Paid Media for Small Businesses with Carissa Richardson

When done right, paid advertising can be the perfect way to grow a business.

Thankfully, we’ve got Carissa Richardson, owner of Kindred Strategy to help us create a campaign that will align with our business goals and provide solid data to move forward. In this episode, Carissa tells us how she got started and the top things to keep in mind when stepping into paid media.

How and Why Carissa Became A Business Owner

Carissa never imagined she’d be an entrepreneur - even with family members who owned their own business. She says she saw the struggle of balancing work and family when her mother ran a business out of her living room. “I always had a realistic expectation of what business ownership looked like,” says Carissa.

In 2018, Carissa finally started her business because she was tired of agency and corporate demands and wanted more balance with her own family. She wanted to be able to manage her kids’ schedules and just craved more control over her life. Carissa knew she had a good network and decided to take that leap.

The biggest struggle she had: pricing. Carissa talks about sending proposals and feeling regret when they were accepted quickly. With each proposal though, she’s gone a bit higher than the one before. “I think I'm in a better place now,” she says “Valuing myself and valuing what I do.”

The most surprising thing for Carissa has been the amount of growth this year. “It's always funny when you're having conversations with people and you're like, ‘I really hope to have steady growth next year and not like exponential growth.” Although she’s surprised, she understands that the challenge is to catch up with staff to meet the growth in clients so that the quality of her work doesn’t fall behind.

Supporting clients in 2020

During this time, Carissa has been speaking with business owners about pivoting from their main sales channels to online platforms. Entrepreneurs are desperately trying to shift their focus in the quickest way possible and she’d here to provide the strategy and guidance. Facebook advertising, in particular, has been one platform that clients have easily turned to because of the lower entry point and how specific you can be with targeting. 

Being a smaller agency, she can be nimble with client needs. This has shown with clients who have had to utilize their advertising budget to pay employees. “So with a bigger agency, it might have been harder to say, ‘You know what, let's just pause the campaign and let's push it back a couple of weeks, or let's, let's just put it on hold for now.’ I mean, I've just been really flexible with most of my clients, or all of my clients,” says Carissa. The main benefit that she’s offered her clients in 2020 has been to be understanding and flexible. “[Being] a company that works with a lot of small businesses, and then being one yourself, you really understand how hard someone works for those hundred dollars a month that they're putting towards [paid ads]”.

Starting with paid ads

Have an objective.

According to Carissa, it all centers on having a strategy. “A lot of people just jump into trying to get people to their site without sitting down and saying, so what's my objective? Is it leads? Is it sales on my site, e-commerce? Is it just getting my awareness and getting visits to my page for people to look at phone calls?”

UNDERSTAND YOUR AUDIENCE.

Understanding your audience will help you know when they’re in the mindset to be told about your product. “Especially when you get into b2b... if they're in a leisure mindset, and you're trying to sell them copy paper, that's not necessarily going to be the best way to do that.” 

Don’t dive in without fully understanding what your goal is and how your audience fits into it because, no matter how big or small your budget is, you can then find the correct avenues where you can reach them.

ADD THE FACEBOOK PIXEL

Put the Facebook Pixel on your website ASAP. It starts gathering data you need even when there’s no ad being shown. Once you want to start the ads, it’ll be the key to your success.

PREPARE YOUR WEBSITE

Once your audience clicks on the ad, you have one shot to impress them. If not, you could lose them forever. This means making sure that your website can impress and that it’s only one or 2 clicks to convert. You don’t want to have a website visitor get confused, frustrated and leave. 

Be sure to check everything else that’s public-facing as well. This could be your business hours on Google My Business, Facebook profile, etc. You really can’t get a do-over when it comes to first impressions.

Budgeting for your ads

Budgets are based on your audience size, ad time-frame and goal. Carissa gives the example of a local boutique now leaning into e-commerce. The owner was likely only targeting about a 25-mile radius before, but now the campaign has to expand to build awareness. “That's a much bigger lift to get somebody to go from seeing your ad to purchasing when they don't know who you are, and requires a lot more money because that's a ton more people.” 

Think of it as bubbles. Would you like to stay within your current area or expand the bubble? The former will focus on getting purchases from people who already know you while the latter needs to warm people up to your brand.

“I would say [at] minimum, I would spend a month on Facebook [and] Instagram,” says Carissa. She suggests starting with about $300 in direct spending towards the ad. 

Testing your paid ads.

Carissa always tests when getting started. Testing creative is great but she also likes to test the audiences because it can be surprising to see who responds to the different sales platforms. In the example of the boutique, Carissa mentions that although an older audience would be likely to come in, a younger audience will be more apt to purchase online. 

The difference between B2B and B2C

Graphically, B2B is usually cleaner and simple. When it comes to objectives or goals, there’s a lot more lead generation for B2B versus awareness or conversions. You also need to know the mindset of your audience on specific platforms. If you’re B2B and are trying to reach people on TV, that’s likely not going to work because they’re in the entertainment mindset. 

Boosting posts is Carissa’s nemesis

According to Carissa, Facebook’s button for boosting posts is usually a waste of time and budget because there’s often no strategy behind it. She suggests that each time you want to boost a post, write down how much you were going to spend and at the end of the month see how much it comes out to be. Finally, come up with a strategy that targets the correct customer and put that little budget into it instead. “...because that strategy piece is so important. I think that's something that a lot of people skip over.”

Fun Fact

Carissa’s grandpa was on the very first National Championship team at Ohio State in 1942! Her father also played sports at Ohio State. So, it’s almost like brainwashing is happening with her own kids going around singing the fight song since they were little.

About Carissa

Carissa has 13 years of agency experience developing paid marketing strategies that create meaningful connections between brands and their customers. She is an expert in paid advertising planning and buying but understand that most people aren’t. She loves collaborating with clients and breaking down these sometimes complex or foreign subjects in a way that is educational, relatable, and understandable.

Find Carissa on her website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn