Advertising

Do not run ads if you’re not getting paid

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Imagine if I’d ask 100 people the following question:

“Should you run ads if those ads aren’t making you any money?”

Now, I’d imagine all 100 of those people would answer “no”. You’d probably give me the same answer (at least I hope you would).

But then you look at what people are doing, and boy it’s a mess out there.

The amount of people who are running ads to their free lead magnets, straight to their opt-in page asking people to join their (free) email list—without making any upsells or qualifying their readers—or, and this is the worst of all, asking them to follow their social media page.

See, I get it.

The thought process goes something like this: “Me want make money. Guru says build following with big numbers. Me run ads for big numbers. Big numbers give me money.”

Although I might have explained the thought process in too much detail and made it too complex to follow—especially for the types of people who follow that type of thought process.

That said.

I hope you can see the issue. If not, let me explain it to you step-by-step.

Let’s say you are in fact running ads straight to your free lead magnet. You probably already understand the importance of building a list and good for you. But you clearly misunderstand what it means for a list to be “high-quality” (spoiler alert: big numbers isn’t it).

In this case, you’d be building a list filled with people who only joined your list because of the free stuff you were giving away.

The result?

You’ve got a list full of freeloaders and tire kickers, none of who will ever pay you a single penny, no matter how good of an offer you make them. They simply won’t pay and they won’t care.

(This is the same reason why you never run “Engagement” Facebook ads if you’re hoping to get some sales—you’ll only get people who like, comment, and follow everything they see, but never, ever buy something. But that’s another story for another time.)

“But Alex, I’ve seen plenty of famous and well-known entrepreneurs such as Russel Brunson, or big multinationals run ads “selling” free stuff”.

Do you have the same budget they do? Do you know your numbers as well as they do? Have you been in the game for as long as they have?

No?

Then stop comparing yourself to them. They’re quite literally playing a whole other game than you are.

The point is this.

Ads are an incredibly powerful (and surprisingly simple) tool you can use to build an effective, consistent, and reliable business. As long as you’re using them to to get clients or sell your offers.

In fact, I find them so useful myself that I’m building an entire course teaching you how to write, run, and profit from ads in a simple and straightforward manner—specifically focused on creatives and those who work in the entertainment industry.

I’ll let you know more about this course later, so definitely keep an eye out for this one.

It’s going to be worth it, I guarantee it.


Stop writing ads if you want to see success

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The more I experiment with creating and running ads, the more I’ve come to realize that most people have come to hate (or at least severely dislike) regular advertising.

Not just because of all the grifters and used car salesmen out there.

But mainly because there’s advertising everywhere you look. People simply can’t escape it anymore—and most of that advertising is boring at best and outrageously disastrous at worst.

See, when it comes to ads that perform, you’ll want to do two things:

1) Entertain

2) Inform

Most ads fail to do either.

Those who succeed in one of them focus way too much on it, so much so that they completely forget and disregard the other.

Yet, there’s an easy trick to get it right without even having to think about it (or even looking at it as “creating an ad”).

The trick?

To use the same principles for your ads as you’d use when it comes to creating high-performing content—which is something a lot more people are able to get right and, definitely not unimportant, you can easily practice without having to spend a single penny.

Think about it this way:

What is an ad if not one of your best-performing pieces of content?

Either way.

While I haven’t got a course for you on how to create, run, and manage high-performing ads to boost your business (it is, however, in the making and will be here sooner than you think). I do have a course helping you pump out tons of emails which are (you guessed it) highly entertaining AND informative which will make you sales and keep your readers reading day after day.

Click here if you’d like to learn more about that: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


Why new stuff is almost always way worse than the old stuff

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One of the founding fathers of modern-day marketing, and more specifically advertising, is Claude C. Hopkins who first published “Scientific Advertising” back in 1923.

It’s an amazing read which I highly suggest to everyone who even remotely comes close to advertising anything, no matter what, why, or how.

In fact, I’d argue you should read it multiple times in a row. That’s what I’m doing right now, in fact—I’m currently on my god-knows-how-many read-through and I keep learning new stuff.

You can read the entire thing in one sitting if you’d like.

And yes, I know what you’re thinking “But Alex, that book is from 1923, surely that’s outdated and there are better books for me to read right now?”.

I thought so too at first.

But boy how wrong I was.

See, advertising and marketing at their core are psychological disciplines. It’s essentially salesmanship in print as Hopkins described it in his book. And if there’s anything to know about sales & psychology, it’s that people’s psyche doesn’t change. If something used to be true back in Ancient Rome, then chances are it still holds true today.

