Paid advertising (also known as paid social) plays a crucial role in promoting green businesses and furthering the sustainability movement. Ads allow all kinds of businesses to reach a wider audience and drive growth. However, before diving into paid ads, it’s essential for businesses to properly prepare so that they can maximize the effectiveness of their ads and ensure they achieve the desired results.
In this blog post, we will explore five important steps to take before starting paid advertising for your businesses. By following these steps, you can set a strong foundation for your campaigns, optimize costs, and ultimately make a significant impact in the sustainable market. So, let’s dive in and discover how to prepare your business for paid ads in the green industry.
Things you need to consider before running ads
Before we get into the heart of this blog, there are a few things you as a business owner need to consider before taking any steps to start your own ads. Sadly, there is no “secret formula” to ads that can make you an overnight success. If there was, everyone would be using it!
The plain truth is that you need to invest time into your business and you need to get the following figured out before you begin running ad campaigns: a business plan, a proven service offer or product (meaning you’ve successfully sold your service or product), a sales strategy, and a successful organic marketing strategy.
Without these, it’s very unlikely you will find success with ads. However, if you have those things in place, you might just be ready to take on these next steps to ensure your green business is ads ready.
1. Define your target audience and goals
Defining your target audience and your goals with ads is a critical first step in preparing for paid advertising for your business. You should already have your ideal client avatar in place for your business but when it comes to ads it’s always good to give your target audience another glance and really ask yourself who is buying this product (age, gender, geographic location, interests, profession, etc.) and why this particular person needs to buy your product.
Additionally, you’ll want to define clear and measurable goals for your ads that do not just revolve around increasing sales. Ads can do much more than that! This is where having a business and organic marketing plan is important and will help guide you on your ads journey.
Do you want to increase web traffic? Grow your email list? Invite warm leads to a live webinar event? Ads can do all of that and more. You just need to know what it is you want and have a goal in mind for what you want to reach.
2. Conduct market research
Conducting thorough market research is crucial before you start using ads – especially for sustainable businesses where it can initially be difficult to create differentiation from the many products and services out there with similar branding and messaging.
By analyzing competitor ads and strategies, you will not only gain valuable insights into effective tactics that can inform your own advertising approach but also ways to stand out from the crowd and craft unique selling propositions (USPs) that resonate with your target audience. Market research will also help you better understand customer pain points and motivations. This enables you to create compelling ad messaging that addresses their needs and desires.
3. Optimize your website and landing pages
Optimizing your website and landing pages is a necessity these days, especially when people’s attention spans are so short. First and foremost, ensuring that your website is user-friendly and mobile responsive is essential. Visitors should be able to load your site quickly, navigate your site easily, find relevant information, and complete desired actions seamlessly. If you’re sending users to a website that doesn’t function, you’re essentially wasting money!
As we’ve established, ads cannot work all on their own. As such, implementing search engine optimization (SEO) techniques improves your website’s visibility in organic search results, complementing your paid ads.
Finally, landing pages that are specific to your ads can be crucial to the success of your campaign. A caveat though: this is not necessary for every ads strategy and it can simply be a compelling homepage with the proper call-to-action buttons. But if you do need to build a proper landing/sales page, it should be designed to align with your ad messaging and provide a seamless transition for visitors, guiding them towards your desired actions, such as making a purchase or filling out a contact form.
4. Set a realistic budget
Setting a realistic budget is a crucial aspect of preparing for paid advertising. If money is particularly tight, hold off on running ads until your cash flow is more forgiving. While it is by no means necessary to have a five-figure budget for ads, having the wiggle room for at least $1,000 a month is a good starting point.
To better calculate what you will need to set aside for an advertising budget, take a look at your goals. Let’s use the Meta platforms as an example: say you want to run awareness ads, lead ads, and sales ads – this is a full blown ad campaign that will probably require upwards of $2-5k to be successful. However, if you only need to run awareness ads you can set them at just $5-10 dollars a day. If you want to go a step further, running a lead ad to a discount or free download might put you at $25-30 a day.
As for the cost of creatives and copy, that all comes down to if you’re willing to put in the time to test different photos, videos, headlines, and primary text. This can take time and requires some expertise to get it right so you may want to consider outsourcing to either an ads management agency or a copywriter with experience writing copy for ads.
5. Choose the right advertising platforms
Finally, and probably most important of all, is choosing the right advertising platform. If you want to advertise on social media, this is also where you should focus your organic marketing efforts.
Researching and selecting ad platforms that are suitable for your businesses allows you to effectively reach your target audience. Each platform offers unique targeting options, audience demographics, and ad formats that can align with your specific marketing objectives. You can also consider utilizing a combination of platforms to expand your visibility, increase brand awareness, and connect with your target audience across various digital spaces.
As for which one you should choose, here’s a quick guide to the most popular platforms:
Facebook and Instagram are part of the Meta paid social media advertising ecosystem and encompass both older and younger demographics. Both platforms will maximize your total potential reach online since both platforms have over 1 billion active monthly users.
LinkedIn is great for those doing more B2B (business to business) interaction.
Pinterest is ideal for businesses selling physical products since the majority of its users are actually using the platform as a shopping tool.
Google and Google Maps are a fantastic advertising investment for brick and mortar businesses.
As you can see, preparing a business for paid advertising requires careful planning and consideration. There are lots of moving parts and if one is ignored you might be wasting either your time or your money. By following the steps outlined in this blog post, you can set yourself up for success and maximize the effectiveness of your ads and confidently embark on your paid advertising journey for your business and make a significant impact in the sustainable market.