How to Navigate the Transition to Paid Advertising

Jeffro (00:01.444)
Welcome back to Digital Dominance. Organic marketing can take you far, but at some point paid advertising becomes the fuel that scales a business. The big question is, when do you make the switch and how do you do it the right way? Today, I’m joined by Kim Insana, founder of Always On Digital, a seven-figure business owner and digital marketing expert who helps brands like Good American, Enfamille, and the Texas Rangers run high-performing digital campaigns. She specializes in paid media, programmatic advertising, and full funnel strategies that help businesses cut through the noise and drive real consumer interaction and sales. So in this episode, we’ll dive into when businesses should shift from organic to paid, how to choose the right ad platform, and what it really takes to stand out from the competition in such a crowded digital landscape. Welcome to the show, Kim.

Kym (00:46.968)
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Jeffro (00:49.259)
Absolutely. You know, I think a lot of business owners rely on organic marketing and referrals for as long as possible. But I’m excited to talk about this. How do you know when it’s time to start investing in paid ads?

Kym (01:02.254)
So I think there’s a couple of things that start to happen. And one key thing is that organic and paid ads do still cost money. So organic’s never free. You’re going to hire somebody to write that content. And if you’re doing it right, they’re going to cost you a little bit. But it’s really what happens after that content that you’re paying for starts to kind of plateau and that could be, you know, indicated by your site traffic. So if your site traffic is not growing at the rate that you’re looking forward to, you know, month over month, if your socials are not gaining more traction month over month, because organic is only going to reach a certain percentage of your audience. So whoever your followers are, it’s only going to reach a certain percentage of those followers. And sometimes you get, you know, new recommendations followers, but that is kind of limited.

Kym (02:08.229)
So, you know, the.

how are you getting, you really rely on getting new customers at that point because you can’t really remarket to them or resell to them at the same cadence as someone who’s selling a product. So really it depends on your site traffic would be one of the first indicators to me as well as, or whatever that thing is that you use. So if you’re a service oriented client and it’s not about getting people to your website, but it’s making calls, are you not getting enough calls or your calls kind of plateauing.

Are you getting less referrals? Like all those little things, is that starting to slow down? And you wanna keep an eye on it earlier and sooner rather later, because if you wait too long, then now you’re in a catch up game and you’re probably gonna have a little bit of a roller coaster of sales or leads come in because you didn’t catch it early enough. And it takes a long time to ramp up to paid. It’s not an overnight thing especially if you’re new to it and there’s a lot of testing. So keeping an eye on those key factors to me are always good indicators of when to start thinking about things.

Jeffro (03:33.698)
Okay, so let’s say we’ve identified some of those and we’re ready to start moving in that direction. What’s next? Do you first decide which platform to use or is it better to figure out who you’re going to partner with if you’re going do it internal versus external and all that good stuff?

Kym (03:49.326)
So it really depends on the size of your team and the type of budget you have available. But I would say, first and foremost, search is a no-brainer. If you’re already getting some organic search, adding in some paste search in there, you can really customize your keywords and questions people are asking, search questions or things like that. There’s so much you can do with search. And then it’s trying to figure out what type of customer are you looking for If you are, you know, maybe a financial type client, you know, advertiser, so you’re offering maybe mortgages or, you know, tax accounting, you know, something like that, anything along those lines, that you can provide something, let’s say educational, maybe you’re promoting educational videos on YouTube or TikTok. And that’s the right fit for you. If you’re trying to sell products or events and getting people to somewhere, maybe Facebook is the right place for you or Instagram. And what is the demographic of your audience? My kids always saying like, old people are on Facebook. Well, I’m on Facebook and I’ve hit that demo and the younger people are on Instagram or TikTok or Snapchat. So who is your audience and kind of where do they play is always helpful. But also don’t of sell yourself short on that either. If you do have the budget and the ability to test multiple platforms, try to do something different than other people are doing. For example, there’s, it’s a church and they have all these priests that do Instagram reels to, you know, try to promote people coming to the church. And they’re obviously physically selling something other than getting more people to their church and then they can generate more revenue that way.

But they try something different and it gains attention and traction. And you can promote those and those be paid ads or they can be organic obviously. that is finding an opportunity somewhere else, but that does take money obviously.

