Paid media such as Facebook ads are AWESOME.

They can take a business from doing ok to scaling at the speed of light, increasing income and impact of your business/brand.

We’ve had many clients that have scaled fast using ads as a great addition to their marketing (you can read some of the case studies here).

However not many people talk about the down sides of ads.

In fact we’d go as far to say there are many more horror stories of ads crippling brands than scaling them.

In this article we're going to go over when, (and when NOT to) use paid advertising in your business.

The first thing is how you perceive your business.

Think of your business as a plane. The plane is your business from everything like your staff, your product etc.

Your Engine

The engine is is what makes the plane tick over.

It’s all the systems in your business. It’s the systems for taking leads to sales, to servicing those sales and giving a great experience.

Your Fuel

This is paid media.

The ads into your business that pour into your engine and help keep momentum going with the plane.

The more fuel you pour in the further it can go. The more you invest in your engine the quicker the plane can move.

You get what we mean right?

The problem is when people don’t see it this way.

It’s very common that people jump the gun and before they’ve built their engine they outsource their marketing and start using paid media. Meaning they assume that they have a good product and paying an agency 'x' amount will mean sales just occur.

When this happens, instead of using fuel for a well oiled machine it’s like pouring fuel into a leaky engine. One that has horrific fuel efficiency and burns through fuel at the speed of light without moving far.

This is where you hear the stories of people dumping thousands into ads at a loss over and over again.

Here’s A Four Step Checklist To Make Sure You’re Ready For Ads

• Are you already making sales “organically”? Your brand should already be making sales from organic activity and word of mouth. In fact, word of mouth is a HUGE sign of a good product/service. If no one is referring your brand then you have an issue.
• You have a clear system of taking leads into customers and don’t have a huge refund rate. Front end ads are great but the real money in ads are getting customers to repeat buy.
• You already have an audience. Even if small you have some momentum that’s started which you want to grow and it’s not a case of starting from scratch.
• You’re not fully reliant on ads. If paid ads were to vanish tomorrow, you'd still be alive and kicking, you’d still make some sales as your marketing is diverse.
  

If you don’t tick all four of these points DON’T start scaling ads.

There’s still some figuring out to do in order to make ads a profitable experience for you, especially when you consider ads are only going to get more and more expensive over time.

Keep your money in your pocket and figure out what part of your business needs some tweaking.

Remember, as much as ads can speed up the plane the runway will remain the same size meaning if something goes wrong you could be in real trouble soon.