ATTENTION BUSINESS OWNER

If you:

• Run a small business with a marketing budget of ~$1.000,00 monthly;
• Want to start or have been trying to start running ads on Facebook;
• Are tired of magic formulas and empty promises;
• Don’t want to waste thousands of dollars and countless hours without any guarantee;
• Need honest, down-to-earth advice;

Then you’ll find plenty of valuable information here.

On the other hand, if you:

• Have plenty of time and money to waste;
• Would rather figure things out by yourself than save time, money, and frustration by educating yourself;
• Have your business just as a hobby and you don’t really want to grow;
• Don’t really mind about losing clients to your competition;
• Love to gamble your marketing budget rather than having a sound strategy;

Then you should spend your time somewhere else.

If you’re still reading this, I’ll assume that you’re in the first group. 

Before you spend another dime on Facebook ads, you’ll want to read this. It’s the kind of stuff agency owners would DIE before telling you.

How Long This Will Take And Why You Should Read This?

The full piece takes about 15-25 minutes to read. If you don’t want to read it all, feel free to jump to the mistake you’ve done or might be about to do.

However, we strongly recommend you to go through the whole article. It’ll be the best 25 minutes you’ve ever spent for your business' digital marketing success.

Just don’t ignore this, as this will help you save thousands of dollars and precious hours that you might otherwise waste.

What other thing could you possibly do in such a small timeframe that would save you thousands of dollars, dozens of hours, and a great deal of frustration?

Summary

When you don't mind spoilers... Or simply like to know what's in it for you.

Mistake #1 - Paying expensive marketing agencies
Mistake #2 - Betting On “Free” Templates
Mistake #3 - Trusting A Marketing Guru’s Old Wive’s Tale
Mistake #4 - Hiring Freelancers Without a Sound Strategy
Mistake #5 - Believing On The Organic Reach Fairy Tale
Solution: The Best Way To Start Advertising On Facebook And Get The Best Bang For Your Marketing Buck

Without further ado, we’ll show you the biggest mistakes business owners make when they’re starting their Facebook advertising efforts. Have fun!

Mistake #1 - Paying expensive marketing agencies

All right. So you’ve decided to give your business that well-deserved marketing bump.

And the most obvious way to start looks pretty simple…

Hiring an agency.

But guess what?

That’s the kind of hurried decision that might bring you a lot of headaches… and a hefty bill.

Before you jump on a costly agency contract, hear us out. Your patience will pay you greatly.

The main reason why hiring an agency is a bad move is that your hard-earned marketing budget (about $1k a month) is pocket change for them.

They charge from $100 to $200 per hour. If you want to get all technical and stuff, the average hourly rate is $136

This means you’ll roughly get about 7h per month.

Might feel like enough. After all, they’re supposed to be marketing pros - how hard could it be to create your campaign? Wouldn’t it only take a couple of hours?

Nope. Much the opposite - the bigger the agency, the more hours they need just to start working because of people management and other budget-gnawing situations.

$1k a month won’t even get them started.

How Much Time Does It Take To Create Successful Content?

Here is how long each activity takes, on average:

1. Briefing and onboarding: 2 to 3h in the first month then 1h/month
2. Traffic management: 1h/month
3. Reporting: 1 to 2h/month
4. Copywriting: 30 min to 1h per campaign
5. Graphic designer: 30 min to 1h30 per campaign
6. Media buyer: 30 min to 1h per campaign
7. Reviewing: 30 min to 1h per campaign

Let’s say you've got 10h deal for your $1k budget.

In the first month, it'll take 3 to 4 hours just to start working (because of meetings, briefings, onboarding, and such).

Then, each campaign may take from 2h up to a whopping 4h30.

In the first month, you’ll probably get 2 campaigns, and then if you’re lucky maybe 3 campaigns each month after that.

That’s not even a campaign per week.

If you wanted a campaign every week, you'd have to pay more money.

But the problem is - you don’t have more money right now. In fact, you don’t even have money for the ads. Big mistake. (actually is in our list - Mistake #5)

Either you stretch your budget, or your audience won’t even see your campaigns.

And just like that, your $1k budget was stretched by 20% for two flimsy campaigns each month. Even though you still haven’t seen a single lead.

What Should You Expect From An Agency

Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and be optimistic…

Unrealistically optimistic.

Imagine everything worked like a charm, and you got some results in the first month.

You will still be tied to that agency for a whole year. Because most will only onboard you after you sign a 12-months contract and pay a retainer fee.

Don’t fool yourself that they will be optimizing your campaign every month. They’ll be focusing their attention on their $10k, $20k, $50k accounts.

This means you won’t be able to run tests or diversify your content.

So if you get any results at all, you should at least be happy this wasn’t a total waste.

But if you want a realistic scenario, this is what’s more likely to happen…

You will have one piece of content every other week, with hopefully a hundred bucks budget for advertising.

Can’t hope for much revenue coming from that.

That’s an expensive mistake. One that may cost you about $14k a year to bring you zero sales.