Jeffro (05:57.407)
And creativity. And one other thing, you mentioned, you know, if you’re a financial person or something, and that reminded me, there are specific rules on certain platforms when you are a financial planner or something. There’s certain things you can’t say. Like you might submit your ad to Facebook and say, go. And then Facebook will just cancel your ad or tell you, hey, can’t run that. It’s against our terms. And so there’s going to be stuff like that that you might not know when you start that you’re going to have to find out.

Kym (06:25.236)
Absolutely. And so there’s, you know, there’s definitely laws against advertising to, you know, certain, you know, regions. So if you’re going to be a regional advertiser, you have to be conscious of that. Anything you know, around housing or finance, those are important things to consider. A lot of these rules are accessible on Facebook or Metta’s website. So you can go in and like, what’s allowed, what’s not allowed, but I’m going to be honest, we do this all the time. And even though we follow the rules and look at the rules, there’s ads that get rejected constantly for us too. And so that’s something to consider because that’s a cost. If you take time to have a designer create those ads and then they’re getting rejected and you have to have those remade, that’s a cost to consider. So there are factors that don’t generate, you know, revenue right away that happen. And so that’s an excellent point. And, know, just even to give context, could be an image of somebody that, you know, we had a client that is an eyeglass center. So they’re selling eyeglasses and sunglasses, not offensive, right? But they had sunglasses on one of the, you know, in the images, somebody had sunglasses on and it was like a copyright issue because there were Ray Bans or something like Facebook, you know, declined it and we had to an appeal and all that. So those things can happen. And even though you don’t have to remake the ad, you have to go through the process and all that does take time and It is frustrating on some of these platforms when you’re doing things yourself.

Jeffro (07:55.102)
especially if you’ve got timelines and you’re like we need to get these running to get if we’ve got a 90-day lag on our ads to revenue like we can’t afford that extra gap in there so that is rough.

Kym (08:07.508)
Yeah, and some of the platforms are also easier than others to deal with customer service for when you are newer and doing it on your own. Google is probably one of the hardest because it’s big and Facebook second right behind it. But sometimes it’s a little more user friendly.

Jeffro (08:26.156)
Do you have any recommendations around local service ads with Google?

Kym (08:32.046)
So you want to separate things out. know a lot of people gravitate towards PMAX or new things. And Google likes us to gravitate towards things that make them money too. But it’s important to remember kind of what you’re trying to achieve. So if you are only trying to find people within your area or your radius, stick to that. Sometimes the algorithm or the system setup uses AI and it changes little things. So for example, Google may automatically change people that have not only are in your area, but have searched or have an interest in your area. So they may be in California, but you’re in New York and only serve New York clients. So some of those changes happen on the account level and they happen maybe with an update or something like that. So, you know, for a local client, it’s really important if you’re only looking in a certain geographical area to make sure you check all of these settings and sometimes they’re in advanced settings and things like that. like that would be my number one because then your money is going to waste automatically, right? If you only service New York and it’s getting served in California, that’s a waste. So that would be my first and foremost is be very cautious and careful of that. The other thing is a lot of advertisers, they tend to forget to update.

So if you have a website and you may change a page, it’s already, you know, maybe you put that specific URL in Google and then you make some changes. A lot of times, you know, you can be going to a broken link or something like that. We’ve seen that happen before many times, or it’s going to a page you don’t want to go to. So it’s like anything else, you know, every week I go and buy groceries and sometimes I throw them out because we didn’t get to cook them and or whatever. It’s the same thing. Right. So you’re to put your money towards this.

You want to make sure you use it properly. So don’t just, you know, put it in there and then it’s like your rotted vegetables at the end of the week. You want to make sure that you’re doing what you can to really monetize that, what you’re putting forth.

Jeffro (10:36.949)
Yeah, well, I think with those examples of losing money or wasting money, I think that’s a big concern that a lot of owners have. They don’t want to just have their ad budgets get blown through or burned up so quickly and have nothing to show for it, right? And so I think that keeps people from starting. And you mentioned Google and Facebook are complex ad platforms, but they’re also the biggest. So for a lot of people, that’s where they need to be to be in front of their audience. let’s talk about some of the biggest mistakes that you see businesses make when they’re running their first paid campaigns.

