If you have $1,000 to test on paid advertising for your business, what would be your strategy?

The first question you need to answer is who is your audience? Who are you trying to reach with your advertising? If for example, you were promoting a local restaurant, Facebook may be a good choice. If you are trying to reach business owners, LinkedIn may be a good choice (its more expensive though than the other choices listed). Also you need to determine if you want to narrow or segment your advertising. Google does allow you to target your advertising in multiple ways but Facebook targeting is more granular as its users share more details regarding Likes and Share, which is all tracked and packaged for advertisers (although the data is not tied to any particular user).

With all that being said, I like AdWords, Facebook, and Bing. AdWords of course is the most popular so if I had to choose between AdWords and Bing I would gravitate to AdWords (although Bing may be worth you conducting a test). You will probably go through your $1000 budget faster on AdWords than on Facebook so that's something to consider also. I would recommend retargeting but you'll probably need a bigger budget to do the campaign justice. I hope all of this helps. Feel free to give me a call if you would like additional information.

It all depends on if the target audience is B2C or B2B. If B2C I would use Facebook all day long. However, if it is B2B I would recommend Linkedin. Both are great platforms that make it very easy to test paid advertising.

Please let me know if you would like to speak further about this.

Before you spend anything you first need to determine how much you want to spend to acquire 1 customer. An acquisition could be a purchase, membership signup, email submission, etc. Let's say you can spend $30 per customer. (You might find that your cost of acquisition is very low and that this kind of advertising just doesn't make financial sense before you even start)

Now because you are just starting your testing you should assume that hitting your target will be 2-3 rounds of testing down the road. Because of this test only enough money in each channel or platform so you can get a signal as to whether you are at least in the ballpark of your cost of acquisition.

- For $30 cost of acquisition I'd spend $100-150 per individual test. (a test may be a platform, an individual ad, a targeting method, a landing page, copy etc.). If you don't get 1 conversion then you either iterate and try alternative ads, copy, etc. Make sure when testing to only change one thing at a time so you can learn.

- Even just 1 conversion is valuable information. It shows that conversions are possible.

- No conversions - you will need to do more testing

Spend your $1000 increments and make sure you are paying to get learning because otherwise it is just gambling.

- Stay away from retargeting until you have at least 10k monthly website uniques.

- I would start with Facebook Ads and Google Adwords - although adwords is extremely competitive and will most likely cost more if your industry has competition. I've made businesses work on those 2 platforms alone.

- Linkedin and bing don't have a lot of volume so you might be wasting you time - although not impossible they will be harder to make work than FB or ADW.

Hope this helps you out! Best of luck and let me know if I can be of help further.

- Mike

What do you imagine when you envision a comprehensive marketing plan across multiple channels from TV to social media? Does it cost you tens of thousands of dollars? It doesn’t. In fact, you can launch a successful marketing campaign for just $1,000.

The key to cost-effective marketing that still makes a big impact is to focus on high-return activities. Should you spend money marketing your business online? Yes. Should you promote your business on every social platform? Definitely not. To get the most out of every dollar spent, optimize your outreach and promote your company where your very best prospects spend their time.

Research -- $0
Research doesn’t have to cost a dime, but it’s still the most important part of any marketing campaign. If you don’t do thorough research first, you’ll never know where to focus your marketing investments, and that’s a recipe for a poor return, whether you’re investing $1,000 or $100,000.

Email marketing -- $300
In an age of flashy new tools and techniques, it might surprise you to hear that plain old email marketing still maintains it’s position as one of the highest return-on-investment marketing efforts around. Surveys show that revenue from email increased 28 percent in 2014, and 68 percent of companies rate the channel as “good” or “excellent.”

Your email list is gold -- these are people who have responded to your outreach, opted in and are primed to hear from you. If you do nothing else, take advantage of email marketing and center your campaign around it.

So what does $300 get you? Right now, it’s the average cost of a one-year subscription to MailChimp. Depending on the size of your list and needs, you can pay more or less. Need it for free? MailChimp offers a free option for lists with less than 2,000 subscribers and no more than 12,000 emails sent per month (though you won’t have access to fun features like auto responders and automation rules). Test your email efforts as you go to see what successes you should duplicate and which ones to ditch.

Video marketing -- $489
Some 44 percent of people say that watching a video is their preferred way to learn about a new product or service. Take advantage of the trend and get started today. There are tons of ways to share video online. I use a branded YouTube channel myself. It’s true that creating a corporate video can run in the thousands of dollars, but it doesn’t have to. Basic equipment and inexpensive editing software is really all you need to get up and running.

Spending $489 gets you a basic video recording equipment bundle, plus one year of the WeVideo business plan. WeVideo offers custom branding, screen recording, advanced editing features, voiceover and more for one of the best editing values available, making it an ideal option for those without in-house video teams.

That said, as important as I think video is to modern marketing campaigns, resist the urge to overspend on videos. You don’t need $10,000 and professional actors to make a brand video that sticks. This isn’t Hollywood, and you’re not trying to win an Oscar. Start by putting yourself and your staff in front of the camera and use the simple videos you’re able to create this way to build rapport and trust with your viewers.

Social-media promoted posts -- $200
With the deep research you’ve already done for free, you should know which social-media platform to focus your content creation and promotion efforts on. This isn’t to say that you should forget about posting or interacting on other channels. But when it comes to spending money, nail it down to the one or two platforms you’re confident will get the best engagement.

Ultimately, the strategies you choose to invest in may be different, and they probably should be, as every business and every target audience is different. What works for one group of followers may fall flat with another, which is why research and ongoing testing are so important. But what I want you to walk away knowing is that marketing doesn’t have to break the bank to be effective. With just $1,000 and a little research, you can hit three of the top marketing outreaches available -- email marketing, video and social media. These simple efforts can rapidly increase your sales and success.

For further queries you can consult me.

It would be useful to know if it a business or actually a product you want to promote? Once this is established then hone your marketing accordingly. The reality is you will easily burn $1,000 on a test campaign via any of your suggested platforms and know what doesn't work. I would suggest going outside the box and if your product or service is appropriate then consider going down the affiliate sales route. This way you can in the first instance use your $1,000 for affiliate incentives/rewards and then compound aiming for the required ROI so generating funds for the required future advertising budget. Do make contact if you would like to discuss this strategy further.