Zilch.

Nada.

But hey - you’ll have some neat PDF reports you won’t ever see again (unless you print and hang them on your wall to remind you never to trust agencies again).

You may argue that if you spend some hours googling, you’ll find an agency that will create 3 posts a week for that budget.

Yet again, you’ll still need to stretch your budget for ads.

Even if they offer a couple of posts a week for half that money, leaving half your budget for ads, trust us when we tell you that the quality will leave much to desire.

We’ve been there, hired that.

And it was never as good as promised.

At the end of the day, you’ll just be another small account they will do their best to ignore without breaking the contract and keep collecting your monthly fee for as long as possible.

That’s why they have a fancy (and useless) monthly report. To throw some numbers at your face, like click-through rates and impressions that don’t really mean anything to you.

Trust your bottom line. It will always tell you the truth.

And the truth is that 9 out of 10 agencies will make you lose money. And that other one didn’t answer back when you asked for a quote because they don’t even get out of bed for less than $5k a month.

What we’re trying to say here is that an agency is NOT the best option for your budget. We’ve had our fair share of disappointment with many agencies.

By the way - that’s why we founded groost. Because pretty much no other company cares for accounts with marketing budgets of $1k and under as groost does.

“Before groost, I had so many bad experiences with digital agencies that I was convinced anyone offering digital marketing was just trying to get money out of my pocket. But as soon as I created my groost account, I noticed they were different. Instead of trying to push the most expensive services, they helped me understand my own marketing needs and then provided a strategy that was not only within my budget but also with optimal ad spend.” Kyle, restaurant owner

If you'd rather give an agency a shot instead of heeding our advice, you’re free to try it anyway. It’s your money.

Go on, find an agency that is cheap enough. Or stretch your budget for one of the expensive ones.

We’ll be here when you come back, and we won’t even say “we told you so”.

Instead, we’ll help you make the most of your marketing buck and forget all about that bad and expensive experience.

Here Are Your Options

1. Take the long, dark, scary, dangerous, and expensive road of agency hiring and circle back to your initial point, in rags, covered by thorns, famished, and without becoming a single penny richer;
2. Take the nice, paved, fun, blossoming with berries and fruits, lit groost road. Achieve your destination faster, and potentially turn a good return over your investment.

Are these your only options? Fortunately not!

If you’re of the adventurous kind, you might also fall prey to another common trap that lies amidst these two paths.

Mistake #2 - Betting On “Free” Templates

Instead of picking the nice, paved, fun, and lit groost road, you’ve seen a sign on top of a mischievous-looking patch of road that says...

FREE TEMPLATES - GET YOURS NOW

Now you might be thinking…

“Well, then, if it’s free, how much harm could it make”?

It’s just as granpa used to say…

“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”.

In the marvelous, and yet dangerous world of marketing, there are also no free results.

Free stuff will end up making you spend more than you had planned.

Everything Has a Cost

If you don’t pay it with money, you’ll end up paying with your time, or even worse, with your reputation.

Sure, creating a quick post on Canva ain’t no rocket science.

But think about it for a minute.

Why is it free?

Because:

1. It ain’t good; or
2. It was already sold to a bucketload of people and no one wants to buy it anymore; and/or
3. It’s bait to lure you in and upsell you some other stuff (that eventually will make you spend even more money or time on it)

Doesn’t matter why it’s free… it’s not worth it.

Of course, one thing is offering a free trial or a free sample of a product or service.

We're talking about those situations where they are giving you a "free forever" alternative.

Businesses shouldn’t rely on free solutions. That would be like relying on free samples to feed your family.

There are lots and lots of businesses out there falling prey to this very same pitfall you might be considering jumping into right now.

They’re even thinking about using the same template you liked!

Nevertheless, you shrug all the evidence that shows you this is a trap.

You start working on your post using that free template.

You feel like things are moving forward! In a few minutes, you have a post and you publish it.

The whole venture takes about an hour, and you feel great.

And then you do that again. And again. But now it’s getting harder and harder to find some decent templates. Why?

Because the next step is forcing you to buy a “premium pack” with all the pretty images and stickers and whatnots that aren’t available for freeloaders.

What once took you an hour and made you feel great, now takes two hours and you feel miserable.

What Can You Expect From Free Templates

MAYBE one or two likes. No shares. No comments. No leads. No conversions.

You can expect the feeling of a lonely ball of hay rolling up and down your page…

Stare your free template long enough and you might even hear that ominous “ah-ee-ah-ee-ah” from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in the background.

When you thought things couldn’t be worse, you'll notice that your feed is looking like everyone else’s and their dogs with posts like these…

DISCLAIMER

We’re not saying stock photos are bad.

Stock photos can be great. Especially when you need to portray a woman merrily throwing spaghetti up in the woods.

We use plenty of stock photos ourselves. Well, not these.

Our skilled designers are very picky and they only use images that make sense with the topic, that aren't overused. The end result is always a branded, unique artwork that won’t dilute your message.