Kym (11:07.928)
So I would almost rather you wait a little longer and have the money to do something that makes an impact than try to do something too small. Because what happens is, let’s say you want to run a campaign for $5 a day. And that’s all you have. But $5 a day takes so long to make an impact. And at that point, you may think paid ads don’t work and abandon the whole idea altogether versus waiting until you have maybe $40 a day or $20 a day where you can really put the effort in. And then there actually is an opportunity for optimizations and for statistically relevant data at that point. Because at $5 a day and then it gets spread out over a couple of ads and if you use another platform, if you’re on Facebook, Instagram, there’s really no information to go off to say what works or what doesn’t. So you I, like I said, I would rather you almost try to save it a little bit and get to a point where you can really, you know, go all in on it.

Jeffro (12:09.821)
makes sense. So what about when you’re ready to do that and start creating this stuff? What are some of the strategies that you recommend to make sure people don’t just blend in with everybody else and sound the same as everybody else? Because I know it’s easy to fall into that.

Kym (12:25.486)
It is, and I think everyone is in a rush to, especially with Google, like I have to have this keyword and be number one in this keyword. Well, be unique. Think of other things that people are coming to you for. So if you’re a plumber, don’t just rely on plumbing in New York. What are the things that people call for? Maybe 24 hour plumber, backing up drains or things like specific to what’s the problem you solve and focusing on that instead of worried about the branding keywords as much or something that your competition is so big, especially when your budgets are small. Some of these guys are spending thousands of dollars a day on some of these words and it’s gonna be really hard to get a higher placement than maybe the third peach of Google. with that, just try to be unique. And that’s why I really… do push unique ideas. If you’re offering free shipping, make sure that’s in your ad. What do you do differently than everyone else? We have a religious store that we work with, and they are an exclusive dealer of these candles. And we didn’t know for the first year that they were exclusive to this. And now we promote it like crazy because it’s something unique to them. And really capitalize on that. And just like us in any industry, what is it that we do differently? that makes us special. Same for you.

Jeffro (13:53.907)
Well, and it’s always more as a consumer, when I’m searching for something, if I find somebody that does the exact same thing that I’m looking for, not something close to it, but the exact thing I want, I’m way more likely to go with them because to me, like, all right, they get it, they have what I need. I’m to go with them. So that’s why those specific keywords are so helpful, not only because they’re easier to rank for, but also because people are going to be more likely to trust you for that specific thing. Right.

Kym (14:18.956)
Yes, exactly.

Jeffro (14:21.767)
Yeah, and I think as you grow, there’s going to be other strategies, obviously. And sometimes at a certain point when you’re big enough, your competitor might be bidding on your branded keywords. So they show up higher than you, right? When people are looking for you specifically. hopefully for people starting out, you don’t have to worry about that. But you can get a lot of mileage out of these long tail keywords, I would say.

Kym (14:31.02)
Yes.

Kym (14:43.062)
Yeah, absolutely. then, know, another strategy, especially if you’re super local, audio is a great, and some of the auto audio platforms are allowing for self serve now. So you can get onto some of those and add into, you know, some of that, you know, for local, obviously there’s local radio, but as we move away from, you know, some of the traditional platforms and traditional channels being able to access digital audio as a local brand. heard a very small company was on Spotify the other day. There’s more accessibility for some of these other brands that there wasn’t in the past.

Jeffro (15:23.512)
Is Spotify the self-serve platform you’re talking about? Or is there another one?

Kym (15:28.334)
So now Pandora has a self-serve right now. Spotify is making some changes. Some of them have minimums. So I don’t know what the minimum is for some of the self-serve options, but Pandora has one that’s on the smaller side.

Jeffro (15:33.778)
Okay.

Jeffro (15:48.015)
And I’m curious to look into that and see how specific you can get in terms of where your ad shows up. I imagine they give you some targeting options. Or maybe not. They just figure it out for you.

Kym (15:55.31)
putting that all. Yeah. There’s some that have targeting, it’s not as nothing is going to be, you’re not buying the full bells and whistles basically. As with anything, you know, there’s the premium product, and then there’s the one that is more limited because of your budget size. So it really depends on on all those factors, but you can still get traction in your geographic area, which is important. So maybe you’re casting a wider net, but in a smaller region.

Jeffro (16:26.395)
Well, I like that idea. think a lot of people haven’t thought about audio advertising just because radio isn’t as mainstream anymore. So we kind of forget about it. Are there other overlooked opportunities like that and paid advertising, whether that’s OTT or other like streaming options that people could use?

