How to Get Started with Ads (Without Wasting Money)

What if ads didn’t feel complicated… expensive… or like a total gamble? 

Because for a lot of business owners, that’s exactly how ads feel. 

You’ve probably wondered: 

Should I be running ads? 
When is the right time? 
And how do I even get started without wasting money? 

In today’s episode of Smarter Online Business, I’m joined by Paul and Melissa Pruitt, who help entrepreneurs use ads as a growth tool in a way that actually makes sense for their business. 

And what I love about this conversation is we really simplify things. 

We talk about: 

• What ads can realistically do for your business 
• When it actually makes sense to start using them 
• How to think about ads as part of your overall strategy 
• And how to get started without overcomplicating everything 

If ads have ever felt confusing or out of reach, this episode is going to help you see them in a completely different way.

Connect with Paul & Melissa Pruitt

Paul and Melissa Pruitt are the husband-and-wife team behind the Adaptive Marketers and co-hosts of the Online Marketing Podcast . They help online entrepreneurs sell their offers using real-world business experience, smart marketing, and a deep understanding of human behavior. Whether on stage, Zoom, or in masterminds, they’re all about mixing strategy with heart to help people grow businesses they actually love.  

Mentioned Resources:

Free 3 Day Ads Summit

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Transcript

Why Ads Feel Like A Gamble

Carrie Saunders 0:00

What if ads didn't feel complicated, expensive, or like a total gamble? Because that's what I feel for myself, as well as what I hear a lot of other business owners talk about. You probably wondered, should I be running ads? When is the right time? And how do I even get started without wasting money? In today's episode of Smarter Online Business, I'm joined by Paul and Melissa Pruitt, who help entrepreneurs use ads as a growth tool in a way that actually makes sense for their business. And what I love about this conversation is we really simplify things. We talk about what can ads realistically do for your business when it actually makes sense to start using them and how to think about ads as part of your overall strategy and how to get started without overcomplicating everything. If ads have ever felt confusing or out of reach, I know they have for me. This episode is going to help you see them in a completely different way. Let's dive in. Struggling to turn website traffic into real sales, you're not alone and you don't have to figure it out all yourself. Welcome to Smarter Online Business, the podcast for course creators, coaches, and e-commerce entrepreneurs who want their websites to convert visitors into buyers without the tech overwhelm. I'm your host, Carrie Saunders, a website strategist and conversion expert with over 20 years of experience. Each episode delivers simple, proven strategies to help you generate more revenue and make your website your smartest sales tool. Welcome back to the show. Today we have a two special guests with us today. They are husband and wife, Deo, Paul, and Melissa Pruitt. They are online marketing experts and ad experts, and they're here to teach us a bit more about ads. So welcome Paul and Melissa to the show. Hello. Hello. Thanks so much for having us. You're welcome. I'm so excited to have you on the show. I've been following you for several years, and I haven't dabbled in ads yet. So this is going to be really good for me because I know that's going to be next on my list maybe in a year-ish or so. Um, so tell us a little bit more about you guys. I want to hear from your words. Like a little bit more about Paul and Melissa.

SPEAKER_03 2:04

Yeah, yeah. So we do business coaching. We work with business owners, online entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and we really focus on the marketing and sales aspect, um, business owners. So helping people with everything from SEO, copywriting, and ads, of course. That's a big uh piece. Uh, we talk to people a lot about lots of different ways of attracting clients, whether it's organically or um through paid traffic. And our goal is just to really help those business owners bring uh more clients uh into their business. We both have different walks of life. We if you want to get into that, you can because we've had a variety of different experiences and businesses, uh both online as well as like uh brick and mortar businesses as well too. And we just we love helping people. So this is this is our jam, and we love we love helping people and we love talking to people about how to bring more people into your world.

Meet The Paid And Organic Duo

Carrie Saunders 2:52

So well, and I love, you know, I've been in your world for about a year or so now, and I love how you guys um like to bring together both organic as well as paid and just kind of have that variety on how we're getting leads. Um, I think that's very smart and um, you know, something some people don't do. They focus on one or the other and don't put a mix of that in there, which I think is much healthier. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Yeah, and I think it comes back to the experience. Most people are not professional marketers. Like they they have their business, they do their thing really well while it's maybe potentially like a cook or a chef in a restaurant uh or somebody that has like teaches yoga online. Like it doesn't matter what the business is, they typically know that thing really well. And the irony, I think any of us has done anything with sales in our lifetime, when we try to sell ourselves, we kind of cringe. If we work for somebody else for an hourly rate, like we can sell somebody else's thing because we don't feel emotionally attached to it. So even in this journey with what we do, we we love the organic and the paid side because it's like what we do in the real world. You know, there's word of mouth, there's relationships, there's you know, we hang out in groups and committees and do things in the real world. And there's other places where it's like, oh, we need to spend a little bit more money to have a storefront that has traffic, you know, or we need to go and pay to go to that networking event because it isn't a free one. You know, so there's there's a lot of things in the offline space that we just pull into the online world. And when people understand that, they're kind of, oh, this this actually makes sense. But uh a lot of people just don't have experience with paid ads. And if they do, um, it's more or less they probably gave some billionaire a whole bunch of money and they didn't get any return on it. And that's a scary thing for them. So then they decide not to do it and avoid it, and then they lean in, like, oh no, no, I do everything organic, I do everything organic. Paid is like evil or whatever. And normally it's just an insecurity of them not understanding like how to play the online marketing game. Uh, but for all of us, it's ROI on time and energy if we're doing it organic that's in the real world or online, and then we can get a lot of our time and energy back if we do have the financial resources to trade for that. Uh, and in either way, you need that ROI. You're not gonna keep going to a networking event for years if nobody ever gives you a referral, you know. So you're gonna find a different room to be in. Yeah.

