If you're ever running an ad… DON'T do it this way.
My gym worked with a bunch of golfers, really good golfers, and we really had that market nailed.
We found out that our best clients from a financial aspect were members of country clubs.
So this magazine company approached us at one point and said,
“We're distributed for free to all the country clubs. And we have magazine stands at all the country clubs in town here.”
Well, if you're going after country club golfers, this would be great way to filter down and make sure that you're getting that exact client, right?
Other businesses in that magazine were getting tons of clients. It was a great idea for us.
So we decided to run an ad. We ran it for six months.
And absolutely nobody came in.
Nobody called.
Nobody did anything.
It was the most expensive ad I've ever ran in my life. I've never spent that much on Facebook ads. It was super expensive and did absolutely nothing.
And when I look back at it, there are two things that caused it to fail completely.
NUMBER #1 – there wasn't a clear reason why people should come in.
There wasn't a clear call to action. There was nothing for the potential client to do. No good reason for them to see this ad and go
“You know what? I'm gonna contact them because I want this thing they're offering.”
It was just an ad saying, “Hey, we're cool.”
And then…
NUMBER #2 – the assumption was you should come in because we're cool.
That is a horrible approach. That's why it didn't produce anybody.
Whenever you focus too much on yourself and how great you are, people lose interest. No one wants to know that.
People want to know how good you can be for them. What I should have done is ran some offer or had some reason for them to come in.
Something like: Come in today for a free golf assessment!
There were businesses who were doing really well in there because
- they were clear about what they did
- and what they were going to do for people who read that ad.
So take this very bad marketing mistake and make sure you don't repeat it.
Ads work, but the context of the ad wasn't correct.