Don't let ROI glasses stop growth

When I got my first digital marketing job back in 2015, I was wearing ROI glasses.

ROI is important, but you have to know when to invest long-term too...

My first gig was doing Google Ads for my mom's cleaning and renovation business.

I only bought "ready to buy" keywords, and I set up keyword-specific landing pages, like '{local} home cleaning service'.

The budget wasn't high, because who wants to waste their mom's money.

It was exciting to see clicks, high conversion rates and phone calls.

But the only thing that mattered to me in the end, was whether or not people became reccuring cleaning customers, or accepted a renovation bid.

It was really rewarding to profitably capture existing demand with a limited budget.

But if we had more capacity to fill, we would've hit a platau using this strategy.

Back in 2021 I did something similar for a different family business, but something was different.

The setup was a bit more advanced, but still easy to manage:

- New, conversion-focused and trust-building website

- Responsive Search Ads and Call Ads for "ready to buy" keywords

- Keyword-specific landing pages, with dedicated conversion popups

- A dynamic list of ideal customers  that visited the website without converting, and which pages they visited

- Remarketing Ads to keep the business top-of-mind for non-converters

These initiatives are all helping capture demand - but in addition, I set up some PPC Ads to help create demand (for the solution type and brand), and pull in people not actively searching.

End result? Continously capturing and creating demand for key services (profitably).

This could of course be built on and scaled. But the main point is:

Don't let your ROI glasses become shades or blinders. Think long-term.