£800 marketing budget - ad agency or do it myself?

[ThePrincessCut]

Hey all,

Please help. I'm a SAHM of two under 2 so my time is extremely limited. I basically have negative time to invest in anything at the moment. 

Nevertheless, I'm still trying to make my jewellery brand work. It's very, very new and has a achieved a few sales by organic instagram (I have 1000 odd followers on my personal-business account). 

I hired someone (not particularly skilled although she came with good reviews, I make this judgement based on seeing the ads she created and also the result) to manage a £100 budget for me for a week (I know this is quite short and ads should run for longer to optimise). Result was one sale at the end of the week.

I'm now considering either going it alone with FB ads - but I will have to find time to teach myself all the strategies etc. Would anyone recommend Shopify Compass?

OR splitting the budget so £400 goes to an ad agency with good reviews, and £400 goes to the ad budget. 

So, would it be best to try it myself, or trust that someone else can do a better job with half the budget. 

Finally, do you think it's reasonable to expect a good (or any!) ROAS during the current climate?

Link to site if you have any thoughts/recommendations, would love to hear from you! theprincesscut.co.uk

Thanks even for reading this far!

Nina x 

[Josh_Uebergang]

Don't go the agency route. Firstly, that won't cover a decent agency.

Secondly, see it as an opportunity to get your skills better so in the future you can have more intelligent conversations and better hire. At absolute bare minimum, get started with Shopify's two Compass courses on Facebook Ads before you spend your first dollar.

[Emmanuel-Adjah]

Hi @ThePrincessCut,

I understand how this can be quite a dilemma. Had a couple of friends who have been faced with a similar challenge. 

Little time on their hands but a business to run.

Anyways, I'd advise you stick with the latter for now. Considering agencies can be quite pricey and regardless of their rave reviews, positive results are not always guaranteed. 

For now, you can just try implementing basic marketing strategies and leave them on auto-pilot.

First define your target audience and optimize your ads accordingly to fit their needs. Facebook makes it very easy to target specific audiences and you can use that to your advantage—even when it comes to budgeting

However, your ad copy needs to be very compelling and you'd need a separate landing page different from your website (except you can optimize the contents on your website to help them convert easily).

Additionally, you can even implement SMS drip campaigns to accelerate the sales cycle of your website visitors.

You can probably hire someone (not an agency) short term who can help you optimize your online ads and based on the results, you can determine what works and what doesn't. 

P.S. You mentioned 1 sale in one-week of running an ad, you might want to look into that data. How many visitors got to your website? How many abandoned cart? How many people saw the ad? What age group? Things like this can help you restrategize.

I hope you find this useful.

[ThePrincessCut]

I watched the Compass course this weekend and it was brilliant - I already had a fair understanding of how to run a FB ad but it drew everything together into a cohesive, comprehensive and succint lecture. I was so much more confident when creating a new set of ads and they're performing well so far. 

And I agree, I'd like to know more about how the systems work in case I'd like to hire anyone in future. 

Thanks for the advice!

[ThePrincessCut]

Hi,

Thank you so much for your reply! Can I ask what you mean by this?

"However, your ad copy needs to be very compelling and you'd need a separate landing page different from your website (except you can optimize the contents on your website to help them convert easily)."

What do you mean by a separate landing page/different from my website?

Thanks,

Nina

[JoesIdeas]

I wouldn't do yourself unless you're a professional marketer (you'll be competing with professional marketers).

That budget is too small for a good agency.

You might be able to work with a freelancer and start small.

If you're on a budget, you might consider setting up an affiliate program then doing outreach to blogs and influencers in your niche. You can set it up pretty easy, then spend a couple hundred for a VA to research and reach out to prospects, then have some left to give free product to the top prospects.

Another budget friendly way, try Klickly, it's Cost per conversion rather than cost per click marketing, with very little setup.

Last piece of advice, if you're doing paid ads don't blow it on social media, you need to spend and experiment to figure that out. Spend it on google shopping instead.

[Emmanuel-Adjah]

Hi @ThePrincessCut,

When I visited your website, there was no content on there that would compel me to buy (even if I was searching for jewelry). 

You need to have more emotive content on your website and not just pictures with price tags on them.

For the separate landing page, what I meant was for you to either build separate one pagers to sell specific items or optimize your website in general to be in synchrony with your ad copies.

For example, it'll be difficult to convert leads if your Facebook ads says "20% off pearl necklaces" and the link shows different kinds of jewelry. It'll increase bounce rates.