Guessing is expensive. A lot.
Anybody inexperienced in making sales chooses the easiest (and most costly) way to promote - paid advertising. Immediate exposure brings you potential customers and revenue almost instantly. But, as time goes by, these ads are less and less effective and more expensive. The reasons are countless. Ads are repetitively shown to the same audience, blocking software, irrelevant ad placement, inflated cost, competition, distrust in ads, overall fog everywhere, and so on.
Relying solely on paid advertising restricts your brand’s visibility and reach. While it may be effective in reaching new customers, it only targets a specific audience. Building a strong brand and incorporating various marketing strategies, such as content marketing and social media marketing, can help reach a wider audience and create long-term brand awareness. Building a strong brand is more challenging, but it is essential for longevity.
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The initial success of ads, measured by factors such as sales and conversion rate, can create the illusion of self-sufficiency and the belief that advertising is all that is needed for promotion. However, relying solely on advertising is not sustainable in the long term. As a business owner, you must continuously pay for advertising to reach new customers, which can be expensive and may not always produce desired outcomes.
Moreover, even if you increase the cost of advertising, the resulting increase in revenue may be minimal. Customers may become immune to seeing the same ads over and over again and may start ignoring them - and you, your business.
Having only paid advertising to promote your business is a problem by itself. So are issues like: overpriced ads, ignored ads, neglected collected data, inefficient ads, misinterpreted data, amateur approach to advertising and so on.
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Paid advertising is not just for making sales. It can be used to test your products or services before even considering of adding to your portfolio. You can experiment by testing the attributes(such as title, price, image), its demand, conversion, audience, … for a fraction of cost.
Additionally, it can be used to promote your business by focusing on brand promotion rather than converting visitors into customers.
Remember: make sure you gather data and interpret it correctly, otherwise it is gambling. Ads are not meant to entertain.
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Your immediate goal may be to make a sale, but your long-term objective is to build a sustainable company. The future of the company is built on returning customers, which can be achieved through branding rather than advertising. Ideally, customers should come from recommendations. Spending a lot of money on ads can indicate that there are issues with the product or service that need to be addressed, as customers are not being convinced or satisfied. This can result in a forced purchase, rather than a genuine one.
Instead of spending money on ads, it is recommended to invest in improving the product, service, or idea so that customers will promote it for you.