ensure that you're cold advertising and any other efforts that you may be making, events going out, referrals, talking to your customers, getting traffic. However it is always retarget for your business as your first step in advertising because it's going to provide the safety net to all the other things that you're investing in. And that goes down to even the sign on your building that people drive by and see. They see the sign, then they look you up, then they go to your website and then they get a retargeting ad for the next couple of weeks. It reminds them, come and eat my donuts. Come and eat my donuts, come and eat my donuts.

And finally, that day on the way to work, when they pass your place again, I'm going to go try a donut. So it's just that simple. It doesn't matter what the traffic source is, retargeting is the first piece to start with so that all of your traffic is getting automatically followed up with. And what's better than that? As a business owner, everybody wishes they had salespeople or some sort of mechanism in their business that automatically followed around their prospects. Retargeting is that mechanism. So of course, we want to start there. So stop wasting your ad spend and start seeing real results by targeting smarter testing, often analyzing your performance, working on copywriting, working on creative, working on your offers, your deals, your price modeling and your messaging. And you will make every dollar work a lot harder with your advertising. If you think I'm crazy or if you think all of this is bs, go ahead and hit me up in the comments. I love to talk about this stuff. It's all we do every day here. And if not, I'll see you back on YouTube on the next one.