Stop Wasting Your Advertising Spend And Do More With Less.

1. Website usability and conversion rate

You need to make sure your website is easy to navigate and purchase from, otherwise 88% of visitors ain't coming back (which is pretty generous, in my opinion).

Try doing some usability testing and invest in some conversion rate optimisation to get the most out of the traffic you already have.

2. Measure and track your marketing and media spend.

You NEED to know what's working and what ain't—or you're just throwing money away.

Keep a close eye on your media spend and paid marketing efforts, and ditch the channels that aren’t delivering results.

Dive deep into Google Analytics; if you’re not savvy in this area it’s a good idea to pay someone for an audit, and to make sure all the tracking is working as it should be.

3. Make sure your website is optimised for search.

I don’t mean go out and start paying an agency for an SEO package (although, that might be a good idea), but make sure your site can rank.

There’s a lot of little things that can help you make the most of your existing assets and content. Small changes to structure, back-end files, sitemaps and the HTML on your pages can help you attract organic traffic without much work.

80/20 rule at its finest.

4. Audience targeting.

Or rather, targeting the right audience. Advertising is all about the right message, to the right person, at the right time. Marketing is about knowing who that person is, where they’re going to be and what problems they’re struggling with.

Get it wrong, and you’re wasting everything. Time, money and brand equity. The wrong messaging and targeting can hurt your brand.

It’s not just specific to Facebook ads, either. You’ve got similar levels of audience targeting through the Google platform you need to be nailing, too.

Get specific about who you're serving those ads to and make sure you're targeting the right folks. Buyer personas and a brand workshop probably ain't a bad idea in 2023.

The more you know about your target demographics and where they hang out online, the easier and more efficiently you can reach them.

5. Reallocate budget from ineffective channels.

Again, for the people in the back, if something ain't working, and everything you’ve tried to get it working hasn’t worked… cut it loose and re-allocate that budget to something that does work.

You can do this on a granular level, (one keyword), or ad group basis in Google Ads, or on a channel basis; i.e. if your Linkedin ads are too expensive and don't convert move that budget to a channel that is more cost effective.

Don’t keep throwing money down a sink-hole. That’s called sunk-cost fallacy, and it’s been the death of more than one business.

6. Monitor your Lead to Sale Ratio.

Get a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool—or even a crude Excel sheet—but figure out how many of every 10, 100, or 1000 leads are closing to sales; and what those sales are worth to the business.

Then you can offset this against the spend it took to acquire them, and calculate an accurate cost per sale figure. If you know for every $1 you invest you are making $10—you know you can scale it up. On the flipside… refer to point 5.

7. Know what you know and know what you don't.

Sometimes it’s best to focus on what you rock at, and outsource the rest. If you're feeling overwhelmed, consider chatting to someone who can help.

Here are some tips for finding a solid provider to help with your marketing:

1. Check their reviews as a first step— Google Business Profile, Facebook, Trustpilot etc. 
2. Check the work section of their website. See if it makes sense for your business to be among those successful case studies. If you can’t visualise it, maybe they’re not the one. 
3. Check if they can walk the talk. If you’re looking to hire an SEO provider, make sure they rank!
4. Meet them. If you go and sit in their office, see if you get to meet their actual team—not just sales staff.

Ask them to paint a picture of what the first 90 days look like and make sure they have a strong and clear onboarding process. You want to be confident they can deliver consistent success time and time again for their clients.

Most importantly make sure they have strong values, are good people and genuinely are in business to help 'create business' for their partners and clients.