What is the best ads platform?

Find out about the pros and cons of some of the most popular ads platforms

The Hawke Method

Johnny is reading ‘The Hawke Method’ at the moment, by Erik Huberman, who runs a huge ads agency and has worked with big brands.

In the book, he categorises ads platforms by:

• TV
   
• Radio
   
• Newspapers
   
• Direct Mail
   
• Even the junk mail you get through your letterbox

Ads can be either:

• A form of interruption
   
• A form of capturing an intent

Interruption-based advertising and Intent-based marketing

Interruption-based advertising creates demand that wasn’t there in the first place.

Whereas intent-based marketing takes advantage of an ad that’s already there.

Most ad platforms these days (like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook) are an ‘interruption’ style of ad.

An example of Intent-based marketing would be searching for something on Google - for example, ‘Best microphone’ - and ads for potential mics appearing at the top of the search page.

The chances of you buying one of these are pretty high. Or you might click on it, but not complete the sale. Then all you see online for the next few days is ads for mics.

So, how can an online personal trainer take advantage of this?

Rather than go after the same keywords as every other personal trainer, try to create demand from elsewhere. Otherwise, you’re going up against every other online coach to be on the first page of Google.

And between taking the intent or interruption approach, we’d advise going with interruption - making use of social media platforms to get potential clients' attention.

Each advertising platform has its pros and cons, so a few things to remember are:

• Keep ahead of trends to see which is gaining (or losing) popularity
   
• Ask yourself where your audiences are
   
• Decide what you’re willing to learn.

We’d recommend that our clients start out on Facebook and Instagram.

For those who say that these platforms aren’t profitable: Nobody would be running ads on them if this were true.

The Pros and cons of Instagram and Facebook

Some of the advantages of advertising on Instagram and Facebook are:

• Their ads are fairly simple to set up
   
• If the quality of the image and your writing is good, you should be able to create an ad that stands out
   
• It’s easy to create lots of variations of ads on this platform

But keep in mind that the longevity of these ads is quite low, too.

And because these platforms work on auction, there are lots of advertisers competing for one slot. This means that costs will slowly rise over time.

The Pros and cons of YouTube

Some of the advantages of advertising on YouTube are:

• There’s a lot more involved in creating a YouTube ad, but there’s also more longevity
   
• People will actually sit down to watch something on YouTube (so you get a bit more of their attention)
   
• More incentive to create good-quality content (YouTube pays people in ad revenue)

One thing to remember is:

YouTube is a harder landscape to compete in.

It’s harder to compete with some of the companies with much bigger budgets when it comes to filming a video.

The future of ads

It does look like YouTube and Google will be big players in the ad space in a few years’ time.

But the tricky thing is that you suddenly have to pay attention to lots of different things:

• The lighting
   
• The audio
   
• How you come across
   
• The script

And if you can’t get a funnel working on Facebook and Instagram, you’ve got no hope on YouTube and Google.

Because these platforms are more expensive, more complicated to use and require more effort.

You’re better off picking the platforms where there are fewer variables to think about, and graduating to platforms like YouTube and Google once you’ve got more experience under your belt.

Your ads can actually be anywhere and still work if you know what you’re doing.

Because the funnel, the offer and the pricing are all far more important than the traffic.

Remember: The ad by itself is meaningless. You’re just paying for a click from the right person, at the right time.

It doesn’t matter if you get hundreds of thousands of views if you don’t have a way of converting that money into something meaningful for your business.

Find out more

If you’re ready to start advertising on Facebook, you can watch this video to find out some of the common mistakes online personal trainers make when advertising on this platform:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mp1JPyyt6g

You can also subscribe to our podcast for more content on growing an online fitness business.

You can learn more about how to build and deliver a profitable online programme to your clients by signing up to our free training.

And if you’re interested in working with us to build your own online fitness business, you can find out more about our business mentoring by booking in a call with us.