$1,000,000 spent on this simple ad strategy

Summary

over a million dollars spent on online ads in the last decade. positive ROI. one strategy. here it is.

1. why most ads fail. owners go straight for the kill. “buy my thing.” nothing personal, nothing earned, just a pitch. and then they’re shocked when it doesn’t convert. the platform doesn’t reward that. neither does the audience.

2. think about your favorite influencer for a second. you bought the supplement they recommended, or the watch, or the shoes. you weren’t tricked. you were inside a long term relationship of know like and trust before they ever recommended anything. that’s the mechanism. that’s what online advertising can mimic on a budget without you having to actually become a full time influencer.

3. the strategy is called 70 20 10. three campaigns. works on Facebook, Instagram, Google, anywhere. 70% of your budget on brand awareness or content. push a piece of writing or video that you’re genuinely proud of out to a cold audience.

4. 20% of the budget on retargeting that 70%. anyone who clicked the article or watched the video sees a follow up. and the follow up is still not a sale. it’s a value exchange. a free e-book, sample workouts, a checklist, in exchange for an email address.

5. 10% of the budget on the people who opted in to the 20%. now you can retarget them with something to buy. usually not your most expensive offer. an entry point. maybe a free evaluation. the relationship is now warm enough that a buy ask makes sense.

6. notice the math. only 10% of the spend asks for money. 90% gives things away for free. that’s the cheat code. you’re essentially running an influencer playbook with a paid traffic engine instead of years of organic following.

7. this is a long game. early ROI may look negative. you have to keep running it until the system is producing. the rest of your strategy adapts. you’ll tweak percentages, swap content, refine targeting. but the shape is the same and it’s been the same for a decade. if you spent $500 this month and need to make $1,000 this month, you’re not ready to advertise yet. fix the cash position first. try harder.

Transcript

why direct response ads fail

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. Today I’m going to give you a simple ad strategy I’ve been using for nearly a decade, have put millions of dollars behind and have a positive ROI on. What’s up ladies and gentlemen? My name is Jerred Moon.

This is the Better Human Business Podcast. Today I’m going to be talking about online advertising. I have done a lot of online advertising. It wasn’t long after I got started in doing online business that I started to dabble in online advertising. I just thought that is very interesting with the, all these social media platforms coming online with Instagram and Facebook and Google that you could spend a couple of dollars and get your message in front of a lot of people.

Now you, these days you do need to spend a good amount of money to get your message in front of more people. But my strategy hasn’t changed for nearly a decade. And that’s why I always think it’s funny when I see these new strategies or new ways to go about online advertising or business because I’ve just always kept it the same.

And so first let me tell you what everyone’s doing wrong in online advertising. And if you’re doing, this is where you need all those fancy strategies and you have to be really good at marketing and copy and like all of that. And that is if you are trying to advertise just to make money and you might be thinking what’s the point of advertising?

That’s what an advertisement does. It makes people money, right? That’s not really how social media advertising works. And that’s why everyone gets their ass handed to them when they go to try online advertising. They’re like, oh, I want more appointments on my schedule or I want to sell more of my programs or I want people to sign up for my membership.

how influencers actually work

So I’m going to put an ad together that says, hey, go sign up for my thing. And then I’m going to be confused as hell when people don’t sign up for my thing. This is what I see every online entrepreneur do or anyone doing, let’s just say online. You don’t have to be an online entrepreneur. You can be brick and mortar.

But this is what I see every entrepreneur do who dabbles in online advertising. They go straight for the kill, doesn’t work out. And then they have a great story about why online advertising did not work for them or social media advertising did not work for them. So that doesn’t work. And that’s very hard to master.

But let’s talk about what does work. So think about your favorite influencer. And if you’re like, I don’t follow any influencers, you probably do. Just look at everything you own today. Do you have a supplement in your pantry that you bought because someone you feel, but you’ve only ever seen on YouTube or Instagram or Facebook, do you have a supplement in your pantry because they recommended it?

Or do you have, are you wearing a whoop because Patrick Mahomes has one? Are you wearing a garment because your favorite endurance athlete has one? Are you wearing a certain type of shoes because someone online recommended it? These influencers, whether they’re just a straight up influencer or they’re just a very popular person on social media that you follow, they make suggestions, right?

And you feel like you can trust them because you’ve been following them for a long time. You see a lot of behind the scenes of their life. You feel like they’re very authentic and real. And so when they come out with a recommendation, you feel like, hey, they’ve probably done the research. I align with this person’s values.

I’m going to buy what they suggested. And I’m not saying you get tricked or duped. And I’m also not saying that person is not authentic and they’re not who they say they are. They very well could be. But the reason these people with large social media followings can just recommend something and you go buy it or I go buy it is because we feel like we know them, we like them, and we can trust them.

