Playbook / Lessons / Partners and paid growth
StartupsUse a small ad budget to test, not to live on
Walling, in a guest post, recommends treating advertising as a testing tool because few startups can carry the cash outlay needed to make ads a profitable ongoing channel. He suggests starting ads on a modest daily budget and using them to learn which keywords, audiences and messages convert. He also urges collecting emails so that visitors can be contacted again.
“Use advertising as a testing tool rather than a long-term stream of customers.”— Rob Walling, The 5 Minute Guide To Cheap Startup Advertising, Mar 2011
Do this
Set a fixed test budget you can afford to lose, run one ad at a few dollars a day this week, and write down which message got the cheapest signups before spending anything further.