If you fall into the “free template” trap, sooner or later you’ll run out of ideas.

The chances of posting something bad, bland, or both, will only grow with each publication.

Those free templates that looked like a solution were just a palliative for the same symptoms you had before and still do: the lack of a reliable and affordable resource for professional marketing campaigns.

Why You Should Avoid Free Templates

After a couple of weeks or months into free templates, what will you have?

Many wasted hours, weak results, and a watered-down feed that makes your brand look like a thousand other brands.

And your problem is still there.

Now, let’s think about another marketing sci-fi scenario. In the unlikely case you’ve become the Lord of the Templates in a fortnight, and your templated posts got some decent numbers. Even leads.

If that ever happens, we have three recommendations:

1. Pinch yourself to check if you ain’t dreaming;
2. Please drop by on our HR and let’s talk about rates so you can provide us consultancy;
3. Don’t count your chickens before they hatch, as the kryptonite of free templates is about to get you.

If you’re immune to sarcasm, recommendations #1 and #2 are jokes.

And recommendation #3 is about an all-time marketers’ enemy.

We call it “creative fatigue”. You can call it “free template’s kryptonite”.

What Is Creative Fatigue?

Creative fatigue is a phenomenon that happens the more a stock photo or template is used by different advertisers.

The more an image is used for posts or ads, the faster people blatantly ignore ads using that image.

Maybe your dentist or your gardener usesd that very same “shaking hand” template you did. And so did hundreds of other businesses. And their dogs. And their brothers.

Everyone seeing an image many times will cause fatigue, and that means no one will really see it anymore. As in, they will see it, but it won’t spark interest. Or joy. Or any other reaction.

In other words - pure lethargy.

That image will be unconsciously registered by people’s brains as just another piece of spam.

Do you know how spam emails go to your spam box?  That’s how it works for creative fatigue.

Your brain has a spam box for overused photos and templates, so it can ignore and direct your attention to something relevant, like a video of a cute cat or a groost-made ad.

“I thought free templates would help me ramp up my marketing. Instead, I ended up spending more and more hours trying to make it happen. I even upgraded my account to Premium because the free options were just painful. I was six weeks and countless hours into it when I saw two different ads from my competition using the same images I used for my own ad. It made me realize that not only I wouldn’t ever get good results from that, but I was also harming my brand” Gabriel, Personal Trainer

You’ll come to understand that professional graphic design is essential to get people’s attention and spark feelings.

As is compelling copywriting. Templates without great copy are just bland, generic images that will be ignored by your audience.

If you still want to give it a go, burn away your time and money on ads you made using free templates as creatives.

You’ll see what should be a “free” solution becoming an expensive problem. Though it’s not even free anymore because you had to upgrade your account to “premium”.

And still do all the work by yourself.

The Anatomy Of a Successful Ad

To beat creative fatigue, you need to understand the anatomy of a successful ad. That way, you can make sure that it won’t happen to your campaigns:

1. A compelling headline that will make people curious
2. Eye-catching artwork that will make  people stop scrolling
3. A professionally written caption that will make people take action
4. A media buyer who can bullseye your audience

If you can do all that by yourself, we’ll ask again that you come by to our HR so we can crown you the groostmeister, and gather everyone around a bonfire so you can teach us the ways of doing all the work of a full marketing team using free templates… while running your business.

If not, be ready to see your audience cold-shouldering your content and scrolling away without even spending 3 seconds looking at your ad.

Because that’s how much time you have to lure them in.

3 seconds.

The 3 Seconds Rule

The first seconds people see your content are so important that Facebook considers a video view when people stay at least 3 seconds.

“If you have stayed on a video for at least three seconds, it signals to us that you are not simply scrolling through feed and you’ve shown intent to watch that video.” Matt Pakes, Facebook Product Manager

Needless to say - if a static image can hold your audience’s attention for 3 seconds or more, that’s a clear sign of success.

Thus, we would like you to take a glance at the ad below.

This is a real ad. That really sucked. So much it made into a post listing 5 examples of bad ads.

Be honest: if you glanced at that ad while scrolling through your feed, would you stop to see what it was?

Do you really think that this kind of ad would make anyone interested, even for a fraction of a second?

It’s not even worth an eye roll.

Why would you launch a campaign for your brand with a free template that looks just like that? 

And even if you had the greatest template ever, it would flunk without all the other parts that constitute a great ad.

If all that isn’t enough to stop you from using templates, here is the biggest problem you might have from it.

It will make your brand look “meh” - a big no-no as 81% of consumers revealed that brand trust is a deal-breaker when they consider a purchase (resource: Edelman Trust Barometer)

Brands that maintain consistency significantly increase their trustworthiness.

GOOD consistency, though. Not bad, watered-down consistency.

Consistently using templates will just make your brand boring and uninteresting.

Instead, you should try 100% done-for-you content with unlimited reviews and iron-clad money back guarantee.

Looks way better than having watered-down brand, doesn't it?

We hope you’ve got the point. Because our spider-sense has just noticed another threat around the corner.

