The truth is this: there is no guarantee when it comes to using Solo Ads, but for those businesses that have a broad market appeal such as Online Courses, Dieting, Personal Development, Dating, Work from Home and Forex Trading, then they’re an excellent, valuable and cost-effective marketing tool for growing and building mailing lists really fast.
Likewise, they work well for those marketers who have a limited budget or for those about to launch an offer led product or service that needs traffic sent directly to a web page promptly. And who doesn’t have time to produce guest posts, build an audience, or create any material that requires less than a few days before they see results.
Whereas, if the product or service is incredibly niche, say something like a consultant who is looking for clients for their marketing agency, or a freelance web designer, then solo ads are not right. In other words, the more niche targeting the business requires – the less likely Solo Ads are going to work.
Understanding Solo Ads
Solo Ads are pretty easy to understand. You can buy them either by how many subscribers you want your message to reach or by how many clicks your message will receive and they can be purchased from an individual or an agency.
Once the payment format has been agreed, the list owner creates an email which is mailed to a list of potential customers that have previously shown an interest in what is being offered in the email.
In the email, the mailing list owner only refers to the brand, product or service (hence why it’s called a Solo Ad) and includes a link to an individual web page or online offer.
However, initially, you don’t see the email addresses. This way, the privacy of the subscribers is guaranteed, and the method is 100% GDPR compliant – which is vital if you don’t want to risk millions of dollars in fines for disregarding privacy laws.
But remember for a Solo Ad campaign to be effective, the message needs to be strong enough to deliver you as many email addresses from visitors to your website as is possible. Then once you have their email addresses, you can over time start to build a relationship with them. And finally, convert them into customers.
However, before you do any of this, you need to be 100% confident that your website is the absolute best it can be and that it is ready for visitors, your opt-in forms work correctly and so on. There’s absolutely no point in starting with a solo ads campaign when the basics aren’t in place.
Are Solo Ads expensive?
Well, that’s a bit of a double-edged sword. Let’s suppose, you start by paying $40 for 100 clicks, and 4 of them opt-in for you mailing list, then those leads would have cost you $10 each, which initially would seem to be quite expensive. But then let’s say each person who opted-in turns out to spend over $1000 with your brand, product or service – well you can do the math.
Remember it’s nothing personal, but sometimes mailing list subscribers are just not interested in what you have to offer. So the trick is to start slow. You can only figure out how your landing page and your follow-up emails perform once you’ve tried it across 3-5 lists from different vendors.
Do your homework
We started by asking if Solo Ads were suitable for growing a new business and in general we believe the answer is yes. Particularly if your product or service has broad appeal and, you go about managing your Solo Ad marketing strategy and expenditure as we have suggested here.
But that’s not to say you won’t read or hear stories of people getting burned using Solo Ads and when you do. Ask yourself, why was this? Because in our opinion the only reason why Solo ads won’t work is down to the fact that the product, brand or service owner didn’t take their time and do their homework. So in that instance, they have nobody to blame for the bad results other than themselves.
Final comment
Solo ads are a great cost-effective way to kickstart your online business. But, it doesn’t mean they’re the only way, and that you shouldn’t look at alternative ways to reach your audience. For example, once you’ve built your mailing list, maybe you don’t need this way of buying traffic.
So it’s essential that you continually analyse how your marketing spend is performing and make necessary changes if you need to.
