As already mentioned in the article that is dedicated to our “classic” form of collaboration with customers, like many other digital advertising agencies, we offer a service that implies us setting up, optimizing, and managing Google Ads campaigns on behalf of our clients with them only letting us know about their goals and expectations.

Although the payment model that we use for that service differs from what most of the other companies in the industry offer, that business model itself is pretty old.

                   Market demands more personalized services

I’m not saying that it doesn’t work anymore but the fact is that 10 or even 5 years is a very long period of time for such a dynamic sphere as digital advertising which results in people starting to have different expectations for their money. To be more exact, we see a steady tendency towards people starting to expect a more personal approach from businesses that they buy from.

Another point is that as a result of different businesses in the niche competing with each other for the customer, there appeared a need to provide more and more value to the paying customer.

                    Introducing Google Ads coaching sessions

As education is probably one of the most valuable things that you can invest in (not necessarily public education) and we truly believe in the concept of content marketing that was also covered in the article about our peculiar SEO service, we’ve decided to start providing our clients great value in the form of individual and personalized education that they can further use to their own advantage.

In other words, these are both one-on-one and group online coaching sessions. To demonstrate to you the huge value of this type of cooperation with us, let me provide you an example.

Let’s say you have managed to establish successful business relations with a company that delivers you good and consistent results. I agree with you that such relations are probably paying off and make sense, however, in order to get them, you need to constantly pay for them. If you don’t pay, then you stop getting results.

Like we’ve discussed in the very first and the biggest introductory article on our website dedicated to the contemporary world of online marketing, spending resources on services that don’t help you, or better to say, develop you in the long run, is not something that you should ideally strive for.

   We understand that you may want to make it yourself

We understand that all businessmen have a clear valid reason of rather hiring someone to get the job done in order not to waste time which makes perfect sense, however, if you’re the one who, at the current stage of your life, for whatever reason wants and is ready to invest in developing your own digital marketing skills, our coaching services without exaggeration is one of the best options on the market.

No matter if you already have experience in working with Google Ads and a created Google Ads account with campaigns or just require help with starting from scratch – we’re ready to discuss your specific situation in order to understand if we’re a good match.

                 The way we run our coaching sessions

We conduct our one-on-one and group online coaching sessions via such free video chat programs as Google Hangouts or Microsoft Skype which, obviously, let you present your computer screen.

Our employee will navigate you in the user interface and simultaneously explain/discuss the process of creating/optimizing your ad campaigns in order to increase your visibility and revenue generated by Google ads.

In order to make the process smooth and comfortable for both sides, we usually ask our clients to provide our representative read-only access to your Google Ads account (or other related accounts) that you can easily remove after the session (Due to privacy reasons, this applies to individual coaching only). Depending on your preferences, the sessions can last several hours with 1 hour being the minimal length. During the coaching, you can ask any questions that you may have.

                               Coaching has serious advantages

In our point of view, the already mentioned personalization of the process is the biggest advantage of coaching sessions compared to, for example, prerecorded online courses.

What I mean is that in such a complicated piece of software as Google Ads and other related products including Google Analytics and Google Merchant Center, there can be a ton of different situations and reasons why something is not working the way you expect it to work.

In addition to this, the amount of regular updates by Google makes it very hard for creators of prerecorded courses to keep up with all of them. Our advertising consultant will not only analyze your specific case and provide tailored recommendations for the fastest and easiest solution but also explain and teach you how to use this knowledge in the future.

From our point of view, a practical experience in the product and a simultaneous desire to teach is what makes our proposition a unique combination of coaching and consulting.

                       You will definitely see or feel the results

What I also want to mention is that in this form of cooperation, obviously, we are not able to officially guarantee you any specific results as to the performance of your campaigns, however, we’re sure that you won’t be disappointed and soon notice the positive impact of our online meetings yourself.

It can manifest itself both in the increased performance metrics or your improved knowledge/understanding of the product which is also very important and can save you a lot of time and money in the future.

Just starting out your journey with online ads from Google, need some advice with campaigns already created by you, or just tired of paying for campaign management that doesn’t bring you results?

