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So you’ve got some cash and you’re looking for the best place to spend it for an ROI.
Well, you could put it in the S&P 500 for a “totally sweet” 8% return, or invest it in your own business for somewhere between a 0% and infinity ROI.
I’m assuming you want the “infinite ROI” option, so let’s dig in…
Table of Contents
Where Can I Spend My Money?
First off, we have to discuss what you can spend your money on, and where to do it. There isn’t a lot that money can’t buy today, at least when it comes to marketing. So understanding your options is key to spending effectively.
Pay-to-Play
Pay-to-play options are things that require money to engage and usually, there isn’t a way around that. Think of things such as social media ads, media buying, featured articles, etc. You’re going to have to spend some cash if you want to engage in these types of assets and campaigns.
- Social Media Ads
By far, one of the easiest ways to spend your marketing budget. Spending here is pretty linear, meaning that once you find an ad that works, you can inherently scale it up and spend more to make more. Unfortunately, this also means that you will be in a constant battle of managing the cost of your ads to keep your profit alive and well.
What does that mean? Well when you find a “winning ad”, meaning something that converts customers and leaves you with a profit, you should be able to increase spending on it to get more results. This works up to a certain point, but eventually, your audience might run out or get bored of the ad you are using and you’ll have to change it up.
- Media Buying
Media buying is the overarching term for renting advertisement space somewhere. This could be in the form of a banner ad, a billboard, a TV, or even a blog post. MB can be quite effective if you know your audience is somewhere specific and you want to get in front of them. Social media ads are technically a subset of this, but it’s far more prevalent so I figured it deserved its own spot.
MB is usually a little more involved than social media ads because it requires you to reach out to the owner of the medium you want to use. Want to have a banner ad on a specific website? You will have to reach out directly and discuss pricing with them directly. There are media buying networks out there that can help with this, but that’s an added cost on top of how much the placement will cost.
- Featured Articles and “PR”
Did you know you could buy your way into an article on almost any major website? Want to be featured on Forbes? With the right amount of money, you can make it happen. While this practice may be frowned upon, it’s a burgeoning industry where writers, journalists, and contributors will take on a specific article or topic – for a price.
You’ll most likely have to engage a PR agency, find a service on a contractor website like Fiverr, or find a listing on a relevant internet forum. But it’s possible, and it might even be a good investment. Not only can you display that you were “featured” on said website, but you’ll also probably get a do-follow backlink out of it too. Not to mention that the article might garner some traffic and send it your way too (but never bet on this).
Sometimes you might get away with giving free access to someone in exchange for a review video. But to guarantee it’s positive you will probably have to spend some cash. Influencers and creators can be a great way to leverage an existing audience and guide them to your product. But it does come with a price tag, and the cost will really depend on their audience size and relevance in your industry.
It’s pretty easy to coordinate this, just reach out to relevant influencers that you know your customers watch and follow. Negotiate terms, and eventually, you’ll get a post, video, or referral back to you.
However, there’s one thing to watch out for here and that’s fake follower counts. Some creators will purchase a large amount of followers to make it seem like they have a large audience. That’s bad for you because you might be thinking your video is going to get hundreds of thousands of views, but really you will be shown to someone’s grandma and some other random people.
Always check the engagement on previous content. If it says they have 100,000 followers, then their posts or videos should be getting an adequate amount of likes and comments. If they aren’t, then that’s a big red flag.
Pay to Enhance
Well, we just went over things that require payment. But what about things that could be free initially, but could benefit from having a budget? Posting on social media is free, but there are certainly benefits from putting some money behind your efforts.
- Social Media
Having a social media account is almost a necessity nowadays. It’s a marketing channel that allows you to engage with others in an organic fashion. A well-kept account can provide great social proof, and it can even provide a place to keep previous buyers engaged and coming back for more.
So what happens when you spend some money on it? Well, you could purchase the service of someone with more experience and expertise. This could lead to a bigger reach and higher quality content, which could lead to more inbound customers.
You could also choose to simply boost your existing posts to a larger audience. Did you have a post that performed particularly well? It might be a good idea to ‘boost’ that post to a larger audience because they will probably like it too.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is a tricky aspect of the internet because technically you don’t need to spend anything on it. But to utilize it effectively, you almost always need to spend some cash. That’s because it’s quite complex and there’s a lot of moving parts to it. So what should you spend your SEO budget on?
Hiring someone to optimize your website can be a great help. They may make some backend changes as well as some changes to your wording and the keywords you use. This can help your website rank better on Google and other search engines leading to more organic traffic.
If you’re not a writer yourself, you could hire a copywriter to create some content around specific keywords that you know your audience is searching for. If done right, this content can rank and capture some of that traffic, bringing them back to the website to view your product.
Backlinks. Yes, you can buy backlinks to boost your website’s authority, leading to higher rankings in the search results. If you do this, just make sure they are high-quality backlinks. Avoid sketchy backlinks from unreputable websites or websites with little to no authority. This could actually backfire and penalize your website by association.
- Outbound Marketing
Ever thought about hiring a salesperson or automating emails? You could do it all yourself, but that’s not very scalable long-term. Hiring someone to manage your outbound campaigns can provide a great ROI if you find the right person.
You could also invest in an automation platform that sends emails and automates other aspects of the process. Word of caution, these types of platforms require a bit of setup time and you’ll want to be careful not to use emails from your primary domain. Email providers are quite picky about email spam and can penalize any domain they feel is abusing the system.
What’s the Best Option?
So what’s the best option? To be honest, I have no clue.
It really depends on your audience, their preferences, and what you feel you can commit to doing consistently.
All of these options can be successful and are used every single day. But they all take time, money, and consistency.
Don’t expect to launch an ad campaign and immediately get buyers. You will have to test out different creatives, wording, and demographics. Once you find one, then you can start scaling up and spending more.
The last piece of advice I will leave you with is this – Try to commit to one for a specific amount of time. Don’t throw money at ads for a week and then call it quits if you don’t get any sales. Give it a month of fine-tuning and trying out different things before moving on to another option.
Remember, marketing is all about experimenting and testing out what works and what doesn’t Experiments take time and data, and even if you fail, you will have learned something and can apply that to your next campaign.