It’s a dangerous menace that will sneak up on the unsuspecting business owner along the road towards great marketing and knock them down from their righteous path…

The Marketing Guru Old Wive’s Tale.

Mistake #3 - Trusting A Marketing Guru’s Old Wive’s Tale

Ok, we understand. After wasting $14k and a full year on a marketing agency without results…

After falling in love with free templates, having a heartbreak, and starting hating them as much as you once loved them…

Upon the horizon, you see what looks like a knight in shining armor, ready to rescue you and save the day.

Your expectations grow, and you stand in awe at the sight of what looks like the answer to all your problems.

But as soon as it gets closer and closer to you…

It’s just a fool wrapped in tin foil.

Looks like a farfetched example, though this is exactly what you can expect from 99% of the marketing gurus out there.

Let me explain.

What To Do When Someone Promises Guaranteed Marketing Results

If anyone promises you guaranteed results without even talking to you...

Without even getting to know your brand and your business…

Run, Forrest, run.

That is the best way to recognize an old wive’s tale.

Marketers with your best interest at heart will make sure you understand there are NO GUARANTEED RESULTS and especially not a single strategy that would work for EVERYBODY.

I repeat.

THERE 👏 CAN’T 👏 BE 👏 GUARANTEED 👏 RESULTS 👏 FROM 👏 A 👏 SINGLE 👏 STRATEGY 👏 THAT 👏 WORKS 👏 FOR 👏 EVERYBODY 👏

All promises of guaranteed results are just another old wive’s tale: a shadow of something that might or might not have worked in the past, and that people are still repeating to this day in a forlorn attempt to milk business owners dry.

Each business is different. 

They might share the same audience, the same niche, but what works for others might not work for you.

So no one can guarantee any kind of results without taking a deep look into your business, your audience, and your goals.

The only way to know what works and what doesn’t work is by putting some elbow grease, researching about your audience to get the creative juices flowing, coming up with a tailored strategy, and running some A/B tests.

Which is exactly what we do here at groost.

There is no magic marketing pill that can bring guaranteed results.

Marketing is an ever-changing landscape, and what works today might not work tomorrow. And vice-versa. It’s also all about finding what works for your individual needs.

So if they’re promising you a guaranteed marketing strategy for a couple hundred dollars (or worse, many thousands)... please don’t fall for that old wive’s tale.

We strongly advise you to save your time and money.

"If you’ve ever read a sales page, you’ve heard of the great results a product or service can provide. But many marketers imply that you’re definitely going to get the best possible results no matter how unlikely it actually is. How much you benefit from a product or service depends almost entirely on you—the time and effort you put into making the most of it and how well it fits your individual situation." Peter Sandeen in 7 Common Marketing Lies And How To Spot Lying Marketers

It’s not that it won’t work for anyone.

It’s just that they’ll just throw at you generic marketing stuff and you’ll end up needing to do it all by yourself anyway.

And on top of that, your marketing budget is a couple thousand dollars thinner.

There are tons of great quality content available FOR FREE that can help you improve your marketing game.

If you don’t even have time to Google it, let us know - we’d happily point you to a few valuable resources.

Why We Won’t Ever Promise Guaranteed Marketing Results

Notice that we never promised guaranteed results. And we never will.

Because that’s impossible to deliver. 

We can guarantee groost is the best bang for your marketing buck because we will always provide you with bespoke content, strategy, and campaigns.

We can guarantee that you’ll love the groost experience because we’ll run that extra mile to make sure your needs are met.

We can guarantee that we’ll create awesome content for you because we handpick our professionals and we have an amazing work environment.

We can guarantee that we won’t stop A/B testing and optimizing your campaigns until we reach the sweet spot between ad spend and conversions.

We can guarantee that we’ll help you make the most of your time by teaching you the best way to use our platform.

But we will never guarantee you’ll get a certain amount of leads, or worse, that the same strategy will work for everyone.

That’s just not how it works. 

Imagine if a doctor prescribed the very same treatment to everyone that came by their office. 

Doesn’t matter what was their complaint. Without even asking them any questions. The doctor just went and prescribed the same thing for everyone over and over again.

Sure, if you have the exact problem that could be solved by that treatment, you’re fine. 

But what if you don’t? Will you rely on luck alone?

Wouldn’t you rather have the doctor take a look at you, ask some questions, have an accurate diagnosis, and only then prescribe you a treatment? 

Believing in a Marketing Guru old wive’s tale is much like getting a prescription from a doctor that hasn't even laid their eyes on you, and can’t possibly know what is your issue.

What About Marketing Principles?

There are proven marketing and sales principles that can help your campaigns succeed. 

They work now and they have worked ever since the dawn of marketing, and they will still work for a long time because they’re rooted in the psychological and emotional principles that run human minds and hearts.

Just like the right medicine will heal a specific ailment.

But just like a doctor needs to diagnose the disease BEFORE prescribing treatment, a marketer must also diagnose the business challenges and goals BEFORE prescribing a strategy. 