Carrie Saunders 5:10

Exactly. And I feel like a lot of business owners, including me, you know, I've been in that position where I'm like, well, I really should do paid ads, but I don't want to waste my money because I don't know what I'm doing. And I've even taken an ad course and haven't taken your guys' yet, I haven't gotten there yet. I'm trying to stay, stay in the lane I'm looking at right now and not getting too distracted. But so how would you help somebody who's pondering it and considering it to know when they're ready, to know when they are at that point where yes, it does make sense to use ads. Um, you know, maybe at first you won't get an ROA, but if you do these certain things, you know, you eventually will. But how do you how do you know that you're in that lane and getting ready to be ready to make the to do ads? So it's not so scary.

Know When You Are Ready

SPEAKER_03 5:54

Yeah. No, that's a great decision. I think the work comes before the ads even come. And it's really the first thing I would say, number one, um, because we help a lot of our clients with with messaging, is making sure that the messaging is clear. Um, you we're always looking at um messaging as a big key component because if the messaging isn't clear on what exactly you're offering and the transformation that you're promising with your offer, then the ads aren't going to give you the results that you want. Um, and Paul will talk about this, that ads only amplify what's going on. So if your messaging isn't clear or wonky, um, you know, if people land on your um if they come to your sales page and they don't even know what you're talking about or it's very confusing with the copy and the messaging there, then it's the ads aren't gonna work. So I would say one of the first things to evaluate is just being really clear on your messaging and really clear on your offer, whatever it might be, um what the promise is, what's the transformation is, how that person is going to achieve what they they want to achieve and being really super clear on that before you start to explore ads and putting ad money behind that. Because that messaging, if that's off, then it's definitely going to affect the performance of the ads.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

Yeah. And I if I can just add to that that um there's no perfect answer to that. It's it's your what is, do you actually have any cash flow, you know, that you can pre-invest? Because we do have some people that, you know, they're semi-retired or they'll do a career or they have a nest egg and they're able to go right out the gate day one doing ads uh because they can risk that that financial element. Not everybody's positioned that way. So even if you have a really mature business, if you're going paycheck to paycheck type thing, you know, might not be a good time to do ads. There might be things you need to again work on the messaging and the offer and and and other elements. Uh, and as Melissa references that, you know, that ads amplify. They don't fix a funnel problem, they don't fix an audience misalignment, they don't fix an offer issue that you have. It'll only amplify, you know, what you have. So if something, if you're doing something that's not working, if you put money behind it, you're just you're donating money out into again to those billionaires that own all the social media networks and stuff, um, because you're not going to get that ROI. So you always want to risk, you know, anything in business is a calculated risk. And if you stay safe forever, then that means you're not putting yourself out there and your competitors are, whether you are spending money in ads or you're showing up on a live or recording a podcast or anything, all this stuff is uncomfortable for most of us, you know. So, but the idea though is if our competitors are waking up today and they're doing ads and attracting clients, or they're doing the podcasts or the blogs or showing up on lives and things like that, they're gonna get the attention while we're sitting here quiet, being safe, not taking any risks. So there's always some type of risk. You just want it to be a calculated risk. So even when it comes to ads, be in a position where your cash flow, you have enough revenue or money that you can play with it in a sense, you know, you don't want it to be like gambling where you're like, oh, I put my entire house up here, and if it doesn't work, my entire business is going to go under. But you need enough money in to make it worthwhile, but not too much. Where if you don't get the ROI, that you risked everything. But the whole idea with marketing, and that's what uh ads, what the cool thing with that is it allows you to amplify quicker so you can get results and feedback faster. So you can know, like, oh, my message is really off. Oh, the audience I'm targeting is not buyers. Oh, the offer that I have is totally nobody wants, I want it, but nobody else in the market's willing to pay for it. You know, so it allows you to get those that feedback loop a lot quicker than just doing organic, crossing your fingers, hoping and praying that whoever's controlling the AI or the algorithm today shows it to the right people, you know. And a lot of times it ends up being our parents that like and comment on our posts instead of a potential buyer. That's what the algorithms are doing to a lot of us. So it does, it just allows you to get to that result a lot quicker.

