MBA2530 How to Get Started with Paid Marketing in 2024

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It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell rewards, free shipping, premium support, and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster. And with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals. Hey, welcome back to the Hundred Dollar MBA show. In today's lesson, you will learn how to get started with paid marketing in 2024. Whether you have a budget of $5,000 a month or even $500 a month, I'm going to show you three effective strategies to kickstart your paid marketing efforts. But first, did you know that businesses that use paid advertising see an average of 200% return on investment? This is according to a study that was done by Wordstream. And this just shows you how effective paid marketing strategies can really boost your revenue in a big way. But before I get into the strategies, I gotta talk about the mental piece. Because if you're watching this and you're like, Omar, I don't have $5,000. I don't even have $500 to invest in marketing. What do I do? How do I get started? I've been there and I know exactly how that feels and I know that mentality. I know what's going on in your head right now. And my advice to you is to get out of that cycle for a very long time. I said to myself, I can't afford paid marketing. I gotta find free ways to do it. I gotta do organic traffic. I gotta do, you know, content marketing. I gotta try to do it slowly. Somehow. I don't have the money for it, Right? But instead of telling yourself, I can't afford it, ask yourself, how can I afford it? What can you do in your business so that you can make some extra profit so you can reinvest that profit into marketing so you can have a marketing budget? Is there a new product or service that you have that you can launch and make some more revenue? Maybe just simply increasing your prices will give you more margin so that you can make more money to invest into marketing. But not having any budget whatsoever or not reinvesting any of our profits in marketing just means you are not prioritizing marketing, period. Just be honest with yourself. Because at the end of the day, if you're not willing to reinvest your profits into your business to grow, then you're going to stagnate. You're going to die eventually. You just can't stay the same place in business. Either you're growing or you're dying. So you got to be on the offense constantly. And that's where marketing comes in. So sorry about that. Tough love there. But it's the truth. I needed to hear that. And once I got that through my head and started taking accountability and started feeling, okay, I need to find a way to make a little bit extra money, make a little bit more profit, put some money aside. Even if I don't have enough profit this month to make a significant dent in my marketing or paid advertising efforts, if I save a profit for two or three months in a row, I will have enough to get started. Okay. And many of the strategies I'm going to share today don't need a lot of money. You can start with as little as $500 a month. So let's get into it. So like I said, there are three options you can start with when it comes to paid marketing in 2024. These are the three I recommend. I'm going to start with the most impactful one, most bang for your buck in terms of how you're going to get for your dollar. Okay, so the first one is maybe not an obvious one, maybe one that you're not thinking about, or not the one that most people think about when they think about paid advertising or paid marketing. Most people think paid ads, right? But my number one choice when it comes to reinvesting in my business is hiring a copywriter. Copywriting is so important in your business. It's the words that you convey. It's the communication. If you can communicate properly to your audience, you can get them to buy, Right? It's Your way of selling the value of what you offer. Okay. A professional copywriter can significantly improve your content everywhere we're talking about, from your website, from your social profiles, from your tweets, from your blogs, from your email marketing, from your video scripts, everything. Okay? And they can really improve your conversions on all those fronts. So you want more followers, then obviously your social media content is going to have to up its game and a copy operator can help you with that. You want more views on YouTube? Well, the script, the words, the actual content you're putting out there in the world. If it gets better, you're going to get more follow more subscribers, I should say, or more views and more people looking for you, right? More thumbs up. He always tell you a thumbs up. Right? You will get a lot more out of your money. You're going to get a lot more conversion. Right? Think about email marketing. If you write the right email in the right way to the right audience, you can convert so much better. And by the way, just a slight improvement in conversion makes all the difference. So for example, if you send an email and the email converts in terms of an offer at 3% and a copywriter comes in, cleans up some things, improves your copy and takes it from 3% to 9%, you just tripled your money on one hire. When we started the hundred dollar MBA back in 2013, I wrote all the copy. I was the copywriter. Now I wasn't bad and I did a pretty good job, but I wasn't world class. I wasn't one of the best copywriters out there in my niche or in my market. By hiring a copywriter though, it really changed things for us, really created a voice, a cohesive brand, and it was much easier to communicate the value we offer when we have somebody else doing it right. When somebody else understands what you're trying to pull off, trying to do and understands how you want to do it, and then they do it for you in their own unique way in terms of, in their own style of conversion. How to communicate your message in an effective way. It makes all the difference. Why? Because it's very hard for you to wear many hats, especially when you're trying to grow the business. You need to run the business, you need to bring sales, you got to oversee your team, you need to recruit people, you need to lead, you need to make sure that the finances are in order. There's so many