And then, use said marketing principles to boost the strategy effectiveness.

It should always be a tailored strategy that suits your goals, your challenges, and your budget right now.

That’s why each groost customer gets a Success Manager.

A Success Manager is a seasoned marketing professional that sees the bigger picture and works alongside the copywriter, designer, and media buyer to ensure each piece of content created will be part of a bullet-proof strategy.

We won’t guarantee results. But we’ll guarantee to follow the best marketing practices and strategies. 

And that’s as honest as it gets.

The best part? It’s 100% done for you. You needn’t worry about anything other than providing us with enough information about your business and your goals. You needn’t spend hours and hours, or attend boring, repetitive meetings.

All for a fraction of the price you’d have to pay if you either hired an agency or hired people to do all that in-house.

Now that we’re talking about hiring, here’s another pitfall you might find yourself in if you don’t believe this guide…

Hiring freelancers yourself.

And managing them.

And going crazy in the process.

Think we’re exaggerating?

Oh, boy. You’re in for quite some trouble.

Mistake #4 - Hiring Freelancers Without a Sound Strategy

First things first, we need to make something clear:

WE LOVE FREELANCERS.

This is how we look like when we think about our amazing freelancers:

Totally head over hills.

Freelancers are the base of our whole business.

Without freelancers, there wouldn’t be:

1. groost
2. amazing content provided to you on-demand
3. fun, yet educational content to keep you amused and help you avoid the most common mistakes made by business owners adventuring through the scary, yet wonderful world of marketing.

But the thing about freelancers is that…

They’re people.

At least we haven’t heard about robot freelancers.

Yet.

Until then, we’ll stick to human freelancers.

With all their human dramas...

You see, the greatest challenge about working with freelancers is not hiring them. 

Hiring is easy.

You find a freelancer, you check if you like their face, describe what you need, give them money, and they deliver what you asked for. 

Hopefully.

I said hopefully because it will depend on your capacity to describe what you need, find the proper freelancer to deliver that, but first and foremost, to deal with this awesome, yet wild workforce.

Don’t fool yourself. Freelancers aren’t cute puppies.

They’re wild. Awesome and wild.

Being a Freelancer Isn’t Easy

The first thing you need to understand is that being a freelancer is not easy.

They don’t have health insurance or other benefits. Most of them don’t have long-term contracts with their clients.

But they do have freedom. And that’s usually what motivates them to become a freelancer.

They’re not like employees, who are used to abiding by almost anything their employers say.

Of course, great freelancers are willing to learn and will hear you. 

But...

If they don’t like the direction the project is taking, or even if they don’t like a subtle thing like how you’re providing feedback or if you’re bossing them around too much, they’ll run.

Great freelancers are very busy and sought after because they deliver. 

This means they’re not in it only for the money, but specially for the quality of life and opportunities to hone their skills.

It also means that you must know how to deal with them, how to communicate, how to organize briefings, tasks, and deliveries, and especially how to keep them motivated to work with your brand.

Or else, they’ll work for someone who does.

Now, say that after looking around you’ve found a great freelancer. One that’s a right fit for your project and culture.

You still haven’t won.

One thing is hiring ONE freelancer to help you with ONE thing.

You can hire a copywriter to do amazing copy for you. 

You can hire a designer. They will deliver great visual creatives pretty fast.

And you can also hire a media buyer. They’ll create high-converting ads spending less than you would (with their rates included).

If you eventually find a copywriter/designer/media buyer who does all the work of a full team, they’ll also probably charge the fees of a full team because they are rare. Unicorn-like rare.

But if you need to hire three or four freelancers (which you'll probably end up doing), it's a whole different world. 

If you don’t have the time, AND the patience, AND the required managing skills, AND experience working with freelancers, it soon might become a tiresome routine.

Before hiring all those people, you need a strategy.

Why Do You Need a Sound Strategy Before Hiring a Freelancer

If you don’t have a strategy before hiring a freelancer, you’ll have an awesome copy, an awesome design, and/or an awesome PPC campaign… but the end result will probably look like a Frankenstein because each piece was created separately.

So now you need either to come up with a winning strategy, which will probably be very hard because you’re not a marketing strategist, or hire a strategist even before you hire any of those freelancers.

Last but not least, you need to manage them all so that their work is done according to that strategy.

See how that can easily go out of hand? 

You thought you would hire one freelancer, and now you basically hired a team you have to manage yourself. Or hire another freelancer to manage them for you.

Good luck doing that. Probably you won’t have much time left to work on your business, but hey, at least you’ve solved your problem by hiring all those nice freelancers! 

You’re set for some time, right?

Right?!

Bad news. When everything starts running smoothly, the copywriter gets sick and can’t work for a couple of weeks. 

Or something good happens - their first child is born! Yay for them. Boohoo for you.

So there you go finding another wild copywriter to fill in their shoes. And onboarding that copywriter to the team.

When you finally find a new copywriter, the designer decides to follow their passion and become a coffee roaster.

