For years, when I started out, I refused to use paid marketing because I was worried about the cost and thought that nobody would click on ads.
The truth is, everybody pays for advertising in some form or another. Whether you’re handing out flyers, cold-calling, or attending networking events. You may not be pay in terms of financial cost, but you are investing your time.
For example, if your time is valued at $50 or $60 an hour, or if you are spending a certain amount providing services to clients, then investing that time into cold-calling or networking events actually costs you in dollars and cents.
Everybody uses advertising in some form or another. Even governments use paid advertising. The phone and laptop you’re reading this from likely spend billions of dollars in advertising every year.
Once, I worked with a music school owner who was worried about the cost of paid advertising. We spent around $300 in paid Facebook advertising and generated around 15 leads. Out of those 15 leads, one client signed up for a $250 a month package.
Let’s do the math here: our team spent around $300 and made $250 in the first month.
From first glance, one may think we lost money.
However, the customer will likely stay with the music school for the next four months. That is an additional $250 per month. That means you not only recoup your investment but i=becomes profitable.
Digital marketing agencies often talk about the lifetime value of a customer. This is a prime example of it.
There are referrals that add in to life time value of one client. One can refer other clients to you, essentially bringing in new clients for free.
The Shift in Mindset from Paid and Free Marketing
Many business owners and coaches find themselves overwhelmed by the tech involved—videos, copywriting, landing pages, WordPress, ClickFunnels, and etc.
The key is that one you’ve built up a system where you spend $300 to make $1,000, you can scale your company to six to seven figures systematically, rather than relying solely on networking or referrals.
Lastly, I’d like to conclude that I REFUSED to use paid marketing for years because I was worried about the cost. I wasn’t thinking in terms of return on investment. If I had relied solely on free marketing methods, I would never have been able to achieve $80,000 in sales.