3 Mistakes I Keep Seeing Small Businesses Make When it Comes to Social Media Ads

0:00 – 4:14 — My Backstory
4:14 – 9:48 — 3 Mistakes SMBs Make When it Comes to Ads

Transcript

For those of you who are not familiar with my story, I started in Jim’s Antennas — 13 years as a franchise — and then I decided to switch to something else. Didn’t know what I was going to do, so I spent three years doing a full-time business degree. Did really well.

I thought my scores would actually carry me through my transition, but no, I came out, I couldn’t really find a paying job in the marketing world. So at the ripe age of 34, I started again as an unpaid intern.

Okay, so I bounced around a little bit until I found somebody who would hire me, would train me, and actually turned out to be like a lifetime mentor who eventually helped me start my business in 2018. And yeah, we ended up slowly growing over time. So currently, the business is doing well and doing good.

One of the things that I really wanted to implement in my business was to make sure that I hire good people and I pay them well. So as you can see, a lot of the people have been with me for about three to four years.

Yeah, like they’re feeding their family, paying for degrees for their siblings, going on holidays, buying properties, moving out of bad neighborhoods.

So yeah, and in this time also I started a family and got my place at Menai. I really wanted to establish my presence on the ground in South Sydney for my business.

My biggest differentiator is I’ve spent about 16,000 hours on the front lines managing ad accounts personally. So my pitch has always been: why are you working with juniors when you can work with the agency owner, right?

Because in this industry, there’s a lot of overpromising and underdelivering — and most of that is caused by people palming off their work to juniors, subcontractors, and overseas. I didn’t like that, because the advertising dollar is really important and it’s the lifeblood of a business.

Okay, so when you spend around 16,000 hours on the front lines, you get to see a lot of mistakes — a lot of recurring mistakes — from small businesses. And that’s what I’m here to talk about today, to help the room avoid those costly mistakes.

Okay, so that’s going to be the thing. I told AI to generate an image of someone handing over their hard-earned money for some shiny object — so it’s probably not a good idea, and what we should do instead.

Okay, so last time I was here we talked a lot about Google Ads. So this time I want to go into more social media ads.

Let’s clarify what social media ads are, right? So when you’re on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and you’re scrolling — every third or fourth post, yeah, you see a “sponsored” logo up there. So that’s an ad.

Okay, so that’s very different to a TV ad where everyone just sees the same thing. The ads on your feed are custom only to you.

And if you’re wondering, “Well, why am I seeing that ad?” — your suspicions are probably true. Because social media apps can hear what you’re saying, they know what websites you’ve been to, your purchase activities, what websites you’re going to, your search history, who you hang around with — and they put you in a category.

Then the more they know about you, they put you in a subcategory, or more of a subcategory.

So that’s on one side. As a small business owner, they are diligently pulling the knobs they can pull to target that specific category. They’re working on the ads and targeting and all that.

Underneath all that gloss — all social media, Google, all the platforms — is an auction house, right? So businesses are trying to bid for that subcategory, and then whoever the highest bidder is, that’s how you end up seeing the ad — because someone bid for you.

Okay, so yeah, that’s what it comes down to.

One of the mistakes that I think people make — small businesses especially — is they focus too much on what they should put in the ad.

As a small business owner, everyone here who’s thinking about doing social media, who has done it, who hasn’t worked or is still doing it but thinks they can do better — they’re all thinking about:

“What should I say in the ad?”
“How long should it be?”
“What should I wear?”

And that’s really not the focus. There are three big mistakes I keep seeing small businesses make.

The first one is that they’re not respecting the entire journey. Social media ads do not work in isolation. It has a digital ecosphere, which means — where’s Alan, Mr Digital — the website is a huge thing because the ad has to go somewhere.

If your website is a converting website, it’s the best-paid salesperson in the world. Works 24/7.

Okay, social media and organic marketing — people are not going to let you into their house until they see the whole spectrum. They want to hear what you sound like, see what you do, and the ad’s not going to tell them all that.

So what they might do is see an ad a few times, go to the website, save something, capture email — which is one of the most underrated marketing channels.

So you’ve got to respect the entire journey of the customer.

Okay, second mistake most small businesses make when they start doing advertising — they are not aware of the most important number that comes with advertising.

There’s a lot of numbers flying around. The most important number you need to know is: **max cost per cold lead**.

How much can you pay for a fresh lead?

Okay, we all know we want to pay as little as possible, right? But remember, guys — it’s an auction system.

For somebody who has a highly recurring, profitable business — you might be able to pay a bit more.

And you say, “No, I don’t want to do that.” Okay — but your competitor will. And they’ll win that ad. And they’ll convert. And then you lose out on the business. And the spiral continues.

So, max cost per cold lead is a number you’ve got to remember.

Once you figure these two things out, what’s going to happen is that it’s going to stop you from what I call **random acts of marketing**. You do a bit of this, a bit of that, and just end up failing.

Another thing that happens when you work these two things out — the strategy just miraculously appears. It comes out by itself because you should be able to know:

– how many clients you need,
– how much you’re going to pay for them,
– and how long before you can get them.

And it’ll stop you from reaching for the shiny object when someone markets to you — because it’s very hard to trick you if you already know these two things and know the number.

Okay, once you’ve got that sorted — the next thing is going to be the third mistake. Now we can talk about creating advertising.

It’s the **lack of a unique hook**.

Unique hook is something that only matters to your business — and that’s what’s going to help you cut through all the noise.

If you have a unique hook — you’re ready for ads.

If you’ve got the website — you’re ready for ads.

So what should go in the ad?

Okay, I’m going to give you some formulas — as close as I can to like a formula.

The best type of ad is going to be **proof**.

Proof that you can do the work. No one wants to be a guinea pig.

So proof that you can get the results that you claim you can get.

I’m going to use George’s example. Out of everyone, George always has the best pitch — just comes up here and talks about: “I sold this place for 300 grand more, just two weeks before the place next door couldn’t get that price. If you want to see how much money you can make from your property, come give us a call.”

That’s ironclad. Bulletproof.

If you can get a bunch of that into an ad — you’ve got a winner.

If you don’t have solid proof, the second best thing you can do is a formula called **teach and pitch**.

Basically, you rock up, solve a quick problem in about 30 seconds, give a quick tip, solve a problem, and then pitch your services. You go, “Look, that’s how we do it. We’ve got a lot of other things happening. If you’re interested, come give us a call.”

So that’s the second formula.

If you can’t work out a proof, if you’re new, if you don’t have proof, and you’re not really good at teach-and-pitch — the last thing you can do is what our copywriters will tell you: it’s the **PAS** — the formula you see everywhere.

Talk about the **Problem**, **Agitate** it a little more, then **Solve** it.

As you can see — the types of ads, as you go down the list, are less and less unique to you.

If you have proof — no one can duplicate it.
The second one — a little easier.
The third one — everybody’s doing it, so it’s going to be harder to get customers.

Right?

So if you’re going to have any big takeaway from my talk today — it’s this:

**Work your long-range marketing towards gathering the best type of proof you can get.**

Whether that be a case study, a video testimonial — something like that.

Yeah, majority of what I do is the actual management. So it’s not like tips or consultation — we do it for you.

When you don’t have proper management, online advertising is like a pokie machine. Money goes in — you don’t know what happens. Sometimes it comes out, sometimes it doesn’t.

But with a proper manager at the helm, it’s more like a vending machine. Yes, you pay some money — but it’s predictable what comes out. You can turn it on and off as you please.

So yeah — thank you.