Goodbye designer, goodbye another week’s night’s sleep. Hello, another week of hiring and onboarding.

Long story short…

Although you can achieve great things with freelancers, you’ll also need to put a lot of time and effort to manage them.

This is our expertise here at groost - finding, managing, and motivating the best freelancers around the world, with the best rates, who are willing to deliver small businesses the content they need for successful marketing campaigns.

“I’ve been a full-time freelancer for over 5 years. And I’ve never worked with a company so organized and transparent as groost. I know exactly what is expected of me, and I can see the good impact of my work. Knowing that I'm helping entrepreneurs all across the globe achieve their goals is highly motivating.” Caio, copywriter at groost

What To Consider Before Hiring Any Freelancer

Now that you understand how difficult it is to hire, manage, and keep freelancers motivated, I would like to ask you one simple question.

Why bother?

I mean, why should you put yourself in that position if you can just login to your groost account, order your content, and get top-notch campaigns delivered to you in a couple of days without all the drama?

It’s the best of all the worlds:

• Top-notch, Agency–level quality for a fraction of the cost and no long contracts or hidden fees
• Easier to use and better results than free templates
• Marketing expertise with your best interest at heart and no empty promises
• Freelancer awesomeness without the drama

With groost, you can literally have your cake and eat it too.

And it’s your favorite cake, but without any calories, and it’s free, and it’s more nutritious than kale.

Don’t like cake?

Give groost a chance, and you’ll see that groost is the best thing since sliced bread. If bread was social media marketing and slices were on-demand campaigns.

Foreword To The Last Big Mistake Most Business Owners Do When They’re New To Facebook Advertising

If you’re still here with us, it means you’ve been heeding our advice. Good for you!

Looks like you’re going to make it unscathed through the thorny path towards marketing awesomeness.

But at the end of the road lies a silent menace. One that can easily knock out those who aren’t paying attention to its threat.

It’s a true silent killer (of business growth).

I’m talking about sitting and waiting for prospects to come and buy… without doing the most important thing you need to do to attract them.

You have probably already tried that unknowingly.

Mistake #5 - Believing On The Organic Reach Fairy Tale

This is perhaps the most heartbreaking thing that can happen to a business owner.

Imagine yourself walking through all the challenges we’ve mentioned above, and some others that haven’t even made it into this tale of courage and marketing epicness.

Imagine that you’ve gone through it all: 

• You spent tons of money with an agency, and got little to no results…
• You were attracted by the appeal of free templates, and it was just another disappointment…
• You spent a couple grand (and many many hours) trying to make the Marketing Guru old wive’s tale happen to your business, to no success…
• You hired one, two, three freelancers and almost lost your sanity trying to sew everything up into that one Frankenstein-looking campaign…

And thanks to your effort, you managed to create great content and a promising campaign was born.

Not because of THEM, but because of your own dedication.

You publish it with a smirk. And you feel great.

For about a day or two.

Until you don’t feel that great anymore… because it looks like no one’s giving a fudge about the content you’ve worked so hard (or spent way too much money) to create.

Why is that happening?

Simple. Nobody reacts because nobody sees your content.

Why No One Is Sees Your content

Even if you manage to resurrect Leonardo Da Vinci to create a majestic design…

Even if you convince George R. R. Martin to write the greatest ad ever, with storytelling, dragons, murders, well maybe not murders, plot twists, and a pinch of lust…

You’d still be ignored. Because Facebook won’t show your content to anyone if you don’t pay them to do it.

Basically, Facebook has gone full Jerry Maguire saying…

“Help me help you!”

Believing in organic reach is a common mistake made by non-marketers. They’ve heard some fairy tales about some people who got amazing organic results and figured out it was worth trying themselves.

But all those people claiming it’s possible to get organic results out of Facebook are either lying or still living in 2011, updating their Myspace from a BlackBerry. 

Let me be candid: organic reach on Facebook is so 2012! 

And that, on the internet, is old news. So old, it has become a fairy tale.

“The first changes you’ll see will be in News Feed, where you can expect to see more from your friends, family and groups. As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media.”  Mark Zuckerberg himself said this in 2018.

Organic Reach: The Modern Day Fairy Tale

Here are the numbers: FB organic reach dropped to 0,5% in 2017.

Some sources say that in 2021, the average organic reach got a small improvement from 2017 and was between 1.1% and 2.2%, depending on the brand. The engagement rate is even worse: it averages around 0.27%.

That’s low. 

Real low. 

Putting it in numbers, only 10 to 20 of each 1,000 followers will see your new post in their feeds… and less than 3 likes.

All that effort. All that time and money. And yet, almost no one will see your content.

Imagine you have a whopping 5,000 followers (which is not easy nor cheap to achieve).

Each post you publish will be seen by 50-100 people, and you’ll score about 13 likes.

Not much if you ask me - especially when you compare it with ads.

Here is the average PPC benchmark:

• Cost per Click: $1.72
• Cost per Impression: $0,018 (less than 2 cents) or $18,71 per thousand impressions.

