Why Paid Ads Aren’t Working For You (7 Fixes for Creative Freelancers)

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, episode 398

Welcome to the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, where our mission is to help you turn your creative passions into a stable, reliable income. If you're in audio, video, design, photography, or really any other creative field, and you just want to learn from other successful creatives, you're in the right place. There's generally two types of freelancers that I've met in the wild. There are first those who have just never tried paid ads before. That's getting to be a smaller and smaller group these days, but generally they never tried because they're intimidated by it, they're overwhelmed by it, or they just don't think it'll work for them. The second group, which is getting to be an increasingly larger group, are those who have tried, but they just couldn't make it work for them for whatever reason. So in this episode, I'm bringing down the seven most common reasons why paid ads flop for creative freelancers, especially when you first try these out for yourself, and what you need to fix before you ever spend another dollar. So if you ever felt like you've wasted money on ads, this was going to show you why they didn't work and how to make them work next time. And if you've never run paid ads before, this is still worth listening to or watching. If you're on Spotify, we actually have Spotify video now, so shout out to my Spotify video peeps. This is still worth listening to or watching because it can save you from wasting a ton of money in the future if you ever do try paid ads. When I first started doing paid ads, I wasted like $10,000 on paid ads before it ever worked out for me. But since then, I have spent over a million dollars on ads very profitably to the point where I did the math. And if you look at like the S&P 500, if you look up average returns, you'll see anywhere from like 8 to 12 percent depending on what people factor into returns. And you'll see some of the best people in the world can get like 15, 18, up to 20 percent a year returns. Paid ads is more like getting 500 percent a year or 600 percent a year or a thousand percent a year on the money you put into it. And I've also coached freelancers through this being able to land five figure clients from paid ads and even growing past six figures with paid ads being the core of their client acquisition methods. And while I'm going to go through all seven things, if you stick around to the end, I'll give you a way that you can actually chat directly with me about paid ads for free. And you can ask me whatever you want. We can dissect why your ads aren't working or ways that we can improve the numbers if they are working, but they're not working great. Or you can just even figure out if paid ads will even work in your industry because some industries just may struggle if they try to do this. I will answer all your questions for free. If you're new here, this is like episode 398 So you've missed out on a lot. There's a lot in our backlog. Go poke around in there. But this is the Six Figure Creative podcast. I'm Brian Hood. This is a podcast for creative freelancers who want to earn more money without selling their souls. I take a lot of influence from my team, who has a wide background in a lot of different industries, and they've collectively spent like $15, $16 million on ads. I take a lot of influence from other industries, like the SaaS industry, software as a service. So many brilliant minds in that world that we can bring directly into the freelance world. There's lots we can learn from the internet marketing world. There's a lot we can learn from the e-commerce world. I just try to learn from a lot of different sources, from people who are smarter than me, know a lot more than me, and then bring it to this industry, the creative freelance industry, and distill it down to something that's usable for you. So if that sounds at all interesting, you're in the right place. So I've got seven things that I think are the biggest mistakes that I see when people try to run paid ads, and they don't work. And this is in no particular order, but it's generally most common or least common. But the first reason why paid ads don't work for people is when there's a lack of credibility. If you think through what paid ads is, is you're putting your message out in front of a bunch of strangers, and so they're comparing your offer, your ad, you as a person, and your services to all the other random strangers that you see on the internet. And the trust barrier is already really high there. It's a lot to get over that trust barrier in order for people to actually trust what you're saying is true, to maybe respond to your ad in some sort of way with a click on it, maybe opt in, maybe book a call with you or fill in an inquiry form. But if you have zero credibility, this is an uphill battle. And your credibility is basically just earned through your reputation, how you treat your clients, your portfolio of work, how good your work is compared to other people, your accolades, if you have any awards or accolades or anything that recognizes you as somebody who is legitimate. The quality of your work is a huge part of this, and you cannot make paid ads work if you have zero reputation and your portfolio sucks or is just very limited. This is the thing I've seen drag people down again and again and again, where paid ads don't work for them because they have absolutely no reputation in the market, in their industry, no credibility whatsoever. Their portfolio sucks or their portfolio is solid, but it's very limited. Your past work and your reputation has to support the promise you're making with your services. And I've seen people make massive transitions to a different offer, a different type of industry, or try to go to something that has more money because they were in a market with broke people or whatever sort of thing that they try to do. But they try to make this massive shift with zero reputation, zero supporting portfolio. While this can be great to do and very necessary for some people, like if you're in a market where it just doesn't work for you, you have to pivot somewhere else, but you're not going to get your first clients through paid ads if you make a massive pivot. You don't have the infrastructure, the portfolio and the reputation to actually help you in that transition through paid ads. So our first reason that paid ads may not have worked for you if you try them was that lack of credibility. And the easiest way of getting around that is actually working people who already know, like, and trust you to start building that portfolio up. This is one of the reasons we tend to shy away from freelancers who are just in the very early stages of their careers, because there's so many things that can go wrong in those early stages that are outside of what we can actually help with. If you are the type of person who takes the shortcuts because you're lazy or you want the fast money and you're not taking care of the client for the long term, where you're okay taking reputation hits, that's going to show up. It's going to show up in a lot of different ways. And you're going to make our jobs as coaches who help you with client acquisition, you're going to make our jobs impossible because you have damaged your own reputation. If you have no portfolio, it is hard to get started. If you have no contacts whatsoever, that is arguably the hardest part to be, is the very beginning. But it's also the part where client acquisition isn't generally the issue, which is why again, we work with freelancers who are already full time, or at least they have a strong portfolio and they've been doing this maybe at an agency or something. But credibility is one of those things that's almost impossible to mimic and will drag you down through almost everything you try to do with client acquisition. Number two, reason why your paid ads didn't work is a lack of clarity. Let me talk about what doesn't work with paid ads or really anything in life. But you've heard me say this quote before. You've heard this from other people out there. If you try to be everything for everyone, you're nothing for no one. What's going to happen is they're going to see the ad that's like, hey, are you a human being and you need any service on earth? Fill out the form and I'll do anything on earth for you. If you're a human, I'll do it. Unfortunately, that doesn't work. That'd be funny if that did work. I should try an ad like that just to see what sort of weirdos I get. Let's talk about what works, especially with paid ads. And then I'm going to get to you people that are like, well, I'm a generalist and I make a bunch of money.