How many times, in the back of your mind, this little voice inside your head tells you “I swear most of the money I’m spending on marketing feels like a giant waste”…

I guarantee you have at least thought about it once, because it’s that common a thought.

Problem is, you are probably right. 

There’s this weird thought process that engulfs the marketing community, and that is that money solves everything. The more money you pump in the more successful anything will be. 

Your ads aren’t working? Let’s throw more money at it. Your website has no traffic? Let’s throw money at it to get you a brand new website. 

To an extent it might be true that you do need to spend more money to achieve your goal, especially if it’s a very lofty goal. But the truth is what many people end up doing is throwing money to mask the issues that are currently plaguing them. 

Think about this from a marketing agency’s point of view. You put some ads out there, and they’re not performing that well. If you try to fix it and increase the performance, it takes your time and money.

If you ask your client to pump more money in, you make more money and even if your conversion is only 1%, with enough volume it becomes worth it. 

Got me so far? That’s what I like to call the “spray and pray”.

Throw enough keywords, enough money around, that you will eventually get some results that perform reasonably well. That will help hide the under performing aspects of the campaign.

Cast the widest net possible and hope you get lucky.

If luck isn’t on your side? Then the client will walk away in anger and never trust a marketing company again. If you do get lucky, you get to keep the client for longer and them spending a large enough amount that it doesn’t matter if you lose a client here or there. 

Wasteful spending. 

Most businesses don’t even see it because the truth is in the account with all the numbers (data) you don’t understand quite well enough. Hidden in the back corner where they make sure it never gets to the reports you get every month.

What I found out, and prefer doing for my clients, is to start small and get things right the first time. Reduce the waste as much as possible.

I like to pick 1 to 3 keywords and focus only on them until we get it right.

Not just any keywords, but the keywords with the highest likelihood to house potential customers.

If you sell red widgets on your website as an example. 

I would focus on “buy red widgets online” because they’re the closest to what you do. 

If we can’t get clients from that keyword that suits you best, then we have more serious problems like the ad or the offer is not resonating with people.

Get that one keyword to the highest performance you can, and then move to another one. That way, every cent of your budget is spent on ads that work. 

We don’t spray and pray, we test and optimize. 

This can really only be accomplished by changing how you view marketing and look at everything from the bottom and then making your way to the top. (Just like Drake says)