Either way, don’t hesitate to contact us using the form below to discuss your specific situation and the details of the collaboration. It is worth noting that in case you are interested in group coaching, we will need to note your attendance and inform you about the scheduled time and date of the session later.

Nowadays, all experienced marketers say that if a business owner is not advertising his business on the web, it means that he’s definitely doing something wrong. To be honest with you, it’s really true and it’s hard to disagree with it.

The thing is that in the 21st century, the internet has become a real necessity, a great part of our lives, which serves not just for fun, but helps to solve problems, buy and sell different goods and services, and of course, earn money.

And by the way, generally speaking, the advertising on the web, which will be the main topic of this article, is not something completely new in its concept. Many of these methods and techniques have been around for decades, but now they’ve just moved to another space, which is called the internet.

Every one of us sees ads outside of the internet at least several times a day and we all just got used to it. Ads are being placed everywhere where there are significant amounts of people.

By saying it, I just want to emphasize, that an ad about dog sitting services in the newspaper about pets, on the lamp post near the dog playground or during the TV program dedicated to home animals is absolutely the same thing as a banner on the website or YouTube video about pets.

The only difference is that ads on the internet have become even smarter and more flexible than the regular offline ones, and you will be soon convinced of it, believe me.

                      Most popular online advertising means

Like in real life, on the internet, there are multiple types of advertising which reach people in different moments or stages of the buying cycle. In a nutshell, the main difference between them lies in the intent of our potential customer, that is, what he’s actually doing at the moment, whether he’s actively searching for something or just relaxes and chats with his friends.

Diving a little bit deeper, I must definitely say that the skill of identifying and understanding the needs, thoughts and desires of a user on the internet plays a key role in the whole internet marketing.

To make it simple, all the internet advertising means come down to the following forms of advertising: ads on the websites, in videos, applications, on social media platforms and finally, directly on the search engine results page. And at this point, I do want to ask you a small question. Which do you think is the most effective form of advertising out of these five? Well, generally speaking, the best and the most correct answer would be that every one of these ways of advertising is important and can be extremely effective when applied to a specific product, service, person, or buying cycle.

By the way, speaking of the buying cycle, at this point, I consider it important to understand what a sales funnel is. Just imagine how a simple funnel that you use for other needs in real life looks like. People or in other words, internet users enter this funnel from that part of the funnel which is broad (the top) and then gradually go down to the narrow part, which is the bottom. When a person is at the very bottom of the funnel, in marketing, it’s considered that he’s ready for a purchase/action. Later I will reference the sales funnel multiple times throughout my course.

On the one hand, if you don’t see good results with either of those forms of advertising which I’ve mentioned before, it most probably means, that you’ve planned something wrong, chosen the incorrect strategy, and don’t fully understand the intent of a specific user or the general needs and thoughts of your audience. And here, I do want to emphasize, that before you’re able to identify the intent of the user on the internet, you need to get to know your audience as good as possible.

Yes. Target audience analysis is one of the most important things in marketing in general. If you skip or ignore this important step, unfortunately, there is a big chance of failure. When making a target audience analysis, you as if paint a realistic portrait of your potential customer, get to know his preferences, habits, likes, and dislikes. So if you can clearly imagine a person who you want to target, you will easily understand his needs and intents, and therefore, tailor a perfect offer for him.

On the other hand, I must admit, that there definitely is a difference between various ads in terms of skills you need to possess in order to convert a person into a paying customer and time you need to spend in order to see first results. Here you may also ask, what’s the fastest and most straightforward way of acquiring new buying customers online?

And by the fastest, I don’t mean the process of getting the traffic itself, but getting the customer who is already ready to buy. It does also differ from business to business, but generally, without any doubt, it’s considered to be search engine traffic.

                Search engine marketing. Introducing paid ads

Answer a simple question. Where do you go in case you want to search for some products, services, or just useful info? Earlier, people used to go to the libraries and dig in thousands of heavy books or go to traditional stores in order to buy newspapers or magazines, but nowadays, in most cases, you just open up a search engine, Google, most probably.

