I want to run ads: Where do I start?
Since this blog was created, I would say that the most frequent question that we see people asking is: “I want to run ads, where do I start?”
Well, that depends on your situation. That’s why we created this short guide, but before diving into it, have you read the book “Breakthrough advertising”? It is considered by many as the best marketing book of all times. Here the author (Eugene Schwartz) points out that there are 5 levels of awareness that you audiences may have, and you can use those 5 levels to decide what’s the place to get started for you. With that said, let’s gets started:
1) Level 1: Product/service aware.
These are the people who know you and / or your company, and who know what you offer. This is the easiest audience to convert into clients, since people usually buy for those they like and know, and as you already know, you should simply emphasize the offer you have.
Here’s 3 simple ways to target them:
A) Put ads on Google Adwords targeting the keywords of your company name (especially if your business is well known)
B) If you business an email list, send a promotion to that list.
C) If you have a website that receives a good amount of traffic, and you have a FB pixel in installed on your site, you can run ads to those who visited your site.
It is very simple. Once you have created these audiences all you have to do is make offers to them (for example, if you sell real estate, a good ad here would be to tell them about a new residential you are promoting and mention the payment facilities they can get on that project).
2) Level 2: Solution Aware:
Here the public knows about the different options they have to solve their problem, but still doesn’t know the specific solution that you offer, and they are still in the process of deciding which is the best solution.
A good way to approach this audience us by using the Lookalike Audiences from FB. These are people who share at least 6 points in common with your list of clients / prospects. For example, if you create a Lookalike Audience of 5% based on your list of clients in the US, that means that this audience is composed of 5% of the US population that most resembles your buyers.
On this level your emphasis should be put int what you’re offering (if you sell real state you could announce a visit to an Open House, to put an example).
3) Level 3: Problem Aware:
This is where the thing starts to become competitive. This is the audience that is aware of the problem they have, they have actively started to look for solution to their problem, but still haven’t found a solution.
If your business or site are new and you can’t target the audiences of the 2 previous levels, then this is a good place to start, because although there may be more competition here, there is also a wider audience to go to.
So, how can you approach this audience?
Simple: you can start your ad by asking a question like “Do you have a problem?” And then indicate that you have the solution.
An example of this would be that if you sell real estate, and your audience is aware of their problem, which is not being able to find an apartment in a specific zone, like let’s say, Manhattan, you can start your ad by saying something like “Looking for an apartment in Manhattan? You’re not alone”… and then offer them a solution (like an exclusive listing of apartments in that area).
4) Level 4: Desire aware
These are the people who know they have the desire to get something, but who have not yet actively started to research about how to obtain it. The disadvantage of addressing this audience from the beginning, depending on what you offer, maybe people are not in a hurry to get it, while the good thing about is that it has a higher scaling potential than the people from the previous levels.
So, if you want to start here, what’s the best way to approach them?
Simple: Start your ad by mentioning the desire they have. To better understand this, I will give an example: Let’s say you sell houses near the beach, and that your audience is made out of people near that area that have a general interest in real estate investing. A good way to grab their attention would be to start the advertisement by saying something like “Investing on the Beach has never been so easy…”
5) Level 5: Unaware
This is the last level. Here the people here have a problem, but they are not aware of it.
The latter is what makes this the most difficult level of all. On the one hand it is the one that has the most potential to scale, but on the other it is the level that requires more creativity. Here you need to use a totally different strategy than in the previous levels. Here, since people are not aware of the problem they have, they are not interested in the benefits of what they offer (talking about benefits to this audience would be like talking about the benefits of an insecticide to someone who does not know they have insects in their home) .
So, how do you approach this audience? By mentioning the main wishes and desires and mentioning a trend that may attract a lot of people at a large scale, and then link that tendency to a problem they have, from which you have the solution.
An example of this can be seen in a previous article we made. It was called “Are Real Estate Agents Becoming Obsolete? This Is What Experts Are Saying”, in which we link a huge tendency with the problem that people had, which made this article to very quickly become viral. Now, this level is by far the most difficult of all, so there’s a lot of things that could be applied here, but that would be the topic for another article.
So, in a few words, where to start?
Everything depends on your situation and budget. It is always easier to start from the highest levels of alert and go down as you grow.
If you already have an established online presence, maybe you should start immediately with levels 1, 2 and 3. While if you are starting to promote yourself online, the best place to start may be level 3 (the people who are alerts of your problems). Keeping all of this in mind not only could help you succeed faster, but could also save you a lot of money by avoiding blowing on your budgets on the hardest place to advertise when you’re starting out.