‘We can’t afford an agency’… but what is the true cost of running your own ads?

In an ideal world, most of the businesses we talk to would love to outsource their ads to us. They want the strategy and day to day running of campaigns off their plate, and an experienced third party to be committed to their growth, and accountable for results.

However, for many, they’re not quite at the stage where they can justify the monthly fee, so they solider on - either running them in-house, using a low-cost agency, or not running ads at all.

But what is the true cost of not fully committing to ads?

When you sign up to a decent agency, what are you paying for, and how does it affect your results?

Here are five campaign elements that come up time and time again in accounts which are under performing: 

Campaign set up

Ensuring your accounts are watertight before we start any work is time well spent. We want to be sure they are fully secure, payment systems work, domains are verified and tracking and events are all working. Without these there’s risk of campaigns being stalled, heading back into learning, patchy tracking and missed opportunities for learning. ALL of these affect the overall success of your campaigns…. ultimately lowering your returns.

Design work

Most of our clients like to at least contribute to the creative aspect of their campaigns, but ultimately, when it comes to the quality of the design work going out, we are the gatekeepers. We work across enough accounts and read enough industry feedback to know what needs to be tested - and this process is rigorous and ongoing.

We both get frustrated when we come across accounts when an ad has performed well and has then been left to run and run and run, until it ultimately fatigues. Finding that winning creative is never a done job, when you’re busy scaling budget on a hero ad, you need to be busy in the background finding its replacement.

If you don’t, ultimately your returns will diminish.

Customer profiling

This is an exercise we always do with new clients. It’s useful for us to get a deeper understanding of their customer base, but it also nearly always triggers interesting conversations about customer groups they’re not currently reaching.

There are two elements to this - firstly ensuring you have a plan in place to exploit all the key audience sectors to test their performance, and then within those audiences narrow down on details such as age and gender to make sure you’re putting your budget behind ads going to only the most ready-to-buy audience.

Without being rigorous in testing your audiences, and fully exploiting all the data you hold on customers and fans, you will be lowering the returns you get from your campaigns.

Organising data

Which leads on to how you use your data. Many businesses are unaware of the power of the data they already hold in the business. An effective ads professional will be squeezing every inch of value out of well segmented (and GDPR compliant) data to reach audiences primed to buy. The more efficiently you can find your hottest buyers, the cheaper your campaigns will be, and the quicker you can scale them for bigger returns.

Understanding the metrics, and responding to them

Understanding all of the key metrics is essential to optimising your campaigns. If you’re not sure what a good click through rate should be, and how to address a sluggish one, even reviewing the metrics is pointless. If you’re going to get excited by a high number of clicks, but aren’t analysing the ultimate goal, reviewing metrics is a waste of time.

Knowing what you’re looking at, what it means to your campaign and how to fix it is essential to get the best returns from a campaign.

So, when you work with an agency it should never be ‘just a few ads’. The fee you pay includes regular investment in training, up to date knowledge of platform developments and trends, years of experience executing campaigns and troubleshooting tricky ones. It is about understanding customer lifetime value, and advising on ads budget to support you in reaching your goals in the most cost effective way. 

A good agency should make you feel supported and confident in your journey to growth.

Which brings us back to, what is the true cost of running your own ads, or running them with an agency which isn’t inspiring confidence?

Inevitably, without watertight set up, rigorously tested creative and audiences, full exploitation of data and analysis of the metrics, returns will suffer. The question businesses need to ask themselves is, what is the tipping point in investing in the monthly fee v the improved returns you can expect from really good ads management. Our answer is, probably earlier than you think.

If you would like to have a chat with us about fully ‘done for you’ ads management, book in for a call - we’d love to hear about your goals!

Alternatively, if you know it’s too soon to commit to the full ‘done for you’ service, but would love some low cost, light touch support on your campaigns, check out our ‘Ask Nutshell’ service - this is designed exactly for you!