Yes, it’s a pretty well-known fact that Google is the most popular search engine in the world. People use it so often, that its name has been transformed into a verb. Have you heard people say: in case you don’t know something, just google it. Well, of course, the American giant is not the only search engine in the world.

For example, in the USA there are also Bing and Yahoo, the most popular search engine in China is called Baidu, and in Russia, Yandex gets more than half of all searches. Nevertheless, in the rest of the world, particularly in Europe, more than 90% of all users trust Google.

So why the search engine traffic is considered to be of the best quality? Generally, we’ve already touched on it. To sum it up, it’s all about the intent. The thing is, that sometimes people who are typing some search queries in the search engine bar, already have their credit card out near them. You just need to convince them, that you’re the one to whom they need to give it. But how can we get this extremely effective and desired search engine traffic?

Generally, there are two ways: by doing so-called SEO that in a nutshell implies writing a lot of awesome content and optimizing your website or by running ads, that is buying traffic from the search engine. In the first case, I will be honest with you, that website optimization can be an extremely long and tedious process that not all people have time and energy for.

In the second case, you can get what you need fast, but literally, pay for every single click you get to your website. Your search ads will look very similar to regular organic links to your website in search results, however, will be marked as an “ad” and can be shown either at the top or bottom of the search engine results page.

One of the best advantages of paid ads is that you can test your offer and find out whether or not people need and like it almost immediately. However, you should also understand that other factors, such as the way your website looks and is structured, also greatly influence your conversion rate. Although I think that this is pretty obvious, I will still mention that you should already have a decent website before starting to invest money in ads. Some landing page changes will definitely need to be done later on, however, a strong framework should be already there.

As I realize that most of you guys are busy people who don’t have too much time on your hands on long term methods of promotion but rather have a desire to start representing your business online as fast and efficient as possible, not only this, but also all the upcoming sources of visitors to your website that I will discuss later in this lesson, will imply paying for the traffic.

By the way, another logical advantage of starting from the paid traffic is that it just makes no sense to invest a lot of time in something that you’re not sure about. That’s why in my opinion, paid ads are probably the only right thing for a real business to start from online in case you don’t have a company that is already very well-known offline.

Finishing up our talk about the search traffic, obviously, like everywhere else, there are definitely some pitfalls on your way of buying search traffic, but don’t worry, because in my course, there will be a separate lesson with a step-by-step tutorial on how to set up a successful Google Ads search campaign in order to start buying or in other words, intercepting valuable search traffic directly from Google. But for now, let’s move on to the next online traffic source.

                                       Ads in Videos. YouTube

Continuing our talk about the effectiveness of different online traffic sources, here’s another interesting fact that not all people know. YouTube is currently the second largest search engine in the world, and by the way, it’s also owned by Google. Yes. It’s not just the website with countless amounts of funny cat videos.

Well, maybe it was perceived like this by some people before, but now I must admit, that the situation has really changed. So why YouTube has become so popular? I must say, that the answer is based on several facts and is pretty self-explanatory.

Do you remember me talking about the fact that all modern advertising means are not new and had already been used earlier in history at the beginning of this article? Well, now I will give you another example. I guess most of you will agree with me, that if we think about it, in its concept, YouTube is the same as television, but just a bit modernized, simplified and moved to another space or platform.

The main difference is that it has become closer to people, with absolutely everyone having a possibility of uploading his or her content and putting it in front of a global audience.

So the first reason for YouTube’s popularity lies in the natural flow of historical events that are connected with the development of mankind. People were reading books and newspapers before the appearance of television, right? Nowadays, people have become freer, they got tired of reading or watching the stuff, that other people want them to see.

Most of us want to participate in the community, to express our own points of view. Thus, it’s pretty obvious, that if a great part of the audience has moved to another platform, the ads have also moved. I should say that this is not an exaggeration because nowadays it’s pretty easy to find a person who doesn’t watch TV at all, me proudly being one of them.