We feel like we can trust them. You’ve probably heard of those three things before, KLT, know, and trust. That’s the goal if you want to sell things, sell things anywhere, and specifically online. You have to foster some sort of relationship to get people to know and trust you to be able to make selling your product or service that much easier.

the 70 20 10 strategy

And so if you think about all they’ve done in creating these brands is you get to know them. You feel like you can trust them. Like I said, you align with them. And so you’re willing to buy the things that they recommend. You just feel, you know what? That’s good. I trust this person. I’m going to buy what they say.

And that’s fine. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it. But if you don’t want to be a big influencer, how do we still take those lessons, that idea, that concept, and put it into online advertising? Now this is where I get into the strategy. And it’s the one I’ve used for a long time. I teach to people, and it just always works.

Even when Facebook had this Armageddon style blocking of their platform from like Apple and all this stuff last year, I still just use this simple strategy and barely noticed any problems at all. And that’s because it’s a very robust strategy of getting people to know and trust you and take the next steps.

So here’s a strategy. It’s called the 70-20-10 strategy. So what you’ll do is you’ll end up setting up three different campaigns, and this can be across any platform. It could be Instagram, Facebook, Google. I’ve tested it everywhere. It works everywhere. Seventy percent of your budget is going to be just towards either like brand awareness or content.

I normally recommend content. So if you have a good Instagram video or you have a good YouTube video or you have a really great article on your blog that has been shared a lot and really resonates with people, that’s your content piece. You’re going to take 70 percent of your budget, and you’re going to push this content piece out to an audience that you feel will vibe with that piece of content.

This is getting people to know you. Now you can also get people to like and trust you through an article. If you put an article or video, if you put enough of your personality into it and those kind of things. So that’s 70 percent of the budget right there. Now 20 percent of the budget is going to be retargeting that 70 percent.

90% of the budget is giving

So let’s say a hundred people have clicked on your article that you’re putting 70 percent of your budget towards. Now you’re going to take 20 percent of your budget in a new campaign, and you’re going to retarget anyone who’s clicked on your article. So you’re going to retarget those hundred people who’ve seen it, and you’re going to be retargeting them still with nothing to sell them.

You’re just going to be retargeting them with something to give them. So this would be like an e-book opt-in or any kind of an exchange for their contact information. That’s 20 percent of your budget. Now let’s say of the 100 people who visited the article, let’s say 30 of them opted in for this next thing.

So a hundred people read the article, 20 percent of your budget is going towards retargeting these hundred people, and of those 100 people that get retargeted into 20 percent of your budget, 30 percent of them opt in for your thing. Okay, so they’re already in your ecosystem now. You can follow up with them, communicate with them.

Now you’re going to take your 10 percent of your budget, and you’re going to retarget those 30 people with something to buy. Typically it’s not going to be your most expensive thing, it’ll just be something that they can buy. And this might be dependent on your business too. Maybe you don’t have something to offer that they can just buy right away.

And so in this case it might be like a free evaluation or something like that. It might still be a free thing, but it’s moving the relationship further. So if I were to give an example of this, say for Garage Gym Athlete, I’d have a badass article going out, then I might have an opt-in for sample workouts, and then the final 10 percent there, I would be presenting a free trial for people to sign up for.

But do you see that through that process, only 10 percent of my budget is asking for somebody to buy something. And 90 percent of my budget is just getting people to know and trust me. I’m giving things away for free, I’m giving away sample workouts for free, I’m taking time to write an amazing article, I’m giving that away for free.

This is what you have to build. So you’re essentially taking what works in an influencer strategy of getting people to know and trust you and then just take the next steps with them. That’s why influencers work. It’s taking that idea and that strategy and putting it to work in a paid ad strategy. Because it’s very hard to legitimately become an influencer unless you just truly want to do that.

play it long, measure the system

And if you’re not super passionate about it, it’s not just going to happen. And so I prefer to spend my money growing the business as opposed to my time in trying to become an influencer. So that’s what I would do or that’s what I do with online advertising. Give away a lot of stuff for free and then you try and get people to move through the next logical steps with you.

And I’ve been using this for years. Years and years. The same strategy and it works very well but you have to have a long term mindset because you might have negative ROI on your campaigns but you just have to keep running them long enough until where it all works out. If you are the person who’s I spent $500 this month, I need to make $1,000 this month, you’re probably not in a position to be advertising in the first place.

It’s a very long term strategy. It’s a strategy to get people to know and trust you and you can tweak these percentages over time. Maybe decrease on the content side, increase on retargeting. But this is where I recommend most people should start if you have a $50 a day budget, $100 a day budget, $10 a day budget.

This is how you should break down your ad spend. And this has been working for a very long time. So if you want to give that strategy a try, I highly recommend it. It’s been very fruitful and beneficial for all the companies that I’ve run. And if you have any questions about that, feel free to let me know.

Email me, jaredbetterhumanbusiness.com. Any questions at all. I actually have a good amount of questions I want to record some more episodes on. But if you have any further questions about this specific ad strategy or strategies in general, jaredbetterhumanbusiness.com. You can send me an email and I’ll get to your questions on the show.

So until next time, try harder.