💰 Paid Ads on a Budget: How to Get Maximum ROI Without Overspending 🎯

Are paid ads worth it when you're working with a small budget? Absolutely—if you use them strategically. In this episode of Kids, Chaos, and Killer Campaigns, we break down how to maximize the impact of paid advertising without breaking the bank.

🔹 How to set a realistic budget (even just $5-$10 per day!)
🔹 Choosing the right platform: Facebook, Instagram, Google, or LinkedIn?
🔹 The 3-step framework for effective paid ads: Targeting, Creative, Testing
🔹 Common ad mistakes that waste your budget—and how to avoid them
🔹 Why paid ads are like family budgeting—and how to make every dollar count

If you're ready to test, tweak, and optimize your ads like a pro, this episode is a must-listen! Plus, stick around for a special challenge to take action today.

🎧 Tune in now and start running ads that actually work! Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and connect with us on LinkedIn!

Chapters

• 0:05 Paid Ads on a Budget
• 2:07 Why Paid Ads?
• 3:06 How to Set an Ad Budget
• 4:56 3-Step Framework
• 9:06 Mistakes to Avoid When Running Paid Ads
• 9:58 Recap

Transcript

Welcome back to Kids, Chaos, and Killer Campaigns. If you're a marketer working on a tight budget, you've probably asked yourself, are paid ads worth it? The answer is yes, they absolutely are, if you use them strategically. Think of paid ads like family budgeting.

When you're planning expenses for your kids, whether it be sports, extracurricular activities, tutoring, child care, etc.

You don't spend recklessly. You prioritize what's most important, and you look for the best value.

My oldest daughter has been in gymnastics for three years and last summer we started her in swim lessons. Recently she's been asking to start dance classes and my husband and I sat down to look at the expenses and we decided together that swim was a must because she'll be in the pool all summer and it's a skill we absolutely want her to have. So it came down to gymnastics, dance or both.

We decided that what fit in the budget was one. And so we prioritized what was most important to her. We asked her, do you want to start dance or do you want to stick with gymnastics? And ultimately she chose to stick with gymnastics. But what we did as a family was again, prioritize what was important and then find the best value.

Paid advertising works the same way. You don't have to have a massive budget. You just have to be smart about how you spend what you have.

Today, I'll walk through the basics of running paid ads without breaking the bank.

covering where to start, how to set a budget, and common mistakes to avoid.

You might be asking yourself, why paid ads? Well, with today's prioritization of AI results and paid search, organic reach just isn't what it used to be. Social media platforms prioritize paid content, and search engines reward businesses who invest in visibility.

So even with the best content strategy, relying solely on organic traffic can slow your growth.

That's where paid ads come in.

A small investment can help you reach the right audience faster.

test messaging and offers in real time.

and generate leads and conversions efficiently.

If you're just getting started, the best platforms to look into are Facebook and Instagram ads,

which are great for visual content, targeting specific interests, and are especially ideal for those people going after B2C.

Google ads are perfect for capturing intent.

Timing is everything, and when people are actively looking for what you offer, you're much more likely to convert than reaching out cold.

and LinkedIn ads. They're a little pricier, but they allow for robust filtering, which ensures that your ads are getting in front of the right audience. This is especially ideal when you're targeting business professionals and decision makers.

So the question is, how to set a budget without breaking the bank?

A lot of marketers I talk to assume that paid ads require thousands of dollars to see results, but you can start small and scale up to what works for you.

Here's how. First, focus on one clear goal.

Don't try to accomplish everything at once. Pick one goal and focus on that. Whether it's brand awareness, just getting your name out there, lead conversion, collecting email signups, newsletter subscriptions, content downloads.

or conversions, getting people to take action and actually make a purchase.

Starting with a small daily budget, even $5 to $10 daily can be incredibly valuable.

And I encourage everyone to run short test campaigns.

Think seven to 30 days. That will give you the insights you need to determine if you should make a long-term commitment.

Think of starting paid ads like trying a new activity for your child.

You wouldn't want to invest in a year's worth of dance classes or an entire season of soccer before you knew that they were actually interested in it. I remember when we first signed my daughter up for gymnastics. She'd never done gymnastics before and there were two local gyms for us. One offered a trial class and one didn't.

We did a ton of research online and my husband and I decided it was best to try out the gym that offered a trial class because we didn't want to have a monthly commitment to something that my daughter might have hated.

Now it ended up that she absolutely loved it, and like I said earlier, she's been doing gymnastics for three years now. But what we did was

we took a trial class, we gauged her interest, and then we made a decision. This same principle applies to paid ads.

Once you've set your ad goals and your daily budget, it's time to actually launch your ads.

Here is a simple three-step framework to get started with paid ads.