Are there any ads in newspapers or on TV? Sure, they’re full of them, and by the way, they’ve been there for a very long time. Are they effective? Well, they kind of are, because the companies still continue to spend millions on it. Finally, have you seen ads on YouTube? I guess all of us have.

By the way, at this point, I really hope that my explanation has already debunked all doubts about the effectiveness of online advertising. The second reason why people start to like YouTube more and more is that a video is just a more unique, entertaining and personal way of passing and spreading information.

Yes. Websites and traditional newspapers are also still being read by people (and again, the difference between these two is that technically, nowadays everyone can create a simple website and post his own article on it), but in the last couple of years, we see a stable tendency which confirms that people start to watch more videos, than reading articles on the websites.

Is there something strange about it? Absolutely not, because in general, also more people watch television than read newspapers, but print media are still not going to die out.

So are ads on YouTube effective? Sure. They’re absolutely are, even though, I must admit, that on the whole, the audience there is considered to be more relaxed and therefore, has less buying intent, than in the search engines, but nevertheless, these are still the same people and this can definitely be worked on if you know some tricks that we’re going to talk about later.

Moreover, people all over the world are starting to perceive YouTube more seriously every single day, watch videos before making a final decision of buying a product or using a service that is a proven trend. The only potential disadvantage for some advertisers may be the fact that in order to start advertising your business on YouTube, it’s not enough to just have a website like in the case of a search campaign.

Obviously, you will need to develop your own video and upload it to YouTube. Yes, I agree that this requires additional work and causes additional costs, however, as a business owner you probably understand that taking additional steps and actions compared to your competitors often results in you overcoming the competition. If something is simple, then it means everyone is already trying this and the other way around. I hope that you get what I’m saying.

In the end I also want to admit, that like with Google search, technically, YouTube is not the only service on the internet where you can upload your videos or run video ads (for example, Facebook also has such an ad format), but it certainly is the most popular one.

By the way, later in this course, we will definitely talk not only about creating an effective YouTube video campaign that can be created in Google Ads, but also about the whole strategy behind making YouTube videos that really sell. As I’ve said earlier regarding the websites, your advertising campaign itself is not a guarantee of success.

          Ads on Websites & in Apps. The Google Display Network

Like I’ve already mentioned earlier, just like newspapers and magazines, many websites on the internet have ads in the form of banners on them. Generally, there are many different networks of various sizes that can help you place your ads on countless websites with content relevant to your business’s product or service.

But just like with the search engine traffic and videos, Google has also surpassed them all with its several millions of partner websites which you can use to show your ads to people who visit them (that is about 90% of all people on the internet). It’s called the Google display network.

Another interesting fact is that the network is not only limited to these websites but also extends to the huge amount of mobile apps with ads serving on YouTube too (in case the channel is being monetized by its owner). Do you already feel the power of this?

I must admit, that unfortunately, not all people do. I would say that the problem is not that this type of traffic doesn’t convert for most of the businesses, because it’s simply not true. The reason definitely lies in the fact that pretty much like the video campaign, Google’s display network campaign has several targeting methods that not all people know how to use or have time and desire to test. And by the way, the last word in the previous sentence of mine was really crucial.

Yes. You have to understand that you definitely need to test all available targeting options and their combinations in your particular niche in order to understand what works best for you, and what doesn’t work at all.

Well, it may sound pretty obvious because this rule can be applied to internet marketing in general, but the GDN is where this really goes to extremes. This is the main reason why many advertisers stop using the display network campaign at the very beginning. They’ve been discouraged by the unsuccessful attempts and investments that didn’t return immediately. And again, please pay attention to the last word of the previous sentence.

One of the biggest misconceptions about internet marketing that many newbies have, is that the results should follow immediately. Well, c’mon, guys. We’re not kids and should be able to understand that this is not the case in most other spheres of our life too. Do all men always manage to succeed in dating without prior experience in this? The same can be said about the job interviews. You really need to know what works, otherwise, you would probably fail. I guess you already get what I’m saying.

Another thing is that you have to understand, that the display ads on websites that people browse are different from the ads on the search engine results page in their very concept. Have you been listening to the beginning of this lesson attentively? What’s one of the most important stages in every marketing campaign? I will give you a hint. It’s a target audience analysis. And why do we need to perform it? That’s right – in order to know the intent of the customer.

