That’s right. I have an MBA. I have marketing skills. I bought ads last week. Google ads, Facebook ads, and Twitter ads. I took a test and wrote a few papers about it so I know what I’m doing. I pushed the buttons and I turned them on and I let them go. EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE FINE!
It was thrilling. I felt so alive. What a rush of endorphins. I might do it again. Have you ever used ads to drive traffic to your blog or website? Totally my first time, I think.
I mostly did it because I was curious if I could apply some of the stuff I learned in the MBA program to my creative stuff. I mean, I know you don’t NEED an MBA to understand ads and marketing and paid SEM, but it was certainly helpful. I don’t know why I never dived into it before. My blog’s niche isn’t exactly and easy one to generate organic traffic with. I write short fiction which hardly anyone reads unless they are forced to by a professor or are short story writers themselves. I’m not well-known so no one is going to be searching for me on Google. Also, I’m honestly probably not all that good at blogging anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I still do it. No one said I had to be good at anything that I enjoy. So, after thinking about all of that, I decided I’d cancel my gym membership for a little while and place some Google and Facebook ads and see what happens.
Running Ads Actually Worked Really Well
Turns out, I got A TON of traffic from it. It was kind of crazy. The majority of the ads ran Monday through Friday. I ran both Google and Facebook ads throughout the week. The Facebook and Twitter ads ended on Saturday. I kept the Google ads going into the weekend. For some reason, I’m getting better Google ad results on the weekend than I was throughout the week. I don’t know if that’s a trend that checks out with Google or not. Maybe I’m forgetting to turn something else off, I don’t know.
I wouldn’t consider most of the traffic to be “converted readers” yet or anything. I don’t think anyone stuck around. But, the cool thing is that now I have numbers to look at and try to tweak and do better next time. I can look at my ad results and analytics and ask myself “how can I tweak these ads to get to my target audience a little better?” Or, “what does my blog offer and how can I show it in these ads to get people who click on them to stick around next time?” You know, stuff like that.
Anyways, it was a fun little experiment. I’ll definitely do it again. I don’t have unlimited funds for it or anything, but maybe a few times a month it wouldn’t hurt. I might keep the Google ads going, because they are fairly cheap compared to Facebook and Twitter ads.
Have you ever experimented with ads? How did it go?
