3 simple reasons why I don’t advertise on social media

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After attending a webinar the other day I was persuaded to give social media advertising another try. Getting your posts noticed on Facebook (or social media in general) isn’t necessarily easy. I’ve spent thousands of dollars contributing to Mark Zuckerberg’s vacation fund in the past without mentionable results (not even a postcard), and for a long time I wasn’t planning on giving that another try. But I did.

The reason a lot of people have signed up for my social media masterclass is that they’re having issues driving traffic and engagement from their social media activity.  Many complain that their posts on Facebook are only seen by about 7% (or less) of their “fans” on Facebook. To make those numbers juicer, they’re thinking of “boosting” their posts or using advertisements to drive additional fans towards their Facebook page (Living by Experience has one too, by the way – you can “like” us here). But advertising is not the approach I teach participants of my online social media influencer class. Here are my top three reasons why.

It’s too expensive

There’s nothing wrong with experimenting with some social media ads for a while. It’s literally like playing the slot machines in Las Vegas – as long as you have a set budget and know when to stop you probably won’t get into too much trouble. And who knows – maybe you’ll win big. In my previous experiment I tried several ads, targeted at a large audience to promote my fine art photography. I set aside a budget of a few thousand dollars. I got a lot of traffic to my website, but not a noticeable increase in art sales. This time around, I tried something different: using targeting, I went after “high net worth individuals”. Art being a luxury, I reasoned, so I attempted to attract people more likely to spend money on luxuries. My target audience went from large to small – but I spent an almost equal amount of money for equally disappointing results. With a more targeted audience, Facebook put a higher pricetag on every individual clickthrough to my fine art website – so my bill at the end of the month was again, astronomical. My increase in sales on the other hand, wasn’t.

It doesn’t get any results

In business, nothing is “too expensive”. The old adage of “you have to spend money to make money” still holds true to some extent, and I don’t mind doing so as long as the results are there. Starting a (side) business is more accessible now than ever before, and usually a large sum of money isn’t required to get started. You can literally start a website or blog today, be online tonight and see results as soon as tomorrow. As the results come in, you can reinvest the money to further grow your business and take it one step at a time. To get started, usually some money upfront is required. Many authors who participated in my Write a Book in a Week program have doubled or even tripled their income after their book came out – but they all paid a (relatively small) tuition fee to get into the program. I don’t mind investing any amount as long as the results meet the goals that I  have set for that investment. Whether an ad on social media costs me thousand or ten thousand dollars becomes irrelevant as long as the direct results are there also. If a thousand dollar ad makes me five thousand in additional revenue, it’s worth it. When I’m just pumping money over in Facebook’s advertising engine every week without any of those results, it’s time to pull the plug.

Nobody likes ads, anyway

On Facebook we’re sharing about the life we wish we were living. Most people never post about what’s really happening. It gets worse when you look at business pages, nothing but endless advertisements and sales messages. Buy this, look at that, sign up for this. Did you know the average customer sees about 5,000 marketing messages every day? Five thousand! We’re inundated with marketing content thrown at us, so we ignore it. Nobody likes looking at ads. We’re so embedded in a world of being sold to that we forget who we truly are and why we do the things we do. One of the recommendations I make in my social media workshop is to share from that standpoint of authenticity first. What does your day look like? Don’t tell me you’re selling golf lessons – share about your golf experience. Don’t tell me about your next success seminar, demonstrate your success in the things you do everyday. Be interesting. Be you. Share your story. Share what you’re doing. People don’t want to connect with businesses trying to sell them more stuff. People want to connect with people.

In the end I don’t care so much about ads. What I really want to do is simply sharing some of the things I’m passionate about, travel and photography, through my social media channels. In my new social media masterclass I explain exactly how to make the big five social media platforms work for you. I would love for you to join and get access to my full, ultimate social media strategy.

P.S. Questions, comments, compliments? Join the conversation and text me: 604-210-8668. I’d love to hear from you.

If this post helped you, please consider buying one of my books, or checking out a more in-depth course on one of the topics I talk about. Thanks! 🙂