Carrie Saunders 9:45

Well, and I think you brought up a good like lead into my next question is you know, once you do get like we'll just call it brave enough, because I feel like that's kind of what a lot of people think of when they're a business owner and you know, starting to do ads, once you get brave enough to try the ads, you know, I know just from listening to you guys for the past couple of years, you know, you need to iterate on it and learn from it. It's kind of like, you know, when we're gonna release this episode we're recording right now, I'll have done this podcast for three years, which I can't believe I'm saying that. But three years, right? But so it took practice to get to the point where I am now. And uh talk to us about, you know, how do you iterate on those ads? How do you practice and and see how they're working and see, you know, maybe it's just a little tiny one or two word tweak, right? Sometimes or sometimes like the messaging is completely off. Is there like a good strategy for, you know, testing and refining the ads once they get going on it?

SPEAKER_03 10:40

Yep. Um and we we take people through an entire process with this, with uh something that yeah, we we call pain testing. But the first thing is is just getting some initial ads out there uh to kind of see what resonates with people on those certain pain points. Um, you know, all of us have done some sort of in our lifetime, some sort of client avatar type of exercise, but it's really like really understanding what are those pain points, what are the things that your person is, you know, having trouble with or challenges with that it's really going to hit home. And having those initial ads really just to test what people are, you know, if they'll click on that, if you have something in a really compelling statement or pain point, you know, is this you type of type of ad. And starting off with something like that, just to get an idea of what people are resonating with. If you start off small with that, and again, we have this uh process with pain testing, you can really see what pains your audience, you know, resonate with. And then from there, it's a matter of, you know, crafting ads uh, you know, that lead into offers that are based upon those pain points with that. Um, the initial thing is just getting something out there to start first. I mean, that's that's always the the hardest thing is the first time that you do that. But um, but if you can test out those different pain points that people have and some ads, it'll give you a chance to really get an understanding of what your audience is actually interested in, what resonates with them, and then lean into that messaging when you're uh create creating ads for you know your programs or an upcoming event or whatnot.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Yeah, and I and I'd add to that that um where most people mess up when they do do testing is they they change too many things. Uh so it it's it's almost like being in a laboratory, like in science, and it's like, okay, have a you know something that is fixed that you can use as a standard, and then only change one variable at a time so that you can test against the the standard itself. So so you want to have your initial ads and have them running, and then potentially it is that hook, that that headline, that that that reason that somebody would engage and only test that thing initially, and then potentially from there, once you have your winners, you know, and that's the key there, because if if you give yourself some patience, and I want to take it out of the ads for a second, like all of us as adults, we forget this, but it's like we when you have a child or you were a child, it's like the parents didn't like say, Okay, you didn't walk the first day, so I give up on you, you know, or the first time you rode a bike and you skin your knee and you're mad or you know, yelling at your parent or whatever, it's like you had to get back up, you had to iterate, you had to learn from it. Oh, I'm not gonna do that again. Oh, I should push the pedal this way. Oh, I need to balance this way. And it takes some time. Now, when we were kids and we were younger, whether it was baseball or playing the piano or whatever the skill set that we have, we a lot of times forget, like we weren't the master of that right out the gate. We weren't some you know prodigy, uh, child prodigy out there. Like we had to practice and learn and iterate and iterate and iterate. And it's no different with marketing. Very rarely do any of us get up to bat and hit the ball right out of the park on the first swing. Like we have to see, like, oh, this is what happened. Let me learn, let me look at the stats. Okay, this is informingly mean what the next change is. But where most people mess up is they when they have something that isn't working, then they totally trash everything and then they go somewhere else. And it's like, no, let's do some small incremental iterations of the of one element so we can see, oh, okay, now we we got that to the maximum that it can perform. Let's start changing the like the photo or let's do different videos and let's see about those which one performs, and then we can go to the call to action. So it but a lot of times people are like, Oh, I'm just I'm doing a different hook, a different image, and a different call to action. And then if something does well or not, they don't know what it was, you know, and and that kind of gets people out of that black box, you know, not not understanding. Just be patient in those iterations, you know, give yourself some grace. And uh, and uh for something Melissa and I probably say to each other at least once or twice a week, everything takes longer than we thought. Always, always even even as far progressed as we are, and we're fast starts and we we implement very quickly and we have a team these days, but even then it still takes three, four, or five times the amount of time that we originally thought it was gonna take, no matter what it is. Yeah.