Pretty much just like in the case of a YouTube audience, people who browse websites, watch pictures and read articles on them, can show less interest (or sometimes even no interest at all) in your products or services while doing it. Nevertheless, I want to admit, that it can definitely be worked on by playing around with targeting and developing your own marketing strategy.

As you can see, the fact is that the display advertising is not so fast and straightforward as text ads in the search engine and requires a lot of testing and analysis.

I will also be straight with you and say that display ads work particularly well with using several specific methods of reaching your audience which I will also explain to you in a separate lesson about the display network. Obviously, like in the case of search and video campaigns, we will discuss the creation and management of the Google display network campaign within the Google Ads system a bit later. Not only can display ads make you known, but they can also deliver you great results, the latter being the result of the first. Believe me.                   

                    Google Shopping for eCommerce websites

Generally speaking, you can definitely advertise your eCommerce business online with the help of methods that we’ve covered earlier, however, for such business models Google has developed a separate advertising campaign which is called a shopping campaign or shopping ads.

The main advantage of such ads is that in such a case the potential buyer sees a clear picture of a specific product that he’s searching for either directly on the main Google’s search results page, in a separate “shopping” tab in the search results that can be easily found at the very top. It’s important to mention that such ads can also serve on the Google search partner websites and the Google display network.

Is this method of advertising your physical products worth your attention? I would say that it definitely is. The main reason is that it has already been proven that a quality picture of an item with the price underneath, a brief description and information about the shipping cost can make a person who already has an intention to buy something online (in other words, a who’s closer to the end or bottom of a sales funnel) more determined to make a decision faster. After clicking on the picture of a product, a user will land on a specific page of your website fully dedicated to that product which also contributes to the higher probability of a sale.

The only potential disadvantage for beginner advertisers may be the fact that such ads require more time and work to set up. The system takes most of the necessary data from the text file which is called a data feed and is located in a separate Google service called Merchant Center. There are many things that you need to pay attention to, however, if you dedicate enough time and attention to setting the whole thing up, you probably won’t be disappointed. Like in case of all other advertising campaigns mentioned by me earlier, we will discuss this campaign type later during the course.

                   Social media advertising. A part of big secrets

It’s no secret that social media websites are among the most visited sites on the internet, after Google and some of its services and, of course, adult websites. Well, the last one was supposed to be a joke, but in reality, it’s pretty much the truth and we all know and understand it. Anyway, let’s not digress here.

I guess that it’s pretty hard to find a person nowadays who doesn’t have an account in one of the social networks. And I’m not only talking about the youth. More and more senior internet users are starting to like social platforms because they’re entertaining, can be useful from time to time, and most importantly, make people in these hard cyber times a bit closer to each other.

Yes, that’s basically it. Social networks were originally designed for communication. Finally, the entertainment part rolled in. Obviously, the amount of traffic there is huge, but as we already know, the quantity doesn’t mean quality.

And again, I’m not saying that the ads on social media don’t work because Facebook wouldn’t be so mighty and successful in that case. The thing is, that just like with YouTube and the display network, you should understand that in many cases, this traffic just won’t convert when it’s cold and such an audience definitely needs to be warmed up.

I’ll repeat, that there is nothing odd in it because you shouldn’t forget that people there are primarily chatting with their friends or simply relaxing. Stop bothering them with your ads, and if you do – do it the right way! Well, sure it was another attempt for a joke, but I hope you got me. Do you remember me saying that online ads are more flexible than offline?

The thing is that online you have a possibility of choosing who you’re targeting based on many facts, including such important information as their interests and habits. Otherwise, you will just waste your time, energy, money and leave a person who just saw your ad unsatisfied or even pissed off. By the way, I guess this really reminds you of some annoying TV commercials and I should say that we definitely don’t want this to happen online.

And after all, what else do I mean when I say that you should use the ads on social media or on the websites the right way? There still can be more than one correct answer to this question but the main idea comes up to the fact that ideally, your ad on social media shouldn’t be the first and the only interaction with your potential customer.