things you got to do and you got to write great copy. You're asking for too much, right? You're asking for Too much for yourself. So really, and I'm just talking to my former self, that's really what I was doing. But once I hired a copywriter to really take a look at all our copy and improve everything, everything just leveled up. And all of a sudden our business, our brand, just took another leap in its growth. So how to implement this tactic? Well, number one, I think you should find a copywriter that has experience in your niche. Okay, so for example, how do we find Connor who wrote our copy for the 100 MBA and webinar ninja for many years? Well, I knew other blogs that had great copy and I reached out to those blog owners, some of them I knew personally and said, hey, who's writing your copy? This is great. Are you doing it? Are you getting some help? Are you getting somebody to write articles for you? And then sooner or later I found Connor. Connor was a referral and I saw some more of his work and I realized, okay, I think this can work. I think this person has what it takes and has what we need to write good copy. So you can find copy that you like, follow blogs, follow great writing, great sales letters, great websites, and you can see who's behind it. Reach out to the person that's behind it and see if you can get an introduction. I recommend you try to find somebody who's written for your niche before because they're going to understand your world a little bit better, be more acquainted, and it'll be easier for them to write compelling copy. So for example, let's say you're in the music industry. Let's say you're a musician and you teach other people how to play the piano, for example, right? So you want to find a copywriter that has written for musicians or in the music industry. Somehow in that world it's not actually that hard because there's a lot of parallels. You don't have to find somebody who's written things about the piano, but somebody who maybe wrote copy for a site that teaches saxophone or somebody who's wrote copy for a website for a store that sells musical equipment. I found it just easier to reach out to these businesses, these websites, and ask the person running it, hey, I love the copy. Can you give me a referral? Who has helped you with that copy? I'm looking to do the same. It's much easier to do this when you go to somebody who's a non referral competitor, right? Somebody who's not doing exactly what you do. So like I said, like a music store's website or somebody who's teaching the saxophone, not the piano makes it easier. I just find this strategy to be so much more effective and honestly, easier than posting a job listing on a job board on LinkedIn or whatever it might be. All right, so hiring a copywriter, highly effective, is going to give you higher conversions on all the areas you communicate on social media, email, videos, whatever it might be. So super powerful. Second strategy, meta retargeting ads. What are meta retargeting ads? Well, if you don't know, retargeting ads are ads that show up based on your activity on the web. So I'm sure if you noticed this before, you've been on a website. Let's say you're looking for a new shampoo, and you found a shampoo website that has some really cool natural ingredients. And then you leave the website, you know, you're thinking about it, and all of a sudden you see ads for that same shampoo on Facebook or on Instagram. You might even see ads of other types of shampoo. This is called retargeting. How is this done? Well, Facebook has got something called a Facebook pixel. It's a little piece of code, and it's on the website of the business that you visited. Right, the shampoo store. And it knows that you're on the website, so it can send you ads or display ads to you on Facebook to remind you of their brand. This is called retargeting. It's highly effective. But if you're on a limited budget, let's say you only have $500 to spend on marketing, then one of the most effective ways to use retargeting when you're on a limited budget, let's say $500, is to retarget a specific page on your website. My advice is to tell Facebook, hey, when you're setting up the ad, anybody who's visited my checkout page, I want you to put an ad, but don't show this ad to anybody who's been to my confirmation page. Okay? So confirmation page is the page they see after they check out, meaning they're a customer. So don't show them an ad when they're ready bought. Okay? So this is going to give you the most bang for your buck, meaning that it's going to take somebody who's really a warm lead. Somebody who's in your checkout has got things in their cart, right? They're ready to buy. All right? They're. They're not thinking anymore. Okay. And you want to turn them into a customer. They're super hot right now and a good way to put them over the edge just to remind them of their purchase through an ad, right? And some people even go even further and say, hey, I saw that you're on our website. Or hey, get this discount code, 10% off your first order. And that way it kind of pushes them over the edge. Here's the user coupon code. I see the coupon code, I'm going to go back, click on the button, go to my car, put the coupon code and check out. So retargeting is really useful because you're going to get so much value because you're just basically taking people that are just about ready to buy and making them customers. This is going to give you a return on investment on your ad dollars quickly. According to AdRoll, retargeting ads can lead up to 70% higher chance of conversion compared to regular ads. And the reason why is because they're already familiar with your brand, they've been on your website, they've even been on their checkout page in this example or in this strategy. So you really want to capitalize on that trust you built already and show them that ad and get them to convert. And if you want to give a little incent with a discount code, you can go ahead and do that as well. Introducing Fidelity Trader plus, the next generation of advanced trading from Fidelity. 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We've all been there. You hold on to a coupon, hoping to cash it in at the store, but then you forget about it and suddenly you've got a mountain of useless expired coupons.

