The biggest mistake we see business owners make with paid media is that they don't have a paid media strategy. A paid media strategy is a plan that will lead them to paid media success. Rather, what they're doing is ad-hoc media buying. Maybe they started running ads on one channel because they heard it's popular, or they started running ads on another channel because a seller approached them. The only goal they have in mind is more sales.
The challenge with this lack of strategy is that, when you don't have a definition of where you want to go and what your key performance indicators might be, you don't know how to achieve those goals or whether your paid media efforts are truly successful. My advice is to really think about what you need to do to ensure you will be successful enough to grow your business. Set the goal, develop a paid media strategy, and execute on that every single day. And do not deviate until the data tells you that you need to do so.
The way you do all this successfully is you work with a good paid media team. They ask the right questions, they extract information from you, and they're communicative with you. They ensure that they understand your business such that they can make the most of your paid media investment. The team gives you insights into how your paid media is doing, as it's a real-time focus group that can then inform business decisions -- e.g., which products or services to offer, which product lines people like, which messaging works really well.
If you're running paid media, it is incumbent upon you to understand what your paid media team is doing. It's also incumbent upon your paid media team to be highly communicative, share examples, provide context, provide implications, and help you make the best decisions for your paid media investment. And all of this simply will not happen without a paid media strategy.
