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 to create your campaigns.

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 to do so?

Nope. It’s much the opposite - the bigger the agency, the more hours they need to start because of people management and other budget-gnawing situations.

Believe when we tell you that $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:

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 got 10h for a $1k budget.

In the first month, they will take 3 to 4 hours just to start working (briefing, onboarding, and such).

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

Usually, in the beginning, it takes more time. So 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 every week. If you want a campaign every week, you will need 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. 

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

And just like that, your $1k budget grew 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 already.

You will still be tied to that agency for about a whole year. Because they 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 fail.

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

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

In other words, a total waste of your budget. Can’t hope for much revenue coming from that.

You’ve put all your eggs in a single basket. A basket that looks good, but has a hole on it that will make your eggs fall to the floor and break.

That’s an expensive mistake. One that cost you about $14k a year, and brought you about zero sales.

Zilch.

Nada.

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

You can 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 they 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

You could get lucky, though, and hire an agency that will hit the bullseye with a campaign.

If you need to rely on luck, though, that’s not scalable. We’re here to do marketing, not to bet.

If you want to bet your money, go and at least have some fun. Play some roulettes, I don’t know, maybe even throw some money at those Bitcoins or other trending crypto.

Might make you more money than an agency.

Disclaimer: We’re not providing investment advice. This is a joke. Don’t put your marketing budget anywhere near roulettes or crypto.

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.

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

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.

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.

And now, as promised…

An Offer You Can’t Refuse

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, and zero risk.

That’s why we’re giving you 100 free credits right now. 

It’s enough for your first campaign, and will still leave you some credits for your next one.

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

So c’mon - we’re waiting for you.