Read time: 4 mins, 36 sec.

Hey there - it's Brian 👋

Today, we’re getting customers with ads.

I just left a workshop with the founder of a $5M SaaS company. His growth has accelerated and he’s planning to double his revenue to $10M in 2 years.

Bold.

So we’ll start with 1 product through 1 channel:
Ads.

Today's issue is for you if you’re looking to get started with ads and want your first steps to get started (without wasting money).

Let’s make your business an outlier: 👇

Why haven’t his ads gotten customers?

In this case my client ran ads for weeks, but he hasn’t had a sale!

Why?

Running ads does not get you customers. It gets you attention.

A few months ago I was in Vietnam.

Picture this: it’s hot. My back is covered in sweat. I’m making my way through a central square packed with tourists.

I’m weird. So every time I go to a new city I play this game:
• I find one thing that I didn’t expect to be there
• And one thing that I expected but couldn’t find

So I’m looking for what surprises me and I notice this guy is yelling into a megaphone in Vietnamese. Huh?

I pay more attention and figure out he’s trying to sell sweaters.

I sit on the curb for a few minutes and watch his sales process.

He yells into a megaphone to get a tourists attention. Tourists don’t speak Vietnamese, but they’re curious so they head over anyway.

They look at his sweaters, wipe the sweat off their brow from the heat, then walk away when they feel it’s not for them! It’s too hot for sweaters.

Ads are your megaphone 📣

You need to get attention. But you need the right attention and be set up to make customers feel your solution is for them.

Let’s get into the 4 steps you need to start running ads (& not waste your money).

So here’s the 4 things you need so you don’t waste money running ads

Overall here’s your process:

1. List 3 types of people you think will buy

2. Make a landing page specific to each buyer type

3. Use the megaphone: Send traffic to that landing page (ads)

4. Watch for sales (or sign ups)

I’ll explain and even share tools you can use to make these steps easier.

1. Who do you think will buy?

Common mistake: not having enough details on the customer type.

We need to know who they are so we know where to find them AND so we can write the landing page to persuade them to buy.

Things like:
• Who are they?
• Where are they?
• What’s their pain?
• What are their interests?
• What do they search for?
• What platforms can I find them on?

Come up with 3 different “who”s and we’ll make landing pages for them in the next step.

Examples:
• Startup founders
• Marketing agencies
• B2C SaaS companies

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:

In our case, we have one buyer type who buys 90% of our client’s product. BUT there are only 400 - 500 of them in the US. So they are buyer type #1.

Our closest competitor is 20x the size of my client (doing $100M in revenue) so we’re breaking their customer base down into different types to see if there’s a type we’re missing and should be testing in this phase. (Hint: we found a few).

It needs to make strategic sense to expand, but we want to know our options.

2. Make a landing page unique to each buyer type

You can have all the traffic you want from ads, but if the page doesn’t convince them to buy was it worth it?

Make a different landing page for each buyer type.

You want each person to land and feel you’re speaking directly to them.

Use use words they relate to, speak to their pain, use examples from them etc.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:

What if I don’t have enough traffic to test my landing page?

That’s common. In fact, my client doesn’t have enough traffic either.

For a typical A/B test (meaning comparing two landing pages) you need at least 1,000 conversions a month before the numbers mean anything.

But no worries. Here’s what we’ll do instead:

• Watch how people interact with the site using a tool like Microsoft Clarity

• Survey customers to hear their opinion

• Take risks! We’ll unscientifically test copy and if we see a big spike we’ll try it

3. Use the megaphone: Run the ads

Now, let’s get the right type of attention.

There’s a lot of different digital ads you can run:
Socials, newsletters, paid search etc.

I made you an infographic below with 6 examples.

Each has its advantages, but we’ll cover that in another issue.

For now (and oversimplified), if you’re B2B - you can’t go wrong with Google ads. And if you’re B2C you can’t go wrong with Facebook ads.

Both have amazing analytics and targeting so you can be more precise.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:

I’m in the B2B space so we’re using Google Search Ads.

I like Google ads because people who search are actively looking for solutions. You spend less effort educating them on their problem and your solution.

But in reality you can make any ad platform work if you create the right funnel.

We’ll dive into detail in a future issue, but real quick - the less your audience knows about the problem/solution, the more storytelling and trust building you need to do.

4. Watch for conversion

Common mistake: getting deep analytic tools then getting lost in the data.

I did this myself.

You waste too much time learning the tool and not enough time focusing on what matters: getting customers.

Stay lean and simple. Focus on a few stats:

• Did they convert?

• How did they find out about you?

• Who are they?

You can get more intense later on but start simple.

A few options:

• Google Analytics 4 (GA4) - The classic. It’s free. Yet also the most complicated tool on the planet. I’ll die on that hill.

• Fathom - a tool that simplifies GA4. Just the basics

• Microsoft Clarity - a free heatmap tool to see where people click

• Unbounce - test which landing pages are working

There’s so many tools.

Any tools you recommend? Reply to this email and let me know!

📣 Get out the megaphone

If you can get the skill to get the attention and convert the attention to a sale? You’ll be unstoppable.

Heck you could even sell sweaters in Vietnam.

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See you next Thursday 👋

Brian
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P.S. Do you want your own marketing reviewed (for free)?

I’ll take a look at your ads, landing pages, socials, and SEO. Then you’ll get an actionable list of things you can do to get more customers.

If your business is over $1M in revenue: I’m offering a free marketing review for Outlier Growth subscribers.

No commitment. Just looking to help.

Get your free review here.

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