For example, many people make a big mistake of targeting all people who like animals, or even worse, all people in the age group of 20-25 who live in Boston, etc. The problem is that the possibility of them buying something from you or even taking some other, simpler action is extremely low. These people don’t know you, and they’re not actively searching for anything, what do you expect?

Thus, ads on social platforms work great as part of a more sophisticated sales funnel where their role is to warm up or support the interest of a person to your brand, product or service, help them to make a decision that they were not ready to make earlier. One of the most popular and effective methods of doing it is called remarketing which basically means showing your ad to a person who has, for instance, visited your website before or performed some other action.

To be honest with you, I’ve initially planned to let this info out a bit later on. The proof is that at the end of the display network part I’ve also promised you to reveal some effective techniques later. However, I didn’t think that it will be so early. So this is basically it. The display network is really very similar to social media websites in terms of strategy. Who knows, maybe I will not manage to keep some other secrets of mine till the end of this introductory part. That’s why it’s worth to continue listening till the end.

As you can see, social networks are just perfect for helping the right people to know you better which in other words is called content marketing. Stop, folks. It seems like this has just happened to me again. The last term that I’ve used is too advanced and was not planned to be used by me at this point. But if we’ve already touched on this. Here’s one more very important and valuable fact that most beginner advertisers usually don’t realize: People tend to buy from people that they know and trust. It’s a proven fact.

As this course is fully dedicated to traffic from Google, be sure that apart from the display network, Google has something more up its sleeve when it comes to social media advertising. It’s definitely worth mentioning that not a long time ago Google decided to release a new campaign type in Google Ads which can be partially considered to be a reply to Facebook and other popular social networks. This campaign is called “Discovery” and just like the display ads, can show your ads not one, but on several properties such as YouTube, “Discover” feed which can be found in the Google’s search app and Gmail.

Note that in this case we’re mostly talking about the ads serving on mobile devices with one single exception. In the case of discovery ads, a key role play high-quality, visually rich, eye-catching and inspiring images that you need to provide. Depending on your niche, this type of campaign can be considered a good alternative to the already mentioned Google display network campaign.

          Tracking performance of paid ads. This can’t be ignored

In the previous parts of this tutorial we’ve discussed the most popular ways and techniques of acquiring new customers online. Generally, at this point, many of you may think that you already have some thoughts about what method of promotion best suits your business and it’s perfectly fine. However, please don’t hurry up spending both your time and money right away and making a mistake that thousands of other business owners make every single day.

I’ll ask you a very simple question. Do you want your resources to be spent smartly and efficiently? Yes, sure! Unfortunately, for some reason, a great percentage of business owners who have just started their marketing actions online, don’t pay proper attention to correctly tracking their results from the very beginning. I personally suspect that this can be partially connected with the mere satisfaction of getting traffic to your website or a video which I can understand, or overestimated hopes that they will be able to measure the performance on their own, that is by eye.

Please remember that marketing is not a sphere where something can be measured roughly or approximately. All actions that you take have to be properly measured in order to find out what works and what doesn’t. To your surprise, it may definitely come out that something that you’ve personally considered to be useless and ineffective before, brings you money and customers in the long run.

That is why in addition to setting up and optimizing your paid advertisement campaigns, the second vast topic that I will also talk about in my course is the way you can track the performance and effectiveness of your marketing actions both within the framework of Google Ads system and also in another, Google’s separate advanced web analytics system called Google Analytics.

Yes, if you really want to become successful online (and I really hope that you do), you should be able to understand what people like on your website, and also why do they leave. You don’t need to guess, you need to know it. By the way, this is the main reason why many people are afraid of paid advertising and stop doing it after the first couple of times they think they wasted their budget.

What you should understand is that paid traffic is not a lottery. You shouldn’t guess and hope but know and control what you’re doing, constantly testing new things and adapting to the current situation.

Paid ads are all about the money you’ve spent in order to get a return on investment. It’s that simple. As you can see, it’s not scary at all if you see whether what you’re currently doing pays off and are cautious and fast in making necessary changes.