Carrie Saunders 14:50

Well, and I think there's some really good points that the business owners listening just need to be reminded of because you know, even myself, I have to remind myself this because I've been in business almost 24 years and I didn't give up in the beginning. Just because I'm doing something new now, I need to iterate on it at least enough times to know whether it's a viable direction or not. You can't just try something once and throw your hands up in the air if it doesn't work. Because you're exactly right. We don't do that as parents to our children, and children try, try again, you know. And so why don't we give ourselves permissions as business owners to do that and you know, to try and refine? It's something when we have people working with us with SEO, it's something I remind them of. This is an iterative process. This is going to seem slow at first. We're going to change small things at a time, just like the scientific method. We don't change a whole lot of things at a time because you won't know what worked and what didn't work. And sometimes it takes a little bit for that client to get used to, oh, okay, we will we need to look at like, you know, at least three months out before we see anything really happening because we've got to iterate on SEO, for example, several times to see what what does what does the major search engines want this time around? Because it's always changing, just like you know, social is always changing. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Yeah, and most of us know this as a general life concept, but we're in a world these days of instant gratification, instant results, like give me the easy button from Staples. Like, I just I don't want to do all the work and like that. We just want to skip stuff. I mean, we're in an AI world where we just we want every external thing to do the thing for us. And the interesting thing is that that shortcut is very rarely the the path to actual success. It's the ones that are patient that do, I mean, think about you even said at the beginning, this is three years in on your podcast, right? So, like, congratulations. And also the perspective and how you're handling and running your podcast right now, right this second. If you go back to podcast number one and you listen to it, you all of us would do this. We would probably cringe and go, like, oh my goodness, you know. No, in the moment we were like, Oh, we're good, we got this, you know. But that's growth, that's slow incremental growth, that's feedback that's you testing different things along the way and discovering. And and a lot of us, we just need to give ourselves permission to go through that process itself. And for us, and I've I've owned several businesses that were beyond million-dollar year revenue businesses in in my lifetime. And the key is is like, can I outlast my competitors? So every market goes up and down and all like that. But it's like, if I can hang in longer and iterate and figure things out where you're gonna give up as my competitor, I'm always gonna win. Yeah. So we just have to be more resilient in all aspects of our business.

Budgeting With Real Business Numbers

Carrie Saunders 17:36

Yeah, I truly totally agree with that. I was actually, as you're thinking about that, like we started with a specific shopping cart software back in the day, back in 2003, 2002, actually. And we've outlasted all the other third-party developers somehow, you know. Well, it was my stubbornness. Um, but you know, we have stubborn, you know. So that outlasting is definitely true. Now, I do want to also transition though, for those who are thinking, and I'm curious about this as well, of doing ads soon. I've always wondered, you know, what about budget? What should my budget expectations? What's realistic and what's not for starting out with let's say Facebook ads, because I know you guys do Facebook ads a lot. So, what what would be my expectations or or the listeners' expectations on budgets for around that?

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Yeah. So this is always a question. This is one of the first questions uh working with anyone. And a cool thing with what we do in our world, we we do more coaching and mastermind, like you know, we we teach and train people to do it themselves. So we're like that step before an agency. Because the moment that people go with an agency, then they just the agency dictates and tells them like how much to spend, but they're the ones behind the scenes, you know, figuring out the numbers. Um, the the real question, so it's whenever we're posed that question, it we have to always flip it because that's the uneducated side is like, oh, can can I spend a hundred bucks? Can I just spend$500? And does this have to be thousands? And it really comes down to uh again, this is a cash flow with your business, this is just knowing it from a perspective of experience, is it's really comes down to how much are you able and willing to spend to acquire a client, a paying client. Because if you have a$20 necklace that you're trying to get people to buy you on Facebook and Instagram as an impulse buy, that is a very different process that you would have to go through because you can't afford you you have shipping costs, you have breakage, you have lost things in the mail, you know, you have returns, you have all these other elements that for you to make a profit, you know, and you have hard costs. Where if you have a digital product, you know, it might be a little bit harder sell because it's something that's like you're talking about it, but people can't touch and feel it, you know, type thing. And there's other elements that have to go into that. So it really comes down to, you know, depending on the price point of your offer. Because of course, if you're selling something that's like a hundred thousand dollar investment, people didn't wake up this morning going they can throw out a hundred thousand dollars. Like that's a longer runway, you know, and that might be a house or an expensive car or big investment type thing. Where somebody else that's selling maybe like a$97 program or you know,$500,$1,000 thing. Um, how much is a lead worth to you? A qualified lead? You know, because you might do webinars and you you might know out of the webinars you do out of a hundred people, 20 people always buy from you. Like you might have a 20% ratio that that you might know, like that's how good it is. So you know how much your offer is. And then so it's like, how much are you able to spend to get those hundred leads to find your 20 people? Because if we define that, then it's like if you're making the money, then really isn't the budget infinite if you're getting the the return? So where most people where we can't afford when you send say, like, what's the budget? Like, I only have$500 to spend, then it's like, okay, well, what is that$500? What do you want that$500 to do? You know, are you just looking for people to give up an email address? You know, are you looking for them to attend a webinar or an event? You know, do you you know, is there a sales mechanism in that moment? You know, and and like how long can you float the money? Like, do you need it back immediately? You know, or you know, because we in our world, our we make our money back on our ads, where we we're at the break-even point, more than 60 days out, two months out. Okay. But we run a nearly seven-figure business because we can afford that cash flow. And then the average value of somebody that does say yes is in the thousands and thousands of dollars lifetime, you know, versus selling a$20 thing once. So, but we know our business and we know our numbers. And I know that scares a lot of people, you know, it's like numbers, uh, yeah. But but you you need to know how much can you afford. Uh, so you have your your fixed business expenses, you also have variable as far as like every time you get a client, is there certain things, staffing or supplies that you have to, you know, per transaction? But if you know how much uh Lead is worth to you, you know, as far as an opt-in, you know, qualified lead versus also how much you can afford to acquire a client, then really just then tuning your ads so that you're making a positive, you know, return on investment. So every time that you spend that hundred bucks, you're getting$500 back. It's in the marketing world, they call that a 5x ROWS return on ad spend. So it means you put a dollar out and you get$5 back. You know, you that that's really highly profitable with a digital product. That's just information. But for somebody that's selling like a car, you know, or something like they have a lot of expense in that vehicle. They might need a different return on the they can't spend a thousand dollars to get somebody that's gonna come in to buy a car at their dealership, they only might make a couple thousand dollars on it, and it's not worth it to them. Yeah. So so it's it's really comes down to how much are you able to spend to acquire a client or how much is a lead worth to you? Because in some, we have some clients that are willing to spend upwards to almost$100 per lead because in their industry, uh, like we have uh one, uh they they do like construction and and you know remediation. Um, you know, like if you have a bad rainstorm or a plumbing leak happens, they go in and like clean up all the mold and do all those things. Like their their average ticket value is really expensive, because that's like somebody that's like their basement just flooded out and now they you know that now it's a$20,000,$30,000 opportunity. They're willing to they're willing to pay up to$700, you know, per lead. And they do actively uh in in different ways. And they do that through a lot of Google type stuff. Now, a lot of us would cringe, oh my goodness, spending$700 for a lead, you know, it's we're in a different business model. Um, so so I'm sorry that I can't give that exact answer that everybody always wants, but it's the honest answer that if you truly know the cost of business, if you know that what it costs you to acquire a client, like what you're able to afford to pay, then it's tuning your ads in to get it as close to that number or under that number as much as possible. Because then it's it's like an ATM machine, you know, it's not a slot machine anymore. So you're not gambling, you know, you're there and it's like, okay, this there is a fee, you know, but every time I go do do I get money out, you know, and and I'd rather have people have a predictable business that way. Hopefully that makes sense.

