May 6, 2025
Should you run ads before you’ve sold your offer? Greta recently saw someone post that you shouldn’t, and when she read the comments, that person shared they’d spent $20K over six months with a marketing company and made zero sales. We get why they’d take that stance. We just 100% disagree with it.
In this episode of Bringing Simplicity Unfiltered (complete with live tech glitches and a mic Judy had to hold up to her face), Judy and Greta answer a question we get a lot: why do we push ads so much? Here’s the breakdown.
The more time you spend in the paid ads world, the more you realize it’s all a numbers game. And the benchmarks on the organic side aren’t that different from the paid side.
Say you have 10,000 followers and a click-through rate around the 1.5% benchmark. That’s about 150 people clicking. Even if those warm followers convert a little better (maybe 30% instead of 20% from cold traffic), you always have the same 10,000 followers, so you’re constantly chasing more. That’s why we’ve seen people with millions of followers whose sales are nothing compared to clients with 600 followers who did $65K from a paid ad strategy that drove a launch.
No. But you do need the foundational elements in place to get a sale. Ads won’t solve your problems. If you don’t have a follow-up process or an offer, more leads won’t magically fix that.
You shouldn’t fear ads if you have:
If you’ve attended our masterclasses or had a strategy call with us, you know we’ll tell you if you’re not ready. We’ll look at your funnel and opt-in, and if it’s not there yet, we’ll say “do not run ads.”
You’ve seen the online claims about waking up to dollars in your bank account. That is the reality for some of our clients, but they did the work on the front end. Like building a friendship or dating, there’s work involved. Everything has a funnel, and if no one is nurturing your audience, whether that’s you or someone you hire for organic, stories, DMs, or event registration, ads won’t work for you.
What makes us different is that we know what it takes on the front end (headlines, captions, graphics) and what converts on the back end, what those conversions should be, and what to fix when they’re not converting.
Judy and Greta actually butted heads about organic social media the morning of this episode. Greta was frustrated, the way every entrepreneur gets when they spend hours creating content and nobody sees it. Judy brought her back to center.
Here’s Judy’s case for organic:
Whoever builds your campaigns should account for two audiences: a warm audience (people who’ve engaged with your content or clicked your links) and a cold audience. We spend money on them differently.
For example, Greta won’t spend much on downloadable ads to a warm audience who already has that downloadable. There’s nothing more annoying than seeing ads for something you already have. Instead, she’ll invest heavily in reach ads, like podcast episodes, that build authority and trust with that warm audience. If your ads person isn’t asking how they’re segmenting your audiences, that’s a red flag.
A lot of people say, “I’ll just test ads by boosting posts.” Greta’s answer: please don’t. When you boost, you can try to create an audience, but it rarely works. And boosting to “people similar to your followers” tends to bring in people who look nothing like your followers, often with inappropriate DMs to match.
The audience you’d actually want to see a boosted post, your current followers, isn’t an option. Instead, run a reach campaign. Instagram now recommends around $10 a day for boosts, but you can spend $3 to $5 a day on a reach campaign and target your warm market directly.
One thing to know: top-performing posts often use trending audio, and Meta sometimes won’t let you turn those into reach ads, or makes you pick a different song. If all your posts use trending audio, you may not be able to use them as reach ads or boosted posts.
This is where having both an ad strategist and a media buyer matters. Sometimes Greta calls a winner and our media buyer wants two or three more days because the data might shift, or vice versa.
In one recent case, a client’s previously successful ad was turned back on and started underperforming. Our media buyer wanted to shut it off. Greta let it run through the weekend, then three more days, and everything turned around. It wasn’t losing money (still around a 1.8 ROAS, compared with about 9 the last time it ran), and we would never risk money we know a client doesn’t have.
Our general approach:
Since ads are a numbers game, as impressions and other data points come in, results should statistically come to a norm.
Creative is one of the biggest topics right now, along with audience fatigue. There are so many types of creative that it’s hard to know what to make next. Our team recommends specific types to test based on seeing what works over and over in the coaching space.
That’s why it matters to hire someone who lives in your industry. Judy shared a story about a golf announcer hired to call a football game. Great resume, wrong industry. What works in B2B SaaS doesn’t necessarily translate to online coaching, just like a car mechanic can probably figure out a lawnmower motor but isn’t the lawnmower expert.
Fear is a natural emotion. The goal isn’t to get rid of fear. It’s to take action in spite of it, and the best way to do that is to lean on the knowledge and support of people who’ve done it before.
You don’t need prior sales, but you do need the foundations to make a sale: a CRM doing follow-up and a conversion event such as a masterclass, direct-ask emails, or sales calls.
No. Boosting doesn’t let you target your existing followers and often reaches the wrong people. A reach campaign in Meta Ads Manager lets you target your warm audience for as little as $3 to $5 a day.
We let data settle for about four days, then decide whether to give it two to three more days, but only if it’s trending toward benchmarks.
Yes. Organic builds trust, and anyone who sees your ad or books a call will check your profile. Organic and paid work best together.
Warm and cold audiences need different messages and budgets. For example, you don’t want to keep showing a freebie ad to people who already downloaded it.
If you’re ready to stop guessing, see our Meta ads services or reach out to us.
Want more? Watch every episode of Bringing Simplicity Unfiltered on our YouTube channel.
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Bringing Simplicity is a full-service marketing and Meta Ads agency helping established online businesses scale proven offers through paid advertising, stronger systems, and smarter strategy.
