Why Are Most Business Owners Afraid Of Advertising?

There's a couple things when it comes to sharing stuff on Facebook groups. When you're putting your product out there, when you're putting your face out there, specifically when it comes to a personal brand like mine or whoever it is out there growing a personal brand, one of the things that creates a lot of traction and creates a lot of buzz around your name is controversy. Controversy really, really sells. And for instance, on Facebook, just from the mechanics of how Facebook works, I posted today a post on a group, an awesome group of SaaS founders, and I posted there and I started my post by saying, why are all of SaaS founders scared of advertising? That was my post, right? And of course, it rattled the cage because a lot of people were out calling me out, saying that I was trying to sell them something, which I wasn't. And I'm not. I'm, you know, blessed enough to be in a position right now that I can really afford to help people just for the sake of afford to help them. And, you know, and not needing to get clients and all that. Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing this. I would be doing some other stuff. Just from the mechanics of how Facebook works, Facebook kind of rewards the fact that you're being controversial. Because Facebook, if you want to start getting some clout or some traction in a niche or in a group or whatever, you need to start getting shares, likes, comments, you know, you need to start getting clicks. And the same happens with Instagram. And the same happens with pretty much every social network at this point. The more comments, the more shares, the more likes you get, basically the more people see your stuff. And that's exactly why I did what I did. But I was really asking them about like, why are you guys afraid of advertising? And of course I get it. Like, some of those people in that group started saying, listen, there are basically 2 or maybe 3 things that are making these founders really edgy about advertising. The first one is that But they think that advertising or marketing is a magic bullet, right? They think it's just like putting their product out there in marketing, in Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or whatever, like whatever type of advertising, or even Google or YouTube, they're going to fix all of their advertising, all of their SaaS problems. And that's hardly the case. In fact, I think that if you launch a campaign, it starts working right off the bat, it's usually called a miracle. It stops being a campaign. Campaigns, I would say 98% of campaigns, they do not work right off the bat, and that's cool, that happens. But what happens is that, you know, when you're trying to do it yourself, you launch a Facebook campaign, you launch an Instagram, a Google, a YouTube campaign, and it doesn't work, and then you're saying, well, advertising doesn't work, let's do something else. Let's wait 6 months for our, you know, our articles to rank on Google, a couple months for our traction to be gained some other places. So that's number one. Number 2 is that unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there that are preaching that they can run ads or they're preaching that they can grow your business, that they are not capable of doing it. They don't have the track record and, you know, you ask them 2 or 3 questions and unfortunately they don't know how to do it. They just took a course and now they're preaching their services, which, you know, it's whatever, but unfortunately there's a lot of founders that come through these advertisers and they hire them sometimes for thousands of dollars a month and they get nothing in return. So that's something to be aware of. And number 3 is one of the biggest problems is that a lot of entrepreneurs, they just know or think or believe they have a great idea, and advertising doesn't lie. If your offer is really bad, if your product is really bad, if your idea is not good, nobody will buy it. So the market doesn't lie. That's a hard pill to swallow. The reason why is because some people would rather keep their idea to themselves and think in their minds, oh well, If I don't advertise, I don't have to prove anyone wrong, right? And they will never advertise because of that, and they will never put their idea or their product out there. And this doesn't necessarily go or appeal only to SaaS founders, but to pretty much any entrepreneur out there. And if you advertise and you don't get any sales, then who is to blame? Like most people will say, well, it was the advertising, or it was my targeting on Facebook. Or it was my ads on YouTube, or it was the people that I've hired. And, you know, sometimes, like I would say, you can get away with a great product that sells itself, right? You can get away with a great product, a great offer, with crappy advertising and mediocre marketing, but not even the best marketing in the world will sell a crappy product or will push a crappy offer. So that is something to consider. Those 3 things basically opened my mind and said, okay, Okay, well, now I have a case, and now I can go about talking to these guys and telling them, hey, listen, this is what you need to do when your ads do not work. This is what you need to ask before, you know, hiring an agency. And this is what you need to do if your offer sucks. What do you do? You pivot. You launch something else. And if that doesn't work, then you launch something else. And if that doesn't work, then you launch something else. That's why, you know, I talked a lot of times about the potential of testing and selling before you build. That's the whole idea of marketing validation phase, because you might wake up tomorrow with a great idea for a new product or service or a software, and you know, you spend thousands of hours, and in some cases thousands, in some cases tens of thousands of dollars developing, and you turn around and nobody wants it. And the reason why that happens is because How do you know if the market really wants it? Well, you sell it first, you build it later, which is completely fine as long as you're open with your public and saying, hey guys, I'm building this waiting list. This is an idea. This isn't even a thing yet. Would you pay for an idea? And guess what? A lot of people will be. That's why Kickstarter works. That's why, you know, those type of companies that you're basically paying for an idea. It's something that is not there yet. There are pretty designs and a really nice video and a really nice idea. And that's how you validate it. That's why it's called Kickstarter, you know, because you kickstart it. You don't have to spend thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising. There's a lot of power in small $5 a day campaigns, a lot of power, okay? And there's some options on the Facebook advertising platform specifically that allow you to get a lot of data in a small period of time, you know, and you don't have to spend $1 a click or $2 a click. You can get a lot of traction with a lot less. If you have any questions throughout the next couple of days, feel free to post them in marketingatlashow.com. I will be more than happy to help you guys out with your questions, and I'll see you guys really, really soon. Have an amazing, amazing rest of your week. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.