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Failing at Ads👎: 5 Lessons I Learned the Hard Way 💵

Foto del escritor: Melanie KalfaianMelanie Kalfaian



How do you find buyers? The big question every new business faces. You can set up a killer website, believe your products are amazing, but reality hits hard: How do you drive traffic? And what’s the cost per acquisition (aka, the famous CAC)? 🤔


I’m sure many entrepreneurs have faced this challenge. But here’s the tricky part: people rarely share their secrets. So, like many, I learned the hard way, by losing money 💸.


I tried everything. Pinterest? A representative from Pinterest guided me through placing ads for £1000/month. We even had several calls to go over the details. Quite the experience, haha. After three months of investment, not a SINGLE sale came through. Meta and Google Ads? Slightly better ROAS (Return on ad spend) but still not great. I even hired a freelancer from Fiverr and spent £600/month + ad costs for 6 months... still nowhere near breakeven. To be honest, I was better off doing it myself 😅.


Still hopeful, I thought I was playing it small by hiring a freelancer, so I decided to inject more money into the company and hired a well-known UK-based agency. They sold me a DREAM!: "You will get there in 2 or 3 months max". Big onboarding fees, high monthly costs, and huge ad spend. Eight months in, Google was still “getting to know us”. Just one call a month and far from being breakeven. It seems that Google is always “getting to know you”... 😂


Here’s what I learned:


1️⃣ Keep paid ads in-house, at least at first. As a small biz, agencies won’t give you the attention you need. Use that money to learn and make your own mistakes. It’s a much better investment. For me, Google Ads and Google Shopping are the only things that really work today.


2️⃣ Building a brand takes time. Paid ads are great, but don’t forget the long-term game: organic growth and PR (I use Press Loft). Today, 40%+ of my sales come from organic Google searches, blog mentions, magazines, and social media presence 🙌. Of course, this takes years, but it pays back, trust me.


3️⃣ Diversify. Selling on other marketplaces helps when traffic is low on your own site. Even just 2-3 extra sales a week can boost your monthly revenue by 30-40% 💪 . Be aware though, marketplace fees can range from 10-50%, so watch your margins.


4️⃣ Don’t underestimate the power of repeat customers. A solid email marketing strategy can bring back a customer at 0 cost 📧. And this happens more often than you'd believe. And I’m not even talking about upselling and cross-selling strategies.


5️⃣ Most of my customers visit the website 5 times before purchasing. So make sure you have email flows in place to bring them back. There's no point in hiring a pricey agency if you don’t know how to re-engage your visitors 🔄


And you're wondering... what about working with content creators? Let’s save that topic for next week, no more tears today! 😂

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© 2021 by Melanie Kalfaian

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