If you wanted a thousand people seeing your organic post, you’d need something between 50,000 and 100,000 followers.

Not an option for 99,9% of small businesses I know of.

Now, imagine your total cost for creating a piece of content was $500. 

And you simply publish it on your page that has 5,000 followers (which is well above the average).

With a 1% organic impression rate, we're talking about 50 impressions. Or $10 for each impression.

555x more than you’d spend if you created an ad.

With a 0,27% impression rate, that would mean around $37 bucks per like, or 231x more expensive than the average cost per engagement in ad campaigns ($0,16)

In a nutshell, creating good content and posting it organically is one of the fastest ways to burn your money online.

It would be like printing 50,000 flyers with an amazing, one-in-a-lifetime-promotion and leaving them all inside your drawer. 

Then wonder “Gee, why isn’t anyone calling about the flyers promotion? Is the promotion bad? Is the flyer ugly?”

Nope. You just did an awesome job hiding it from everyone that should’ve seen it when you decided you didn’t want to run an ad campaign.

Fortunately, there is a simple solution for this. All you need is a professional media buyer.

You might think: “OK, so I’ll create a few ad campaigns by myself.”

 Sure, go on, here’s what will probably happen.

What If You Try To Run Ad Campaigns By Yourself

Could you run Facebook Ad campaigns by yourself? Yes, if you’re willing to put in the hours to become a professional media buyer.

If not, you’ll probably end up clicking on “boost my post” or whatever. 

Spoiler alert? Another couple hundred bucks down the toilet.

You could do it, but it’d take time, money, and resources that would be best spent elsewhere.

Think about this: how do you feel when a total stranger thinks they can do your job better than you?

Someone who has never done it before, trying to beat you in something you’ve been doing every single day for the past decades.

Wouldn’t it be annoying?

That’s what you’d be doing if you tried to do your Facebook ads yourself.

You will probably spend way too much and get way too little results. 

Then you’ll be like “hey this ad thingy ain’t working”.

Well, I once tried to fix my car. 

I know nothing about mechanics. Ended up making it even worse. 

Does that mean this “mechanic” thing doesn’t work?

It means I’m a bad mechanic, and I shouldn’t try to do something I don’t have the required skills to do.

The advice here is to stick to doing what you’re good at - running your business. All the rest, you should delegate. That’s how you can grow and scale.

If you think about it, these are awesome times we’re living in with great opportunities, if you’re willing to hire the right people to help you out.

Let’s say you wanted your audience to see a video ad of your company about 20 years ago. You’d have to spend thousands of dollars on a local TV ad, or worse, millions of dollars for a national TV ad.

Now you can do it with a couple hundred, and have your audience see your ads in their “prime time”, which is when they’re scrolling through their feeds.

We’re still in the process of picking ourselves up off the floor after witnessing firsthand the fact that a 18 year-old Youtuber can deliver us three times the traffic in a couple of days that some excellent traditional media coverage had over five months. Michael Fox, founder of Shoes of Pray

Of course, the more professional, fun, and attention-grabbing your ad is, the better it will perform. 

And a skilled media buyer will get a better price on the auction (as each ad goes through an auction where it “bids” for their audience’s attention).

That’s why we see so many frustrated business owners sitting on great content, waiting for a miracle that is not going to happen. Because even though their content is great, they are not distributing it properly to their audience

That means they ain’t seeing it. So they won’t be calling. Or clicking.

To sum it all up, great content alone won’t cut it. You can post a content masterpiece every week. Create fun, engaging posts every day.

You can share the best piece of content ever created. Facebook still won’t show it to your audience unless you throw them some money.

That’s why so many people say “FB ads don’t work for me”.

It’s not because FB ads don’t work. It’s because they didn’t paid for their content to be distributed.

Spending almost your whole budget on creatives and forgetting to leave enough for media buying is one of the most heartbreaking mistakes you can make.

How Much Of Your Budget Should Go To Paid Ads

There is not an exact number. This is not an attempt to provide a strategy that would work for anyone. Because we already established that it doesn’t work like that.

Nevertheless, from our experience with hundreds of businesses, we can give you a safe benchmark.

We always advise our clients to save AT LEAST 30% of their budget for media buying.

This means we’re telling them to spend over 30% of their money with another company instead of using it to purchase our services.

Why?

Because we’re in it for the long run. We don’t want to sell you the most expensive package, or make you spend more with us.

We want to build trust by helping you succeed.

This means that for each $1,000 you have on your budget, you should spend AT LEAST $300 with ads.

We would go further and tell you to spend about $500 (or 50% of your budget) with ads. Even if that means less money for groost. 

The ideal would be 40% or even 50%. And after you get results and reinvest, that percentage will grow even more.

We’ve created successful campaigns at groost using only 20% of the budget for the creatives, leaving 80% of it for media buying. And it was a huge hit.

That’s right: we’re advising our customers to spend more with another company than with our own services.

That's how much we care about your success.

