Why you need paid advertising

Why you need paid advertising for your business

The number one mistake I see with startups or even existing entertainment businesses looking to grow, they don’t advertise their business. They think that a couple facebook posts into the local community groups is enough and they’ll be off rolling in dough. 

Everyone wants to take advantage of the free advertising methods, but after over a decade in this industry growing multiple businesses myself and consulting loads of others, I can tell you that that just isn’t enough. You need to budget actual paid advertising, not just paying some kid to make Facebook and Tiktok posts for you, but actual paid media. The right media for your business may vary depending on your city and demographic, but you need paid advertising, no ifs, ands, or buts.

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The reasons why, these free methods don’t give you the option to target your actual demographic. Yeah you can hope for a viral tiktok that gets you millions of views and thousands of followers, I have had some clients have that and it’s great. But the problem with something like that, how many of those millions of people who saw it are actually close enough to your business that they will actually go? Very few. The other thing I see is people putting posts into their community groups, yeah that’s targeting a demographic that’s closer to you geographically, but how many people are actually going to remember that or even care? I know the community groups in my city are just full of scammers, duct cleaning, landscapers, and every other business without a marketing plan trying to get by.

Paid targeted media gives you the opportunity to get the right message in the right format to the right people. You can be precise in finding the right people that will actually convert into customers, instead of just hoping for the best.

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Now when it comes to advertising there’s two main rules that are going to seem biased because I work for a marketing agency, but you need to follow.

Rule 1: Advertise constantly, if you start advertising when your sales are down it’s already too late. You want to be consistently advertising to hopefully avoid having those sales dips all together. Now obviously that varies if you're more of a seasonal business or if you’re in a city that depends on tourism, but for traditional business, always be advertising and you won’t have slow times.

Rule 2: Now this is the most important rule, and I cannot stress this enough. Don’t cut your advertising when your sales are low. Not to be harsh, but that may be the dumbest thing you can do. You’re basically saying “my sales are low, I'm going to stop attracting the people who pay my bills”. As Henry Ford once said, “A man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time”. If anything when your sales are low is when you should dedicate more to advertising to get those numbers up. 

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In short, just advertise your business. When was the last time you saw a successful entertainment business that didn’t have constant high quality advertisements?