                  It’s time to connect the dots. Building a brand

Let’s assume you already have experience in creating and managing advertising campaigns that bring you good results, your website or landing pages that you send traffic to were optimized for specific user actions by having conducted multiple A/B tests, the conversion tracking is set up and functions correctly. At this point, it may seem that you’ve done a great job at perfecting your money machine and generally, it’s hard to disagree with it. However, wait. Don’t be so opinionated. I didn’t let you be so yet. You should wait for a command. I don’t need to say that it’s a joke, right?

Anyways, so what do you think will happen next? Well, you may say that you will just continue to do what you’re currently doing, maybe even increase the advertising budget in order to scale the whole thing up. Yes, this also makes sense, however, in such a case, by turning off the ads, most likely, the inflow of new customers and sales will just stop too, which is kind of logical, but not something everyone should strive for in a long run.

In other words, this is not the full-fledged, automated business that most people are ultimately dreaming of. I would say that to a certain extent, such a business can be compared to freelancing. As long as you’re working hard every single day by doing something for one-time customers, you have an income, but when you stop, everything is over. Another thing is that in such a case people probably contact you and buy from you only because they just need to have something done.

Most likely as cheap and fast as possible. I should say that the probability of you becoming a rich person by selling cheap products is pretty damn low, but there’s another, the bigger problem in this. In such a case, there is absolutely no sort of emotional connection between you and your buyer. Your relations with him are that simple.

What I want to say is that the mere conversions or one-time sales should not be the only focus and result of money that you spend on paid traffic or any other marketing actions. If you’re serious about marketing, you need to have a strategy that is more long-term. By the way, wasting money on those people who don’t buy from you the first time is also not farsighted.

So do you know what’s the difference between freelancing and entrepreneurship? In other words, a one-time “conversion game” versus a real business? It’s a returning customer who knows and likes you. In a well-established business whose goal is to make its’ customers’ lives better, the real money or profit is always being made later, that is not from the first transaction or interaction with the client.

At the end of the social media advertising part, I’ve already mentioned that people usually buy from people who they know and trust and even said that this can be considered a secret. So this is exactly what I mean. In order to build a really successful, full-fledged business you definitely need to have and grow your customer base. What’s the best way of doing it? Theoretically, you can literally collect the contact info of people who have previously bought from you (for example, by building an email list) and then try to make them buy from you again.

I should say that this is not a bad idea at all, but the best thing that a business owner can imagine, is when customers come and return to him without pushing or asking them to do so. Why would they do this? This is a very good question I should say because we’ve finally approached the notion of a brand which is one of the main things in marketing.

So what is a brand? There are many definitions but generally, they all come done to several points which are essential. A brand is a trustworthy promise. One of the biggest brand-building goals is to differentiate from the competition by building relationships, convincing a customer to purchase from you over them! You need to provide the consumers everything they need that they are not getting from a similar business.

At least they should have such an impression. You should make people feel that you’re not selling to them, but really understand their concern and helping them to be better, feel better.  “The best brand builders see greatness in their customers, and figure out ways to enable it”. You need to share values/beliefs with your customers which are bigger than any product.

Do you remember me saying that in freelancing there is no emotional connection between the business and the customer? So this is because a freelancer who is working on one of those huge freelance platforms doesn’t have his own brand. To be honest with you, we may even say that he doesn’t have a business or doesn’t own the customer. A platform owns him because the customer doesn’t return directly to the business which does the job.

They return to that platform because it’s fast, cheap, safe, has a lot of good professionals and so on. These promises are parts of their brand. If you analyze such platforms attentively enough, you’ll notice that the owners of those platforms try to do everything they can in order to suppress any manifestation of brand development among their freelancers because they understand how important this is. They want them to stay unnamed, dark horses so to say.

A pretty similar thing happens in case you’re just providing a simple “unbranded” product or a service to consumers directly (I mean, not through some marketplace platform like “amazon” or a freelance platform like “Upwork”). Although it’s still better than the previous option, however, as there is no emotional connection, people buy from you only because it’s profitable or comfortable for them at that particular point in their life.