Carrie Saunders 24:24

No, that actually makes perfect sense. And I I knew going in and asking you that question, I would get get a Paul answer.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

I don't know that's a good or bad thing.

Carrie Saunders 24:33

No, I think it's a good thing because I don't think people think they they think about the spend. They think about, oh, I spent$10 on this person, or I spent a dollar, or I spent, you know,$100 on this person. They don't think about the fact that, okay, I spent$10 on this person, but I made, you know,$490, or, you know, yeah, I'm just throwing out numbers there. You know, maybe that's a$500, you know, income you brought in. So you made$490 on them, especially if it's a digital project side product. So I don't think people necessarily think that through. And I think that's, I mean, my engineering brain just goes crazy over that. Sure. I love that. You know, I love that answer. But I think it also helps those listening who maybe aren't the engineering brain that I have kind of equate it to, you know, I'm gonna put a dollar in the ETM and I'm gonna get five back. Well, sure, I'm gonna do that all day, right? If we had one of those around here, I'd be doing that all day. All I do, right? You know, because you're just getting extra money back for, you know, the effort, the little money that you're putting in. So I think looking at it as an investment more so than an expense, especially when you've, you know, aligned your ads correctly, your messaging and you know, your landing pages and all the things that come after that, aligning those all correctly, it's you know, it's kind of a no-brainer to do it.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

