That internet marketing guru I paid $500 gave me the worst advice ever

So I hired this guy who called himself a 'Detroit small biz growth expert' last March. He told me to cancel all my Google Ads and just spam local Facebook groups with my dog grooming deals. Said ads were a waste. Three months later my revenue dropped 40% and I had to beg Google to reinstate my account. Now I'm rebuilding from scratch. Anyone else get burned by one of these so-called experts around here?

3 comments

3 Comments

emma_flores16d ago

Wait, was this guy actually telling people to just stop running ads altogether? That's insane... I got burned the exact same way by some "Atlanta marketing genius" last summer. He convinced me to dump my Google Ads and instead waste hours posting in neighborhood Facebook groups. Three months later I was down 35% in leads and my website traffic just died. @the_lisa, your story about going back to basics is exactly what I had to do too. I started over with tiny Google ads targeting just a 3 mile radius around my shop, and it took me almost 5 months to climb back to where I was. These so-called experts just throw out trendy advice without understanding how local businesses actually work...

the_lisa16d ago

Honestly I fell for something similar last year with a guy who called himself a "Denver growth hacker". Paid him $800 and he told me to ditch my email list and only use TikTok. I lost about 30% of my repeat customers in two months. What actually saved me was going back to basics. I started running simple Google ads again with a small daily budget, like $20 a day, targeting only people within 5 miles of my shop. I also started sending a weekly email to my old customers with a "we missed you" discount code. Took about 4 months but my numbers came back to normal.

karenh5612d ago

Are we really calling an $800 mistake and a few months of lost customers "getting burned"? Seems like a pretty cheap lesson honestly, could have been so much worse.