Where To Spend Your Budget When Advertising Managed Services

One of the most common questions I get when talking to MSPs is “where should I spend my advertising budget?” In reality, not every business has the ability to fork out thousands of dollars per month, spread across multiple platforms. The platform on which they spend their money first (and the return on such placement) often dictates the longevity of their campaigns. Put simply, if they get nothing out of the first few hundred dollars they spend, they are more likely to stop spending altogether than trying something else.

Here are a few placements that have generated great results in my experience and will act as building blocks for any MSP advertising campaign:

LinkedIn: Engagement Ads To Title & Industry

Based on current results, LinkedIn ads offer the best chance of a positive return on investment for budgets typical of an MSP. One of the reasons for this is the precision of targeting that is available within the platform and the accuracy of the data that is used. Users are more likely to update their LinkedIn profile (opposed to Facebook) when they change jobs or receive a promotion, which benefits advertisers and their ability to target them.

The placement that I use the most is engagement ads that are targeted to specific title and industry. When you select “engagement” as your campaign objective, it will include a follow button on your ad and will show to users that are most likely to engage. This is great for top of funnel brand awareness and building a social following for your brand on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn: Lead-Gen Ads To Re-targeting Audience

Another LinkedIn ad placement that we use frequently is “lead generation” ads to our audience of website visitors (re-targeting). After someone has had a chance to consume the content on your website, their interest level is piqued. If they saw value in your content, they are likely to opt-in for more if offered the opportunity.

Launching ads with a “lead generation” objective will include a form directly under your ad, giving the audience the ability to opt-in to your contact list without leaving their feed. Through testing various types of ads, we have found that video is the best medium to use when launching lead generation ads and may greatly increase the opt-in rates on your forms.

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LinkedIn: Traffic Ads To Matched Audience

An additional placement that has shown great potential is using “traffic” focused ads and showing it to a matched audience. The objective of this campaign type is drive traffic to the URL within the ad and will contain an additional call-to-action to do so. These ads may not include a follow button by default, attempting to funnel your audience toward your landing page and not other miscellaneous actions.

The reason these work well with a matched audience is because this audience is already engaged with your company, to the point where you have opted-in to your contact list. This means that the brand recognition is strong which will increase the likelihood of a click or action. These lists can be uploaded manually, or synced with your CRM (such as Mailchimp) via a third-party integration.

Facebook: Engagement Ads To Interest Audience

Have you ever talked about something with your friend and then seen an ad on Facebook or Instagram for a similar product shortly after? Almost anyone who is a user of these platforms will share a similar story and how freaked out they were when it happened. This is Facebook doing an excellent job at knowing your interests in any given moment, beyond what you actively “like” and “follow.”

Using engagement ads to target those interested in services that you offer is a great use of Facebook’s many targeting methods. While it may take awhile for these ads to optimize based on your budget, they eventually accumulate enough data to learn what type of people are most likely to engage and will favor these impressions (yielding better results).

Facebook: Follower Ads To Look-a-like Audience

Ads that have a singular purpose of generating page followers often get overlooked when it comes to building a campaign. This is mainly because page followers are looked at as vanity metrics and the organic reach on Business Page posts continue to dwindle. The reason I still recommend these ads is because your follower count is still public and it matters in how your business is portrayed. Having 500 followers makes you look more legitimate than if you only had 5 followers. It’s not fair, but it is how consumer brains work when evaluating people or companies.

Look-a-like audiences are one of the better targeting options to use for this type of ads. This is when you allow Facebook to create an audience that is similar to your own. We create look-a-like audience from our website visitors, which the platform does a pretty good job of matching based on its user data. The ads using this audience do not perform as well as the original audience that it is modeled after, but they still perform better than other targeting methods available.

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Reddit: Video Ads To Sub-Reddit Audience

Reddit is one of the most under-appreciated advertising platforms on the market. One of the major benefits of Reddit ads right now is their low cost to entry. Minimum bids on a CPM, CPC, and CPV are lower than just about any major platform that I have seen. This makes for a great opportunity, should you find the right targeting for your message.

When we launch Reddit Ad campaigns, we only target specific Sub-Reddit communities and do so on a CPV basis. We choose video because the minimum cost per view is $0.01 (yes,you read that correctly). This means that if you have a video that really relates to the Sub-Reddit you choose, you can get a view for a single penny, many of which lead to clicks to your landing page. This strategy is perfect for vertical specific MSPs that want to explore new advertising placements.

Google: Youtube Ads To Keyword Search

If it were not for Youtube Ads and Display Retargeting, the Google Ads platform would have little to offer small-budget MSPs. This is because Google’s years of monopoly within the search advertising realm brought an incredible amount of competition to the platform, pricing many small businesses out of contention.

While successfully bidding on keywords is difficult for Google Search Ads, it is far more budget-friendly to bid on keywords using Youtube Ads. This placement allows you to show ads on Youtube to viewers that have previously searched a keyword on Google. This is an excellent way to avoid competition and still be able to target an audience with a strong level of intent.

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Facebook: Traffic Ads To Matched Audience

Similar to Linkedin, Facebook also allows you to utilize a matched audience to show ads. While these two placements are very similar, I have found that Facebook will yield a higher volume, primarily because their platforms (Facebook and Instagram) are used more frequently.

The more active your contact list is, the more opportunities you have to show ads and get this audience back to your site to commit another action (such as buying your services or registering for your event). It also helps that this audience knows who you are and has a basis of trust for your brand, which will account for a high click-thru-rate on your ads.

Google: Youtube Ads To Matched Audience

Youtube Ads are not only useful to find new audiences, they are also a great tool to show content to your existing audience as well. For example, if you want to show your email subscribers your latest podcast episode on Youtube, you can do so using this combination of campaign type and targeting.

The best returns from this type of campaign, often come from “TrueView Discovery Ads.” Since your audience already knows who you are, they are more likely to click your discovery ad within the Youtube search listings and sidebar. This high click-thru will reward you with a lower click cost if you bid appropriately. This way you can get views of your video without having to pay the hefty costs of in-stream ads.

Google: Search Ads To Keyword Search

While Google Search Ads are priced at a premium, that does not mean that it should be avoided at all cost. In fact, even though I “trashed” this exact placement in an above paragraph, there is still one trick to make it pay off in a major way. The “trick” I am talking about is called “restraint.”

Search Ads are overpriced, mostly because of the way people use the platform. A typical user will pick every possible keyword they can imagine with a “broad match” and scale their campaign out instead of up. Contrary to this behavior, I am currently running a Google Search campaign for a single keyword in only exact and phrase match types. This one keyword produces one of the best returns of any campaign (on any platform) I have and instead of adding new keywords to scale, I simply set my bid and budget as high as it can go and ensure that I am getting every impression possible. If you have given up on Google Ads previously, I recommend giving Search Ads a second chance, this time with a “less is more” approach.

Google: Banner Ads To Retargeting Audience

Banner ads are still one of the best ad types to generate traffic and Google has a vast amount of inventory to utilize for this very purpose. The reason I love banner ads is because it gives me the ability to push out a consistent message to a targeted audience and do so in a visually creative way. This can be a real “brand-builder” when used effectively.

We recently launched a similar campaign, re-targeting website visitors to promote my book The MSP Growth Funnel. Doing so, we were able to generate a ton of awareness toward the book and while the return on this campaign was not overly impressive, it allowed us to sell more books through direct channels than we would have otherwise. Broadcasting awareness ads such as these should not be overlooked as a part of your campaign efforts.