Yeah, and also coming back, there's always there's always a cost to acquiring a client. So that's the financial side that we were just talking about. You know, what what are you able and willing to invest? A lot of a lot of people don't realize they're doing the same thing in organic, they're just giving up their time and energy. So, and that's really the trade-off when you're doing ads, you're just able to get back your time and energy. So, so it's like do when when I was younger, going right out of high school, I went right into real estate. And there were agents in my office that that made a lot of money a year, but they were accomplished, they had referrals coming to them, and they had money where they could afford to do full-page ads uh in the local news. I'm dating myself, the newspapers and magazines back then. This is pre-internet, right? And on on my end, I didn't have that money. Now, what I did have was time at 18, 19 years old. So I'm gonna really date myself, but I put on, I was with Century 21, I put a gold jacket on, and I was 18 years old, 19 years old, and I door-knocked neighborhoods to try to find people that were thinking about buying or selling a house. Now, that first year I made uh a little over$48,000. I sold 23 homes uh when I was a teenager. And what that taught me though is I again, I didn't have the money before that. I got the money, but then the second year I was able to do ads. And but interesting, I wanted to be a top producer. So I started cold calling instead of door knocking back in the day when people used to call, you know. Um, and but what it was though is like I could cover a whole neighborhood by hanging at the phone, going to the next, going to the next. But then when technology got to the point where nobody was picking up the phone because of caller ID, you know, then uh that changed that game. But then I had more money at that point. So I was doing websites, I was I had ads, I was on realtor.com and Zillow, I was doing you know, all the all the things. So I didn't need to go door knock anymore. You know, I didn't need the cold call anymore. So the same thing with organic, where you're posting or you're going into a group or something like that, or you're networking on a Zoom call with other people, you're just trading off your the value of your time. It's in that moment, you're just trading off the hours and the energy instead of the financial investment. But you still, there's a cost to it. When you finally get that client, did it take you 20 hours of effort to get so how much was your time worth? You know, so there's that delicate balance. A lot of us don't look at it that way. It's like, oh, okay, you know, I got I did a launch and I got five people that bought. And it's like, okay, you didn't done a launch for three months. So during that three months, all the social media posting, all the things that you did, all the energy, all the time, all the networking, all the DMs, all the thing you did, it manifested five sales. Could you have gotten those five sales by putting a couple hundred or a few hundred dollars or maybe a thousand or two in ads and it gotten all your time back? You know, so that it's always a resource. You can't escape we all can't escape that. Most of us are not Oprah or some mega celebrity that if you just put a message out and say, give me$20,000, here's an here's a link. I'm not gonna tell you what it is. Like if Oprah did that, she would sell out because she has high level authority and she has, you know, and and we have people like that in our all of our spaces that are just celebrity factor. People don't have to work hard to get the sale. And most of us are putting in the work. We're either hammering that nail every day and building the house ourselves, or we're spending money and hiring the contractor to do it for us. You know, so it's it's just a delicate balance as far as the resource.

Carrie Saunders 29:23

Well, and before you even made that point, Paul, I was actually thinking that same thing that wow, how much time am I actually spending creating content organically on all the things? And and how much am I actually getting back? Because I was because you know, I've been doing this business for 24 years. I I need a break. You know what I mean? So like I need I I need a day where I can be like, oh, for these two hours I can go do something creative. I don't have to like grind on anything or you know, try to get all the things done. So you're even making my brain think, okay, maybe we maybe once I get this one big task I have right now on my plate done, maybe I should explore ads shortly after that and see what my budget is. Think about the things you talked about as far as like, you know, the value of what I the client I'd bring in. So how much would I be willing to pay to bring that client in? And you know, I think you're really helping us think through the the logical and and really kind of the emotional side of how do I how do I start this ad thing? You know, I've heard it's great, I've heard it can really, you know, bring in a lot of money kind of on a passive way, in a way, once you've got it set up and tweaked right. You know, you could you would need to obviously touch it some, but you know, it it's less on, you know, you don't have to be on so much and on and ready and social media and you know, chatting and all the things where you can kind of set this thing and just keep an eye on it and kind of it's kind of like a fish tank. You feed it every once in a while and you're good versus like a dog, you gotta go walk all the time and feed all the time, right? You know, so kind of make it a fish tank instead of like, you know, a pet that you have to tend to constantly. Um I don't know, it's just making me think about doing ads potentially maybe within six months, not by the end of the year. Right.

SPEAKER_03 31:10

Yeah, that's awesome. I think when it's done right too, um with organic and paid traffic, and when you do it right, they work hand in hand together. Because again, um, when you have the ads dial it in, getting that time back, then you can, it does give you some relief so that when you are then doing things organically, you know, connecting with people on social, you show up even better because you're you have less of that pressure, that stress, and you can really show up in those groups and contribute or go to that networking event and not be exhausted or feel that pressure to get it. So it's kind of a nice marriage of the two. And that's one of the things that you know, we just love teaching people is that it's all of it works. And when you have it dialed in really well, it's it's a marriage of the two, which is really nice.

Carrie Saunders 31:52

Yeah, and I think you know what you just said there, Melissa, it really made me think that would be so wonderful. Like I love talking to people, I love helping people, I love going into Facebook, you know, groups and you know, giving them advice. That's how I started this business back in 2002 was helping people on online forums, which I'm dating myself now because you know, those don't exist anymore, really, um, unless you call Reddit one of those, but you know, and it would be nice to be able to just do that genuine help still and not be like, oh, I gotta get this done quickly because I have to go do X, Y, and Z. Yes. So I love that you brought up the point that it really kind of helps, you know, marry the both together and it can make the organic stuff more fun and and just you know more satisfying on your end. Because you know, most of us here who have online businesses are here because we want to help somebody in some sort of capacity. Whether it's you know, yoga, you know, cooking, um, you know, coaching, whatever, you know, we're here to help people, and I think that can help us get back into that helping mode. And just I don't know, I feel like I'm really relief already just listening to you guys talk us through this.