One, targeting. Make sure you choose the right

ask yourself who are you trying to reach, and then define your audience based on demographics, age, location, gender, job title, industry.

Interests, what they follow, what content they're already engaging with.

And look alike audiences. Find an audience similar to your existing customers and target them.

For example, if you run a gymnastics facility, targets toddlers, nine months to five years old, you would target parents who are age 25 to 40.

who are interested in early childhood development, toddler activities, and maybe even local parenting groups.

You might also want to focus on families who are looking for fun, structured ways to improve their child's coordination or social

Two, creative, make your ads stand out.

People have a short attention span, so your ads need to grab their attention quickly. And stand out from all the noise.

Here's how you do that. Use high quality images or videos.

Faces, movement, and bright colors perform best in paid

Keep your copy short and clear. What problem is it that your customers have and how do you solve it? Make that obvious in your ad copy.

and include a strong call to action. Something like sign up for a free class, download the guide today, or shop now.

If you're running ads for that gymnastics facility who offers classes for kids 9 months to 5 years old,

An image of a smiling toddler balancing on a balance beam or hanging from the bars with an engaging headline like, build strength and confidence through fun gymnastics classes. Enroll today!

will stand out more than a generic image of an empty gym with a lot of equipment.

Three, testing and tweaking. Optimize for the best result.

Even with a small budget, you can still test and optimize your ads for the highest performance.

I highly encourage A-B testing. Run two versions of ads with slight variations. Maybe change the images or the headline or even the call to action button on the ad.

It's also important to monitor your metrics. Watch engagement, clicks, and conversion rates to see what's working and what's not.

and adjust gradually. Don't change everything at once. Make small tweaks to one element at a time and give it time to run to see what's really improving your results.

Think of this like making adjustments to the bedtime routine for your kids. I remember when my daughter was two and we went through a phase where we'd been sleeping great and suddenly bedtime was so hard. We'd had a consistent bedtime routine for as long as I could remember. Dinner, bath, brush teeth, put on pajamas, read story, go to bed. And suddenly that routine wasn't working. We tried adjusting the bedtime. We tried going earlier, tried a little later. Nothing seemed to be working.

We tried adjusting what we were eating, eating earlier. we even tried giving her 15 minutes to run off all her energy and play before we started the routine. And then we took out bath. We decided one day, let's do bath in the morning. And we learned that for some reason, bath time just really riled my little girl up and it didn't calm her down. And removing that bath time from the bedtime routine got us right back on track.

But if we had changed everything at once, we never would have known what really worked.

But by tweaking one thing at a time, like moving the bedtime routine earlier, and then taking out bath, in that nighttime routine adjustment, we were able to find the perfect solution. The same applies to those paid ads. One change at a time.

Mistakes to avoid when running paid ads. Even with a great setup, are common pitfalls that can waste your ad budget.

First is not tracking conversions.

If you're not measuring leads, clicks, conversions, purchases, you won't actually know how your ads are working. Using tracking pixels, UTM links, or analytics tools will help you monitor your success. Ignoring audience insights. If your ads are reaching the wrong people, it won't convert. Check your audience reports and refine your targeting as needed.

And again,

changing too many things at once.

If your ad isn't performing well, resist that urge to overhaul everything and test one small adjustment at a time, like just tweaking copy or just tweaking an image.

So let's recap everything that we've covered today. Paid ads help boost your reach, even with a small budget.

Start small. Think $5 to $10 daily, but have a very clear goal.

Follow the simple framework, right audience, strong creative, and testing for optimization.

And avoid common pitfalls like failing to track your results or making too many changes at once.

If you're ready to explore more, I recommend checking out the Facebook Ads Library to see what your competitors are doing or Google Ads Keyword Planner to get started on some keyword research.

Your challenge for today, instead of just listening, go take action. If you've never run paid ads before,

Set up a small test campaign this week, even if it's only a $5 daily budget. Get the creative and get your ad out there so that you can see the results.

if you're already running paid ads, your challenge is to try an A-B test this week to see what improves your performance. Remember, when you're A-B testing, only change one thing at a time. So maybe test a different image or test a different headline and see which one performs better.

Thank you so much for checking out this podcast. I'd love to hear the topics that you want to hear discussed, so please drop them in the comments or drop me a line on LinkedIn.

I encourage you to subscribe to the podcast, leave it a review, and please share it with a marketer or a parent who you think could benefit from today's episode.

I'd love to connect on LinkedIn so we can stay in touch through this journey. My LinkedIn is going to be in the show notes, so you can easily click there and click that connect request.

In next episode, we're going to be talking about flexible schedules and productivity tips. Think of making remote work actually work.

Until then, enjoy the kids, enjoy the chaos, and I'm wishing you all killer campaign.