Kym (16:43.998)
Yeah, I would always suggest if you can get into streaming as well, know connected TV Is great, but then even think you know, kind of like go backwards a little bit outside of digital with OTT So maybe it’s gas stations. Maybe you know, it’s like billboard ads that you can have access to Programmatically now sometimes programmatic has a little bit higher point of entry because you’re using another platform but where you can have that or audience extensions with some of these other partners give you that kind of like the local cable idea.

Jeffro (17:20.315)
Yeah, well, and another thing to keep in mind is when you’re choosing a platform, you’re not going to get as much data from some types of advertising just because of the nature of the platform. So billboard, okay, maybe a lot of people see it, but you don’t know exactly how many, you don’t know exactly what was the cause when they did visit your website or not, as opposed to on Facebook, you know if they clicked or not, it’s very easy to track that.

Kym (17:42.7)
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s important to use some website tools. There’s a lot of free tools. You can use Google Analytics or tracking tools to see who’s coming to your site and what type of people are coming to your site, are they staying on your site, all of that. So even taking that into account and maybe you think, OK, it seems like they came from, it says they came from search. So maybe we spend more time on search. Or it says they came from Facebook now we’re going to spend more time on Facebook or try to perfect that message. But it’s, it’s all experiment. It’s not, you know, there’s not a perfect science to it and it does change over time. You know, it is something that does evolve for sure.

Jeffro (18:23.536)
Okay, so what is your recommendation before someone switches over? What should they have in the bank or what should their team look like? Like how do they know if it’s actually ready? I know we touched on it earlier, but what would you recommend?

Kym (18:41.742)
So I always, you know, if you really want to move the needle, you should be spending, you know, about 10 % of your, your revenue on marketing, right? So if you’re looking to grow, could you get, could you put 10 % and maybe that includes, you know, materials, includes the staff, it includes what you’re spending. So like kind of all of it, if you, if you can get to like an eight to 10 % number and then, you know, take that and that’s your first step to understand your budget. Do you have the staff and the team? If you’re using socials, one other thing to consider are comments. Maybe you’re a business that’s not really offensive to anyone, you don’t think, but someone could leave you a bad review or say, you know, I was in your store and I waited two hours and no one saw me and whatever. like you have to be able to manage comments and things like that. I think it’s also important to understand if your brand is going to have a personality or not. And How are you going to speak in your ads? And it should be consistent across everything. There’s these cheeky brands that get recognition and people follow them and like them just because of their personalities. Like Wendy’s, they have a really great social media manager. But who’s going to be doing that? And do they understand the full way the brand should be speaking and speaking to customers as well as speaking as itself?

Jeffro (20:08.134)
Yeah, well that’s a good summary and I think that’s a good place for us to kind of wrap this up. I really appreciate you joining us today. I loved hearing kind of your insights because this is such an intimidating topic for a lot of people moving into paid ads are so worried about losing money or maybe they’ve lost money in the past. So I think this is really helpful to have kind of a glimpse into what it takes and how to know if you’re ready and to set the expectation that it’s not going to work overnight. Like you’ve got a plan for this and be ready that this is a

Kym (20:35.118)
Bye.

Jeffro (20:37.827)
something you’re just going to have to work on and it’s going to be another regular part of the business to keep track of.

Kym (20:45.166)
Great. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Jeffro (20:48.287)
absolutely. And for those of you listening at home, make sure to reach out to Kim using the links in the show notes. I do have one last question for you before you go. For business owners who are nervous about spending money on ads, like we’ve talked about what it looks like, but is there a mindset shift or some other piece of advice from that side of things that you give them to help them start with confidence?

Kym (21:07.768)
So, you know, there’s the old saying, you gotta spend money to make money. You know, it’s true. There’s a commitment that you have to make and think of it not something that’s costing you. It’s an investment in your brand. It’s an investment in the business. Just like you would pay someone to create a logo. You don’t necessarily get a return on that. Somebody’s creating your website. Maybe you’re not getting an immediate return on it, but you need a website. So this is all an investment in your business and something that’s gonna grow over time the way your portfolio with from your 401k or whatever it’s not an immediate return so it’s an investment versus a cost.

Jeffro (21:45.797)
Well thanks again, Kim, for being here today. Thanks to all of you guys for listening. If you found this episode helpful, please leave a review on iTunes or Spotify. And if this episode has inspired you to start running paid ads, tag me on LinkedIn to let me know. That’s all for now. Take care and we’ll see you next time.