Start With Low Risk Retargeting

SPEAKER_00 33:00

Well, it's cool because you have that perspective of all these years as well, and there's a lot of people that are newer. Um, and um, we're we're from that day, and I'm gonna say we're that it's not gonna relate to a lot of people that are newer, but from the V Bulletin days of you know, the forums and stuff like that, uh, back back in the day. And these days it's like things have evolved, but they haven't really changed. Like, so years ago, a business to get they they leaned on referrals and location, everything like that, but they they used to advertise in the newspaper and they used to advertise in the telephone book, and now instead of a telephone book, it's Google, and they used to take ads out in radio, and now it's podcasts. They used to do again uh the newspapers and and and magazines and stuff like that. Now it's blogs and vlogs. Like it's not that anything's new, it's just it's transferred into a new medium. And but a lot of us that came into business in in recent years, we don't know that difference. Because back in the day, if you wanted business, you know, and you there wasn't the internet, you only had word of mouth, and that was only to like your five, 20 friends that you had. Like you had to go out there and hustle to get to get people in. And what's really cool, if you think of the ads, I'm gonna take you from your six-month time frame down to even sooner, is that is that where the biggest fear of people entering the ads is there's they're truly thinking of like, I need to go out there and find complete strangers that don't know who I am and convince them to come into my world. And while that is, yes, because 99% of people out there don't know who we all are, and there is probably most likely somebody today thinking about buying our product and service, but we're not relevant to them. So that's why we need to get out there and find them. And the best way is through paid media to do that. But the the interesting thing is most of us, like you've been doing the podcast for three years, you've been in business for 23 plus years, like these elements. You already have traffic, you already have influence, but what you haven't been doing is just doing simple, very low-cost ads that get triggered because somebody is already on your website today. Somebody's looking at that page, they're ready to check out, but they hesitate, they abandon the cart. You could have an ad just serving to those people. And we're talking like two, three dollars a day, like not thousands. You know, like you already have traffic, you already have people that are following you on certain social media accounts. Instead of hoping and crushing your fingers that the algorithm, you know, powers the bee will show that next post to them because you're ready to promote or launch something new, you can put an ad in front of that group of people that are already warmed up with you, that you've already engaged with organically. So, so you don't have to go immediately out to like, oh, I had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to have this big budget. But what you could do is something that is omnipresent. That means you you hit several different channels, very low cost, like probably total less than$10,$15,$20 a day, and then you let it run indefinitely. You know, just like that fish tank is running all the time, you know, and the low maintenance is tweaking it, you know, maybe seasonally or here or there. But what you're doing is you're amplifying the people that are already in your ecosystem, that are seeing you organically, that you just have retargeting ads that is keeping you top of mind in front of those individuals. Back in the day, we used to call this drip marketing. It's where you're already you're already engaged with somebody in the real world, and then you purposely put them on a follow-up system so they think of you top of mind. So they recommend and refer you, and or they use your product or service when they're ready to and are able to. Uh, but because most people that are going to be our buyer might not be our buyer this moment, the exact moment in time, but maybe two weeks from now, maybe two months from now, maybe two years from now. But it's like keeping top of mind with them. Most of us aren't doing that. We're just trying to find a buyer now. And if you're not buying, forget about it. And it's like, but those those simple ads, those retargeting ads, would be the first step I would say that you do. And that's very little to no risk, you know, uh minimal. And I would probably recommend doing that sooner than six months because somebody, as we're talking right now, and also somebody's listening to this podcast, rate this second or watching it. There is somebody on their social media account or on their website right now, and they're completely invisible, and they're not going to the next step of contacting, booking, buying. And that invisible person now is going to leave your website, leave your social media, and they're going to go somewhere else and buy somewhere else, unless we have that simple ads that are running that are very low cost that are retargeting a person because they were on your account today, or they were consuming your content, or they were on your website. So I'd start there.

Carrie Saunders 37:45

I think that I just think that Paul, you're you're convincing me. We'll be talking on our mastermind calls. Um, no, I think that was a really good way to like kind of settle the rest of this podcast and kind of get towards the end of it because that you when you were saying that, that just seems so easy to me.

SPEAKER_01 38:05

Yeah.

Carrie Saunders 38:05

That seems so easy, like so much less scary than doing the stranger danger ad, I guess I'll call it. You know, that seems, you know, to do an ad to people who are already familiar with you. It's kind of like, you know, talking to that acquaintance on the street or in the grocery store or something that feels a lot less scary than than some random person, you know, driving by you on the highway or something, you know. Um, so I think that's a really good way to kind of you know put a bow on this conversation and and encourage those listeners to, you know, do start with the retargeting ads. That's that's that's a smart thing because they're already familiar with your song. There's already a little bit of like known trust factor there. So taking that to the next steps a little easier than than that stranger out there. So if somebody wants to do the retargeting ads first, is there any other than what you've already said, is there any other like tips you want to like wrap wrap the conversation up with or or just ads in general to help people out?

