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Paid advertising is something most online business owners struggle with at first. Here’s how a very special event helped me to get perspective on it. A year ago I was sitting in the ultra cool New Jersey HQ of one of my Mentors Jay Kubassek. Jay is co-founder of Six Figure Mentors (SFM) and Digital Experts Academy {DEA). Also there were co-founder Stuart Ross and their leadership team of mega successful entrepreneurs. 13 other SFM and DEA affiliates were invited. Myself and the other affiliates had earned a place on a very special 2-day masterminding and training event. This event (known as 10 for 10) has kick started many a successful Internet marketing career. I was in powerful company.
The event started with a round table session. We introduced ourselves and were asked to talk about our business challenges. When it came to my turn I explained that I was having trouble getting my head around paid advertising. Just to frame that: We earned our 10 for 10 places through reaching an income goal. Unlike most of the others I had reached mine through free marketing – blogging and video – rather than through paid advertising.
Paid Advertising Vs Free Marketing
I explained that whenever I ran paid ad campaigns I’d panic when they didn’t actually generate sales. At the same time I was getting some big sales from my blogs and organic videos. This is quite rare according to Stuart but very difficult to optimise as it relies on people finding those videos. There are things you can do make them discoverable of course but with Google’s ever-changing algorithms and policies it’s getting harder. Paying for traffic instead makes sense but has its own challenges.
The advice I got has proven to be invaluable. Stuart in typical no-nonsense style suggested I just send some traffic via paid Youtube ads to some of the videos that had generated sales. Later in the event, super affiliates Martin Strom and Christian Bir went through an extremely detailed presentation on Youtube paid advertising, which takes a lot of the guesswork out of the equation.
Changing Your Mindset On Paid Advertising
You may be in the same boat if you are new to Internet marketing or indeed to SFM and DEA. Paid marketing is without doubt the strategy used by all successful internet business owners. If you are not starting with a big budget though it can be a painful learning curve. It’s costing you money after all and it can take a while to master.
What I learned at that event and through my ongoing training with SFM and DEA is that you need to change your mindset on it. You need to go from the leap of faith approach – “Eventually I’ll work it out” (hopefully before I run out of money and have to get a job) – to a more scientific approach.
With the scientific approach you track everything so that you are getting back a ton of data from your advertising campaigns. Then you can and use data to improve them. No traditional forms of adverting provide the amount of useable information that online platforms do. You start off small. You study the information you are paying for and make data driven decisions to either scale them up or tweak them. Switching your mindset from “I’m wasting money” to “I’m buying actionable information” really is the key.
From Leap of Faith To Data Driven Decisions
The ad budgets of top Internet marketers seem eye-watering but trust me they start small and scale strategically. They wouldn’t be spending fortunes on advertising if they weren’t getting a huge return on the investment.
Of course you need to be promoting products – your own or as an affiliate, selling other people’s for commission – that offer an ROI which make paid marketing viable in the first place. That aside from the incredible training and events like 10 for 10 is what got me into SFM and DEA in the first place. It’s also why I am still an affiliate partner 5 years later. The SFM and DEA commission structure is possibly the best on the market.
When you know that (depending on your position in the pay plan) a lead generated can earn you up to $8k, your perspective changes. Factor in recurring monthly and annual residuals and you realise that you can actually afford to spend quite a lot on advertising – when you do it properly. Understanding this helps you to take the essential longer-term view of the process.
If you’d like more information about SFM and DEA’s world class educational and affiliate business platform click the link below. This will give you access to their free introductory video series.