Do you think this one's still good? Free milk?

Oh, mate, that expired in 1993.

Dang it.

Fortunately, there are better ways to save money. Like by switching to Geico. You could save about 900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

Ooh, how about this one? Half off floppy disks.

Now you should try a bit of spring cleaning.

It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico. So just to recap the strategy again, how to implement, I would just first go to YouTube and get an understanding on how to set up a retargeting ad on Facebook or Instagram. It's very simple. You probably can learn in 15 minutes. It's not hard at all. I've done it many times. And what you're going to do then is you're going to use tracking pixels. Put the tracking pixel on your website. I'll show you how to do that. And then you're going to learn through the tracking pixel who who's been on your checkout page. And you're going to tell Facebook, hey, anybody who's been on this page and put the link of the page of checkout page, show them the ad. But anybody who's not been on that page, don't show them the ad. Also, anybody who's seen the confirmation page, don't show them the ad because they've already bought. So we talked about hiring even a freelance copywriter. Then we talked about meta retargeting ads. What's my third strategy when getting started with paid marketing? This one's all about email capture. Capturing people's email, getting them on your email list so you can convert them into sales. And we talked about how to make money off email marketing in our last episode. Okay, so check that out. But the point here is that you're going to spend some money to get a lead instead of the sale itself. Because once you have the lead, then you can take that lead, nurture them and turn them into customers instead of showing them an ad and not having any way to contact them later. So what you want to do here is really focus on doing everything you can to get that email. So how can you do that? There are a couple ways I recommend. Number one, run an ad to an opt in page so that you can get people's email address. So this is like the form of the name and email address. So why would they give their name in the little address? Well, you got to give them a compelling reason why. You got to give them something of high value that they really want that will solve a pain or a problem. One of the things I think you should do is to see this as a product in itself. Yes, it's a freebie, but you want to give them something that you would be happy to sell or they'd be happy to pay for, even like a product. Okay, I'm going to give you some two examples of some really cool opt ins. For example, a good friend of mine, great entrepreneur and New York Times bestselling author Noah Kagan gave away free software like full out software to grow his email list. Over at Sumo.com, the software Sumo.com, which is an opt in pop up generator. And he did it for a very long time with a free plan. And it really helped him grow his email list and be able to promote other things to that list. We gave away templates and cheat sheets, things that people can use right away. Think of something that people would be willing to spend maybe 20 or $30 for and give it away for free. That makes a compelling opt in. The more compelling the better because it's going to be easier for you to convert on the ads. That means that more people are going to opt in and click on the ad for every dollar you spend on the ad. So that's one way to grow your email list with ads or with paid marketing. The other way I recommend is through sponsoring other people's newsletters. So you can go to other people that have a newsletter in adjacent businesses or markets and you can sponsor their newsletter, meaning you could put an ad in their newsletter to tell them to join your email list with that amazing opt in of great value. So they're in the email, they're clicking on the ad in the email, going to your opt in page and joining your email list. So this is a great way to leverage somebody else's audience by sponsoring their newsletter. Now, sponsoring newsletter doesn't have to be expensive. I sponsor newsletters for less than $200. I've sponsored new letters for $5,000, $10,000 a lot more. But there's a lot of range depending on the size of the actual list or the audience, as well as how early are they in their journey. One of the email marketing softwares out There is called ConvertKit. We use ConvertKit and they have this kind of built in feature, actually this whole thing where you can sell ads on other people's newsletters. It's called the creator Network, I believe. So it's an easy way for you to kind of get your foot in the door in sponsoring other newsletters and getting people onto your email list. Now I really encourage you to spend money on growing your email list because you have the lead now and you can nurture them. You can invite them to webinars, you can give them content, you can show them what you're all about and build a relationship and then obviously give them an offer and convert on that lead so it's money well spent. Even if all that money only gets you leads and no sales. So to recap, here are the three ways I recommend that you spend your hard earned dollars on paid marketing in 2024 if you're just getting started. Number one, and this is an order of I really believe in right order of how compelling each strategy could be for your business. Number one, hire a copywriter. Find somebody who can improve your copy on all channels. It's going to elevate everything you do. Okay, number two, retargeting ads on meta. I like the low hanging fruit of the checkout page method I shared. And then number three is grow your email list with opt in ads or opt in pages and run ads to that opt in page or via sponsoring a newsletter. So as you can see, starting with paid marketing doesn't have to break the bank. You can hire a copywriter, even a freelancer, just part time. You know, for $500 running meta retargeting ads, right, you can get started with small budget or focusing on email capture with running lead ads or sponsoring a newsletter. You don't need a lot of money to get started, but obviously the more money you spend, the more chances at bat you have at converting. Okay, thanks for tuning in to the $100 MBA show. I hope you found this episode valuable. If you want more valuable business lessons, we have over 2,500 of them on our website over at 100- MBA-NET. We have so much on that website, so many pieces of content, so many resources for you to dig into. The vast majority of what we offer is free. So check it out over there. And if you want to get our episodes automatically, whether you're listening on Spotify or Apple podcasts or you're watch YouTube, make sure you hit the subscribe button. Thanks so much again and I'll check you in the next episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

We've all been there. You hold on to a coupon, hoping to cash it in at the store, but then you forget about it and suddenly you've got a mountain of useless expired coupons.

Do you think this one's still good? Free milk.

Oh, mate, that expired in 1993.

Dang it.

Fortunately, there are better ways to save money. Like by switching to Geico. You could save about $900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

Ooh, how about this one? Half off floppy disks.

Now you should try a bit of spring cleaning.

It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico.