[josefresco]

The power and effectiveness of digital targeting is often overblown for small businesses.

Many of my small business owner clients hear anecdotes where a business was able to use targeting to create a veritable "money machine". The problem is these scnerios are fleetingly rare, complete bullshit or only apply to a specific niche.

The anecdote often glazes over the thousands of wasted dollars spent trying to perfect the model and a hundred other details that factored into the success.

The good thing for most is that digital advertising is no less effective than traditional advertising. Even if there's little to no targeting, or no tracking in place it's not any worse than tv/radio/print.

I can count on one hand the number of clients in my 20 years of web work that have created a model where they dump money in the top, and are able to extract more out the bottom. In all cases it didn't last more than a couple years at most.

For any small business considering hiring an ad agency that claims to have mastered this model ask yourself this: Why aren't they doing it themselves?

[anticsapp]

I do a lot of Facebook and most of my clients target CAC earnback in 7-9 months. I once was able to do arbitrage for my product and made a non-infinitely scalable positive ROI within one week with targeted Facebook ads but it was 2012. Not nowadays, the CPGs finally jumped in and the CPMs/CPCs are too competitive.

I think now the move is to go after territories that the major brands/agencies are afraid of. Tik Tok? I don't know, but I would trust doing DIY and examining the real numbers, I used to sell agency services, I'd say anything to win business. And 30% of the time we actually overdelivered on my absurd promises.

[mywittyname]

Small companies probably see the biggest bang for the buck on SEO and maybe blog posts. I feel like most small companies have niche offerings, since most things that can be big, are big by now. When people/business have issues with their sewage system, they go searching online for someone to help. So the difference in ranking between Walters Waste Water Warriors and Steve's Sewage System Saviors comes down who has the nicest, most informative site.