Sure the medium changes, and maybe even certain ideas, beliefs, and cultural ideals. But the underlying principles everything is based on don’t.

Another fact to consider is that the best way to stand out is to “be different”.

So modern books, teachings, and people who want to “compete” with such old-school legends and more-than-holy scriptures on the art of advertising, by definition, have to do things differently or else they won’t even stand a chance in competing.

But what happens when people want to compete with a near-perfect book (in this case at least)?

That’s right…

You end up with something slightly worse at best and completely and utter bollocks at worst.

That’s the case for every piece of information in every market targeted to every demographic and applied to every medium there is. No exceptions.

Something to think about.

Anyway, I’m not saying I’ve got knowledge anywhere near to the level of that of Hopkins. But I always focus on only taking in the best, most-trustworthy, and effective information from the old-school myths, legends, and pioneers.

Take for example Email Valhalla, my flagship course which teaches you all about writing emails that get you sales, no matter what market you’re in or what you’re selling, and keeps readers reading day after day.

There’s nothing truly new in the course.

No shiny bells or whistles.

But it is one of the only (I only know a handful of others) courses that brings everything from the top dogs who knew what they were doing together and teaches it in a modern jacket and a teaching style that’s uniquely mine and mine alone (that means no-nonsense, no bullshit, no time-wasting, and ultimately memorable and effective).

If that tickles your fancy, then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


How to grow your email list (without the use of social media)

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A few days ago I wrote an email ranting about the current state of social media and the boring, unfulfilling, and downright soul-wrenching game you have to play if you want to achieve any kind of ‘success’ according to most “social media gurus” out there.

That message seemed to have struck a chord somewhere because I received quite some responses.

One of those responses was from a long-time reader (whose name I won’t share for obvious reasons) who felt exactly what I was talking about.

He mentioned how he felt like he “had to” play this social media game to build social proof and authority to get started as a beginner in his market.

Obviously, that didn’t please him. So he asked me, yours truly, what I would do if I were in his shoes instead and wanted to build my business from the ground up when nobody knows my name.

So here goes:

First, realize that social media is a new thing.

Marketing and sales aren’t.

There have been plenty of ultra-successful marketers selling all sorts of products, services, and even experiences for far longer than social media has been around.

Don’t get trapped in this mindset that social media is the end-all-be-all. The only people who want you to believe that are the ones who want to sell you their social media course.

I’m not saying social media doesn’t work—it clearly does.

But it’s not for everyone and it definitely isn’t your only option.

Second caveat:

Realize that social proof, while definitely being powerful and useful, is far lower on the ladder of necessity than you might think.

90% of all the ads you see (if not more) don’t use any kind of social proof. They simply make you aware of a problem you might be having, and then offer you a potential solution to said problem.

If the advertiser did his homework, aka he knows what keeps his market up at night, then the problem will be so close to home you can’t help but pay attention to whatever solution the ad might be offering. And if the solution is positioned correctly then you, the customer seeing the ad, will end up buying it.

Regardless of whether you’ve heard of the product before or your next-door neighbor Nancy also happened to have used that same product.

Once your realize this, that’s when countless doors will open for you.

You’ll realize all you have to do is get your product, service, or better yet, yourself (and a plug to your email list—the most valuable asset you’ll ever build and which allows you to create repeat buyers and die-hard fans instead of having to survive on one-time sales) in front of your target audience while talking about their problems or their interests—regardless of what market you’re in (every single product in the entertainment industry solves the “problem” of boredom—which just so happens to be at an all-time high right now; making it the best time ever to grow your entertainment business if you know what you’re doing).

Some possibilities:

  • Run ads on Google, Facebook, Amazon, popular forums, or wherever your target audience hangs out (simple yet effective)

  • Get on podcasts as a guest speaker: start small and build your way up. You won’t get on Joe Rogan’s podcast as a no-name but there are thousands of people with dreams of building a big-name podcasts who just so happen to always have a need for guests to interview. Mention what you’re working on and how that could interest their audience and chances are most, if not everyone, would like to talk to you.

  • Write blog posts, articles, or press releases for online newspapers, other people’s blogs and email lists, internet magazines, or any of the tens of thousands of media outlets all scattered around the internet (most of which are owned by people who dislike writing articles but want to publish as much content as possible so they can make a living off the ad revenue)

  • Message local newspapers, radio shows, or television channels: Most people lead boring lives. So just by building a business or doing something artsy or creative, you instantly become so much more interesting—which is more than entertaining enough for every local media outlet to want to interview you (what’s a better story than the “local celebrity”?)