SPEAKER_00 39:04

I'd say that um most businesses don't hit a level of success by staying safe. So a lot of us, uh, our values and our belief systems typically control like how we are in our personal lives, control and dictate like our risk tolerance in our businesses. And sometimes we self-sabotage. So you need to get to a certain point where you have to kind of molt out of your old shell that's keeping you productive, but it's also stunting you from growing. Is those that succeed just, and we're not talking about huge leaps, it's just getting a little uncomfortable, going a little out of your comfort zone. Because at that point, then you're gonna grow into a new shell. And then at one point, when that becomes normal, you're gonna molt and go again into the next level uh itself. You can incrementally take risk. Uh, but most of us uh we're just afraid of failure and we're afraid of imposter syndrome and we just get frozen all the time. So when it comes, when it comes to ads, um in this online marketing space, the the concept of ads a lot of times comes from this concept of launching, you know, doing this big, huge promotion, all the chips in, going all in. And the reason why you have to do that concept in general is because you haven't pre-influenced anybody. You're going to complete strangers and you're trying to get them to buy from you, just like being in the middle of Times Square, opening up a jacket saying you want to buy a watch, you know, and and that's the hard thing for a lot of people. That's when things do feel salesy. So when you think sales and marketing and your hair in the back of your neck stands up, it's most likely because you feel awkward going up to complete strangers and say, buy my thing. But the thing is, we're already showing up in social, we're already doing blogs, we're already doing the podcasts, we're doing all the things that we've all been learning. But what it is is we're we're at the reaction of how the algorithm is going to show our content every day. And most of us don't create content that has virality to it. Like it doesn't naturally go viral, it's just going to a small group of people. So the idea though is if you have a thousand people on your Instagram that are the right fit people because of what you are talking about or whatever TikTok or whatever account, YouTube, it doesn't matter, is that they're the right fit people. Instead of like only 12 people that are following you sees that post today, you can intentionally make sure all of them see your post because you can amplify through ads. You can target, and then they most likely will share and comment, and then their friends will see it, and then they'll engage. And if they're the right fit, they'll start following you. And then it has this natural snowball effect. But it's no different than if you went to that business networking event and you had an incredible conversation because you got to know somebody. And then the next time that you went, they're like, hey, that you see that person again, and they want to introduce you to their friend, you know, because you made you took the time and the energy, you paid into getting into that room. So, in a way, just leverage ads to amplify what you're already doing organically. So you see organically, oh, these posts resonate with my community. These posts get little to no traction at all. Let me put a little money behind the ones that do already attract the rate because I can see the stats. So I'm putting money behind the winners. So don't put money behind losers because then you're just giving Mark Zuckerberg and the others, you know, all your money, you know, type thing. But um take it slow, iterate, be patient. It's gonna take longer than you think. Uh just summarizing some of the things that we were talking about today. And um just give yourself some grace. You know, you don't have to be an expert at all these things. That's why we have a lot of people in our world, and just like people when come in your world, you guys help support and help them do the things when it comes to e-commerce and you know, high-level and the other elements that you help with on the tech end, because they still need to just be a yoga teacher. They just still need to be the cook, they do not need to be the master marketer, you know. They they hire companies like yours and like ours to do these other pieces so they can focus on what they do well, I think is the most important thing.

Carrie Saunders 42:50

That's I I just love your little summary there because I I I don't always get all the things in my head to be able to summarize it. You did such a really good job there, Paul. So so then um just as a wrap-up, what we'll have all the links in the show in our show notes and stuff, but you know, just verbally, what's the best way to get hold of Paul or Melissa Pruitt and um find out a little bit more about each of you?

SPEAKER_03 43:12

Oh yeah. Um well thanks. Um we we have our um program, our coaching program, Adaptive Marketers. So if you head over to adaptive marketers.com, you can learn about that as well. Um we're both on social. Um it's really easy. And our social handles are real Melissa Pruitt, real Paul Pruitt. So like the real person. So um we always love to connect with people as well, too. So um that those are the easiest ways to get in touch with us and would just love to jam and talk. Um we have lots of different resources available for people too. It's if they want to learn about um marketing and um ads and all the things.

Carrie Saunders 43:43

And I can attest to that. Both Paul and Melissa, every time I've ever had a conversation with them, they're always just so kind and super generous at just, you know, giving their heart out to you and trying to help you best they can. So uh just love having you guys on our podcast today, Paul and Melissa. So happy to have you.

SPEAKER_03 44:00

Thank you so much.

Carrie Saunders 44:01

This was so fun. Thank you. I just really love this conversation because it takes something that can feel so overwhelming, like ads, and make it feel much more approachable and strategic. It has me thinking about how I'm going to put ads into my business very, very soon. The biggest takeaway here is that ads are not about doing more, they're about amplifying what's already working in your business. And when you approach them that way, they stop feeling risky and they start feeling like a tool you can grow into. And if you've been on the fence about ads, I hope this episode gave you some clarity on what's possible and where to start. And if you want to make sure your website's ready to support growth when you do start driving traffic, come join us in the free Facebook group at smarteronline business.com forward slash Facebook. And as always, you can find all the links to our guests in this podcast on our show notes website at Smarteronlinebusiness.com. And we will see you next week.