Are paid digital ads worth it?

Summary – Paid ads might be worth it, but after you’ve worked every organic and personal angle.

We all want more from our businesses – more sales, more recognition, more traffic, more!

The promise of advertising is that you can pay a small amount and magically boost your sales. It’s even in the language that various platforms use – “Boost this post for only $5!”, “Drive more traffic from our ads!” But these enticements are short on details and long on promises.

When I work with clients on their strategy to increase sales, paid digital advertising usually comes in last on the list – it’s there, but it isn’t a priority. The longer answer to whether or not you should pay for digital ads is – maybe not just yet. Let’s examine:

Start by making a short list of your goals and get specific!

Before you plunk down money on paid ads, start by diving deeper into your business goals.

What is your objective from paid ads? Followers? Email list sign-ups? Sales? Brand awareness?

If your goal is to get more followers and more visitors to your site how many of each would make paid ads worth it for you?

If your goal is to increase your subscribers – how many sign-ups would you need for paid ads to be worth the money?

And if your ultimate goal is to increase your online sales, what would be your ideal Return on Investment (ROI)?

If brand awareness is your goal, how will you decide to measure this?

Having specific goals for your ads will be your best method for evaluating whether or not the ads are working for you.

Here’s what paid advertising CAN’T do for you.

This isn’t sexy to say, but a lot of success in eCommerce grows from paying deep attention to the right details. It comes from having a website that is an alluring combination of beautiful, stylish, and functional. It’s that last part that can make or break your eCommerce success.

Paid advertising can’t make people purchase a product. Paid ads might bring people to your site, but these visitors won’t become customers unless your site has drawn them into your story or unless your site has given them the information that they need to make a decision.

For instance, with one client last year, we realized that some listings were missing vital pieces of information – chain length and stone size were missing from some of the more popularly viewed items on their site.

In other words, people were visiting, looking, lusting even, but they were missing that last vital piece of information that they needed to add to their cart and purchase.

And sure, you might think that they would reach out and ask you for the details, but humans are gonna human, and many will simply leave your site.

Making sure that your visitors understand what they are looking at is vital. This is especially true when lots of us in the jewelry business are selling products at $500 and up.

Here’s another reason to temporarily pump the brakes on running digital ads – your budget

A lot of digital advertising works on something called a Cost Per Click basis (CPC), meaning you pay for every click to your website*. In theory, this means that you pay for the most interested parties possible.

In theory, this works well, because the people clicking through to your site will be more likely to purchase.

Getting people to your site and getting them to be aware of your brand could be the sole goal of your ad campaign – that is a reasonable thing to advertise for.

But if you are paying for each click, and no one is purchasing, it could indicate an issue with the listings on your site. In the case of the client I mentioned earlier, had they spent money on ads before working on their site, the ad money would have been wasted.

So what would the path to digital ads look like?

OK, so you still want to buy ads to increase traffic and hopefully sales. How can you get your website ready for the traffic coming from ads?

• Website review – because for ads to be effective, visitors need a soft place to land.

• Do an honest evaluation of your site – can anyone who lands there understand what to do and where to go and how to shop? Do your listings have the details that a customer needs to purchase?

• Gather data – this is a dull way of saying that you need to learn what your customers like and what they want.

  • This is information you can gather from in-person shows for retail and wholesale levels, or from responses to your social media posts.

  • This helps you because you will need to know HOW to advertise to people

• Use social media to drive organic traffic – every post, every link, every everything should lead people back to your site.

  • This will give you great information on WHAT it is the people like about your site.

For instance, is there one listing that everyone looks at but no one buys? Is there a listing that no one looks at, but you think is worthy of more attention? This kind of information can inform how you spend your advertising dollars.

All of this will take time, but the good news is that implementing changes from this review can increase traffic and sales all on their own before you advertise.

Wouldn’t you rather spend less, but be more effective?

Now imagine that your site is beautiful, functional, enticing, and ready for shoppers. Now imagine that you’ve developed an ear for what your customers and future customers want from you. Now you can take that language, that functionality, and that beauty and increase your sales.

The beauty of not paying for advertising, the beauty of putting in some of this work is that there is a pretty decent likelihood that you’ll increase your sales, visits, and subscribers organically. Meaning that you can spend less and make more.

Your ad dollars can go much farther

It also means that once you do start paying for those CPC ads, your money will go much farther because the people coming to your site will be ready to check out. You will know who to target for your ads, you will have clear listings that are ready for purchase. You will need fewer visitors to your site to make sales meaning your ad spend will be so much more effective.

You can get started by ensuring your product listings have all the details your visitors need. I offer this product checklist for anyone who wants to get started on their own. The checklist is there as a reminder of all of the important details that can make or break your sales.

I also offer my eCommerce Edit consulting plan for anyone who wants an expert review and the support to get it done.

See what you can do with paid ads when your visitors have a soft place to land.

*There are a lot of ways of discussing digital advertising, this is the most basic

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