And that’s how ads "go viral" these days. By spending a bucketload of money on production and distribution.

Do you remember when Van Damme’s Epic Split?

It has had over 113 million views since it was launched in 2013. It’s estimated that it generated $170 million in revenue for Volvo.

But it had a production and distribution cost of about $4 million dollars.

42x ROI. That’s pretty much the average ROI of a simple email campaign.

The punch line?

You don’t need millions of dollars to launch a great ad campaign.

What Do You Need To Do To Get The Best Bang For Your Marketing Buck

All you need is a sound strategy that takes into account how much budget you have and how much of that budget should be directed towards media purchase.

Then, you use what’s left to hire groost and get the best bang for your marketing buck.

It’s as simple as 1, 2, 3:

1. Define your budget;
2. Talk to your groost success manager and develop a strategy;
3. Create your campaign briefing.

Let’s be honest: that’s easier than any of the mistakes we’ve shown you above.

And it’s not even a mistake!

Do you know what would be another mistake?

Boosting your post.

Whatever You Do, Don’t Click The “Boost My Post” Button

Successful ad campaigns should be created on the ads manager, where you can choose campaign type, audience, and other optimization factors.

Clicking “boost my post” will only get you a bump on your likes. And you want to see revenue.

You don’t want vanity metrics that won’t bring you sales, do you?

You want to bring home the bacon.

We can help you do that. But our work ethic doesn't allow us to guarantee results.

There is no such thing as guaranteed results when it comes to digital marketing.

But what we can guarantee is that you’ll have the best marketing team your budget could afford and that we’ll make sure we help you define the best budget for your ad spend so we can achieve those results together.

We can guarantee that we’ll work tirelessly with you until you are satisfied with your campaigns.

Because if we don’t, you’ll just get your money back.

We want to help you multiply your budget. And revenue. And happiness.

All while you get more free time to enjoy with your family, friends, or do whatever you want with it.

Solution: The Best Way To Start Advertising On Facebook And Get The Best Bang For Your Marketing Buck

I know, I know. Reading all these common mistakes might be a little off-putting. That’s understandable.

But what would you think about a doctor who doesn’t tell you what’s wrong?

You need to understand the issue before you can fix it.

This is what we’ve been trying to accomplish: it needs to be crystal-clear in your mind:

Facebook advertising is not a hobby, but a professional endeavor that needs professional attention and skillsets.

You wouldn’t trust your healthcare to your nephew who’s been playing around with a stethoscope for a couple of weeks, would you?

If you want to grow your business, it is paramount that you have a reliable resource to help you do that properly.

There are more than 3,5 billion users on Facebook worldwide. One out of each two human beings is there. This means a professional campaign can help you reach pretty much any audience on Facebook.

Unless your target audience is newborn babies from an uncontacted tribe in Papua New Guinea. Then you’d probably need to go door-to-door (or teepee-to-teepee).

Not tapping into that massive source means potentially missing out on a big chunk of your market share and thousands of dollars in potential revenue.

You’ll also be making your competition’s life easier as you won’t be bidding for the audience, making their ads even cheaper.

We don’t want that, do we?

Why A Successful Facebook Ads Campaign Can Be A Turning Point For Your Business

Facebook enables small businesses to reach their audience as if they were the big hotshots. Imagine if you’re a burger joint - your ad could be shown to your audience instead of an ad from a giant like Burger King or McDonald’s.

Something like that would be unachievable in the TV/Newspaper/Radio era. You simply wouldn’t have enough resources to compete…

Now you do. So why shouldn’t you?

That’s why we’ve built groost - we want to give small and medium businesses not only a fighting chance but a winning chance.

We want to give you that edge you need, even if your monthly budget is under $1k.

For a fraction of the costs you’d have with an agency, an in-house team, or even a team of freelancers, you will have a professional team that will help you get the best bang for your marketing buck.

And that’s guaranteed.

We’ve been small business owners ourselves. We know how hard it can be.

We know how many hats you need to wear on a daily basis.

That’s why we handpick our marketing professionals. We want to make sure they have experience helping small and medium businesses succeed.

We have an innate understanding of your goals, needs, challenges, and possibilities.

This is why groost is different from any other marketing service.

We’re not an agency. We don’t provide free templates. We’re not marketing gurus.

We’re creative, yet down-to-earth marketers who love to help small and medium businesses achieve their goals.

Each groost customer gets:

• A customer success to help find a winning strategy
• A seasoned copywriter to write awesome sales copy and captions
• A talented graphic designer to create alluring artworks
• A dedicated media buyer who will optimize your ad spend to the bone.

This means your budget will be enough to create awesome content and make sure your target audience sees and engages with it.

Your success is what motivates us to get up in the morning and create awesome campaigns every single day. 

So much we want to present you with the full tailored groost experience for ONLY $59 and ZERO risk thanks to our iron-clad money back guarantee.

We’re giving you a FULL ad campaign with $20 discount

All you need to do is click the button below, create your account, redeem your credits, and create your first campaign.

We’re waiting for you.