However, in case there are some minor issues or if someone else offers the same product or a service a little bit cheaper, they won’t contemplate too long. They will leave you never to come back because there is nothing to come back for.

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve mentioned the phrase “emotional connection” several times already. And I’ve done this for the following reason: “People buy change (or in other words, the solution to their problem, a result) with emotions and then justify it with logic”. In most cases “people don’t buy what they need, they buy what they want”.

If people are really passionate about your brand and believe in it, they will become your loyal customers for a long period of time. This means that they will buy your products or services several times and become your regulars. A regular, in turn, means, first of all, that you don’t need to spend resources on finding a new one, but simply earn more automatically.

But these are also not all the advantages, because in this case, they will certainly recommend your company to their friends, relatives or acquaintances, which in turn will have a very positive effect on the “organic” promotion of our brand with the help of a word-of-mouth-marketing.

And this, accordingly, can mean that our company will become larger and profit will increase, since deep inside each of us understands that people are often willing to pay a lot more just for the brand, the trust and many other different feelings that can be associated with it.

At this point, I hope that now you understand that building your own brand should stand at the very top of all your marketing actions or in other words, to be your ultimate goal. Obviously, you would ask how this could be done? A brand consists of several elements and can be built with the help of both paid and organic traffic. This is a very extensive topic that I definitely won’t be able to cover within this introductory part of my course. I will stop here by saying that a huge role in this process plays a term that has also already been unintentionally mentioned by me earlier in this lesson. It’s content marketing.

                         Any other traffic sources in the future?

As you already know, this course focuses primarily on paid traffic from Google and the reasons for this have already been mentioned by me earlier. However, as I want to make my introduction to the world on internet marketing as complete as possible and I want your marketing strategy to be as complete and long-term as possible as well, obviously, I want to share my thoughts about other traffic sources too.

I will start by admitting that, personally, I always prefer to approach different things thoroughly and comprehensively, which means that I do not and can not recommend using paid advertising as the only source of traffic to your website in the long run.

First of all, as the English proverb goes, putting all your eggs in one basket is simply short-sighted. In other words, for example, in case of some issues with your main traffic source, the sales will probably drop heavily, especially, if your brand is not strong enough yet. As you should strive for your business to be as stable as possible, this scenario is highly undesirable.

Every experienced marketer will confirm that the key to success lies in the advisable usage of all available methods of promotion that make sense for your specific business and in your specific situation. (Both free and paid).

Of course, after you try several of them, over time you will begin to understand which of those methods of attracting customers is the most optimal for your business and the niche as a whole.

However, even this does not mean that it will be necessary to dwell on one thing. You can simply allocate most of the budget for something specific. For example for a certain type of campaign in Google Ads. If speaking about free methods, then I highly recommend you to make yourself familiar with this article where I discuss a strategy that I personally think it’s worth investing your time and money in.

                  Remember about your website and ad assets

You’ve probably noticed that throughout this lesson I’ve mentioned several times that the good overall quality of the incoming traffic is not all that you need in order to make a sale or close a deal. Obviously, not only you need to have a good-looking, trustworthy and conversion-oriented website, but also strive to make the assets such as titles and descriptions, images and videos that you’re using in Google Ads the same.

Note that all these elements should be as consistent as possible to both each other and your product or service. The last thing that we want is to lose or disappoint the customer that we’ve paid for even before him making a purchase because he expected something different from you.

As web development is a pretty extensive topic, I won’t go into any additional specifics in this introductory part of the course which primarily focuses on advertising and marketing. However, I will mention that in case any of you would be interested in me providing you some concrete suggestions or even technical help, you can always contact me regarding this directly.

              This is the end. Hold your breath and count to ten

So guys, at this point, I want to thank each of you for your attention. I really hope that you have found my pretty protracted introduction to the world of internet advertising interesting and informative. No need to say that I will be happy to see you in the next parts of the training which will be structured in the same order as the subtopics discussed by me today. Let’s get your business the attention that you deserve! See you soon.