  • Meet new people and keep an eye out for potential joint-ventures: You’re not alone in your market. Use this to your advantage. Work together with other creatives or entrepreneurs. Ask if they’d be interested in recommending you or your products to their audience if you’d do the same for them (or simply pay them to recommend you).

There’s a lot more where that came from, but this should be more than enough to keep anyone busy for quite a while already.

After all, no amount of information will save you if you never get to implementing things.

So get to it.

Start implementing at least one or two of these and build yourself a big email list.

At that point, you might want to master how to write engaging, entertaining, and persuasive emails that’ll help sell your products while keeping your readers reading day after day as well.

For that, consider checking out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


My love-hate relationship with social media

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Once in a while, I’ll enter this period where I’ll write up some social media post guiding people to join my email list.

This, however, never lasts long.

Sometimes I’ll do it for 2-3 days. Sometimes I’ll keep it up for a few weeks. But eventually, I’ll disappear from the platform, without any notice. Only to pop up, unannounced and as if nothing happened, a short while later.

And it’s not because I can’t stay disciplined enough to keep it going. In fact, I used to write 5 post a day on Twitter for over a year, without missing a single day. That’s how I got started with all of this.

So it’s not that.

Simply said. I just got tired of playing the social media game and how fake and unfulfilling it is (ask anyone in the social media business who’s making real money—it’s shallow, its repetitive, it’s boring).

That’s just how it goes when social media is only good for top-of-funnel content (aka, aimed at the 95% of the population who are beginners in your market).

And it’s the same for the consumers as well.

Eventually that social media content gets boring—especially once you’ve read the same 10 beginner lessons a hundred times over and over again.

So for the entirety of 2024, I’ve been working on making my business work without requiring leads from social media—it helps a bit here and there, that’s why I write the occasional post, but I don’t rely on it.

How have I been doing this, you ask?

Many different ways. But one of them is through paid advertising—an incredible alternative source of guaranteed (and often high-quality) traffic that’s easily customizable to whatever you require.

It’s easy to keep going as well.

Far more rewarding and less shallow than social media content creation, at least.

Coincidentally, I’m also working on a new product that’ll teach my paid advertising framework so you can rely on a more stable and higher-quality form of traffic generation that, once you get it going, requires dramatically less time investment than anything else out there.

But that won’t be for now just yet.

In the meantime, if you already have traffic, but you don’t have a great product or service to do something worthwhile (aka, get paid) with that traffic, then I’d highly suggest you check out Product Creation Made Easy.

It ain’t cheap, but it’s damn worth it and you might find it to be just what you need.

Check it out here: https://alexvandromme.com/product


3 reason you might want to consider running classified ads

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I’ve run 2 ads in the past few weeks in my daily emails.

The thing is, I wouldn’t have believed you if you told me that last year.

Not because I didn’t think I could do so (everyone can) but simply because, at least back then, I told myself I’d do any ads because why would I advertise for someone else’s stuff if I could just sell my own and earn more?

I still believe that, at least to a certain extent, but, as with anything, there are exceptions.

First, sometimes you just don’t care, don’t want to offer, or simply can’t offer (either because of a lack of expertise, time, or other resources) a certain solution that would help your readers out.

Would it then be fair to withhold such an opportunity from your readers?

No, of course not.

My main goal, first and foremost, will always be to keep the customer and the market in mind, think about what they want (read: need—the customer doesn’t even know what they want, let alone what they truly need) and how I can offer it to them.

So in that case, I’ll gladly refer people to someone else to buy from or do business with—and if I can get paid for it in the meantime, then even better.

Another one.

There’s always unused capacity in everything you do—daily emails are no exception.

Yeah, I can write daily emails selling my own stuff all the time (and I mostly do), but I can’t be running promotions 24/7, and even when I’m not running promotions, there’s always a diminishing return from sending more emails (most people don’t send enough emails to notice it though, me including). So withholding one email here and there to write an affiliate email or do a sponsored post is making use of the unused capacity and filling the gap or “less optimized” email you would otherwise have sent.

Last but not least.

It’s simple to do and doesn’t require much (if any at all) investment on your part (not every reason has to be profound, right?).

Anyway.

This has been an important lesson for me (and one I found valuable enough to share with you) and marks another clear sign of personal growth in my entrepreneurial journey of email marketing.

That said.

If you’d like to pick up pace in your own journey and learn more about email marketing and building, growing, and selling to your list then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla