Should You DIY Your Ads or Hire Help? How to Know Which Stage You’re At

In this episode of Abundant Funnels, Jayne breaks down one of the most common questions business owners ask when they want to grow with Meta™ Ads: should you run your own ads, hire a freelancer or agency, or use a done-with-you model instead?

Jayne walks through when DIY is actually the smartest place to start, when outsourcing begins to make financial sense, and why every business owner should still understand the basics of their ads regardless of who is managing them. She also explains why she believes a done-with-you model gives many business owners the best of both worlds, expert support, strategy and implementation help, while still building real capability inside the business.

She also talks about how this model can work well with a VA, so the strategy stays aligned and execution can still be supported internally.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• When DIY Meta™ Ads makes sense
• When outsourcing becomes financially worth it
• Why every business owner should understand the basics of their ads
• What to look for if you hire a freelancer or agency
• Why done-with-you support can be such a strong option
• How to involve a VA in your ads process without losing oversight
• The risks of running ads with no strategy, support or understanding

Connect with Jayne:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/webonize

Website: https://webonize.com.au/

FREE Resource - The Facebook™ Ads
$3 Lead Formula: https://learn.webonize.com.au/leadformula

Join Abundant Ads Academy: https://courses.webonize.com.au/abundantadsacademy

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

I'm Jane Day and welcome to Abundant Funnels. I help coaches, course creators, and online experts get high quality leads and consistent sales without relying on guesswork, constant content creation, or $10 leads. In fact, I'm known for getting some of the best cost per lead results for quality buyers in the industry. This show is where we break down the ad strategy, the funnel, and the numbers so you can grow your revenue and buy back your time in a way that's actually sustainable. Let's get started. Hi there and welcome back to the podcast. I'm Jane Day, and today I want to talk to you about a question that most business owners ask themselves when they want to grow their business using meta ads. And that question is: should I be running my own ads or should I be hiring someone to do it for me? It sounds simple on the surface, but there are actually quite a few different paths you can take here. You can do it yourself, bring in a VA, hire a freelancer, work with an agency, and the right answer depends on where you are in your business right now. So today I'm going to walk you through the options clearly and help you figure out which one makes sense for your situation and share my thoughts on what I think every business owner should have regardless of which path they choose. So let's get into it. The first option is doing it yourself. And for a lot of coaches, consultants and course creators, especially those who are earlier in their business journey, this is actually a really smart place to start. So when does DOI make sense? It makes sense when the cost of outsourcing doesn't stack up for your business yet. Agency fees and freelancer retainers are a big investment on top of your ad spend if you aren't well established in business and if your revenue isn't at a point where that makes financial sense. So keeping it in-house is the right call here. It makes sense when you want to understand your own marketing. There is something really powerful about knowing your ads from the inside out, understanding what's working, why it's working, and being able to make informed decisions about your strategy. And it makes sense when you have the time to actually do it properly. And I want to be really honest with you here. Running ads well does take time. Not just to set them up, but to monitor them, test new creative, review your data, and optimize your ads and the marketing assets that affect your ad results. If you have that capacity, DIY can be incredibly effective. Now some business owners choose to DIY their ad strategy while having a VA handle the day-to-day execution, the uploading, the monitoring, the reporting. That works really well as a model, and I'll come back to that in a moment. The second option is hiring help, whether that's a freelancer or a full service agency. This makes sense when you simply don't have the time to manage your ads yourself and you have no desire to learn. You want to hand it over to someone who lives and breathes this stuff every day and focus your own energy on other parts of the business. And that is a completely legitimate decision. Time is your most valuable resource, and if ads aren't where you want to spend it, outsourcing is the right move. But, and this is important, there is a threshold at which outsourcing actually makes financial sense. Agencies and experienced freelancers that are good at what they do don't come cheap. They charge well for their expertise, and so they should. And those fees sit on top of your ad spent. So your business needs to be generating enough revenue that absorbing those costs still leaves you with a healthy return on your marketing investment. As a general guide, I'd say that if you're not yet at a point where you can comfortably invest in both the management fees and a reasonable ad budget, you might want to hold off on outsourcing and focus on learning the foundations first. When you do get to that point and you're ready to hire, whether it's a freelancer, an agency, or even a specialist contractor, do your due diligence. Ask about their experience with businesses like yours. Ask to see results they've achieved for clients. Understand exactly what is included in their service and what isn't. And ask how they communicate results to you. If you can get referrals from other trusted business owners, then that makes all the difference. Which brings me to something I feel really strongly about. No matter which option you go with, every business owner who is running meta ads, whether they're doing it themselves or paying someone else to do it, they should have at least a general understanding of how ads work, what strategies are currently performing, and how to read their own results. Because if you outsource your ads and you have no idea what good looks like, you have no way of knowing whether the person or agency you've hired is actually doing a good job. I've seen it happen over and over again. Business owners paying agency retainers month after month, not getting meaningful results, but not knowing enough to ask the right questions or recognize that the strategy isn't working. They trust because they feel they have to, because they don't have the knowledge to evaluate what they're being told. And that is a vulnerable position to be in when you're talking about your marketing budget. Even a foundational level of understanding, knowing what campaign objectives to use for what goal, understanding what your key metrics should look like, and knowing what questions to ask. That puts you in a completely different position. You become an informed client. You can have real conversations about your strategy, and you can hold your agency accountable. So whatever path you choose, I encourage you to invest some time in understanding this. It will pay dividends regardless of who ends up doing the day-to-day work for you. Now I want to talk about a third option, one that I believe gives you the best of both worlds. And yes, I may be a little biased here, but bear with me because I believe this model is the right fit for a lot of business owners listening today. And that option is a done with you approach, and that's exactly why I created Abundant Ads Academy. Here's what I mean by done with you. You're not handed a course and left to figure it out alone. And you're not just paying someone to run your ads without understanding what's happening. You are learning how to run your ads properly, with the guidance of an expert, in this case with someone that has 14 years of experience managing campaigns every day. That person right beside you. You get the knowledge, you get the strategy, you get the implementation support, and you get expert eyes reviewing your actual campaigns as you run them. This means you build real capability in your own business. You understand your ads, you understand your marketing, you can make informed decisions. And over time, you're not dependent on anyone else to run this part of your marketing for you. And here is something that makes this model work really well for business owners who want to bring a VA into their ads process. Inside Abundant Ads Academy, your VA gets access to. So if you want to keep the ads in-house and have your VA handling the day-to-day uploading, monitoring, and optimization, they can be trained inside the Academy alongside you. You get the strategic overview, they get the practical skills to execute, and you're not left wondering whether you know what they're doing because you'll both be working from the same framework. It's a completely flexible model that meets you wherever you are in your business journey. So, how do you decide? Let me give you a simple way to think about this. If you're earlier in your business and working with a tighter budget, DIY with the Done With You Support in Abundance Ad Academy, I believe is your best path. You build the skills, you keep control of your marketing, and you're not paying agency fees on top of ad spend before the revenue is there to support it. But you're not wasting money doing it yourself and just guessing every step of the way. With the done with you support, you have the guidance so you're not going to be wasting your money up front. If you're at a stage where your revenue is solid, your time is limited, and you can comfortably absorb management fees on top of ad spend, hiring help can make a lot of sense. Just make sure you go in with enough understanding to be an informed client. And if you're somewhere in between, if you want expert support but also want to understand what's happening in your account, a done with you model is almost certainly the right fit. The worst position to be in is running ads with no strategy, no support, and no understanding of what the numbers are telling you. Whatever path you choose, make sure it includes some level of knowledge and oversight on your end. So there's no single right answer to whether you should DOI or hire help for your ads. It depends on your revenue, your time, your goals, and how much you want to understand your own marketing. What I do believe, regardless of where you land, is that every business owner running Meta Ads should have at least a foundational understanding of how it all works. It protects you, it empowers you, and it makes every dollar you spend on ads more effective. If Abundant Ads Academy sounds like it might be the right fit for you, whether you're planning to run your own ads, train your VA, or you just want to finally understand what's going on inside your account, I'd love to invite you inside. You can find the link in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here today, and I'll see you in the next episode.