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Welcome to the Win with Paid Ads podcast for small business owners, entrepreneurs and really anyone who has anything you want more people to find. Whether you're starting from ground zero or scaling an eight figure business, you are exactly who this podcast was created for. Because you being the best kept secret helps no one, right? You may be the best at what you do, but if you aren't the best at advertising what you do, then you're leaving money on the table. That's why in every episode I'll show you how you can use paid ads to hit your goals 10 time sooner. It's time you finally learn how to win with paid ads. You or someone on your team can do this. I'll show you how to score and be known by more. Let's get started. All right, so let's get started with today. So we're rebranding. So if you've been listening along or following on YouTube on the YouTube channel, this used to be marketing matters. Marketing matters. But we are pivoting and honestly, I have pivoted in every other area of the business except for the channel and, and my handles on TikTok and on YouTube, everything. We're rebranding. And I want to tell you in this episode today a few things. So we're going to talk about why we're rebranding, what my social media transition has been over the past couple of months and six months, why branding matters statistically for you, and also why people don't trust you and how you can honestly fix that with brand. And we're going to talk about one extra layer of branding that can allow people to see your name, see you, know that it's you, and know that they want to buy from you. So this is going to be a really good episode where we talk about all things branding because honestly, people aren't buying from you because they don't trust you or because you haven't built a brand yet that is strong enough. And so I'm going to give you so many stats and examples and talk to you about all of that. So let's break it down. But before we do, I want to make sure to invite you to the Win with Paid Ads challenge. So if you're watching on YouTube or listening on the podcast below this episode, you can click to join the Win with Paid Ads podcast or Win with Paid Ads challenge. It is the Win with Paid Ads podcast now. So in the Win with Paid Ads challenge, it is five days of live training. What that means for you is you are going to learn the strategies that I have trademarked and designed through doing paid advertising for the last 10 years. People often ask, how did you make this up? Why do you do ads? Because I've done ads all day, every day for over a decade. I am obsessed with ads. It's going to be challenging for you to find someone who, who cares and loves ads as much as I do and has the depth of experience with over 10 years of working in four different ad agencies with Fortune 500 companies and spending over $200 million on paid ads for my clients, and now growing a multimillion dollar company and helping my clients do the very same thing. So I have clients who are just getting started all the way that have eight figure businesses, that we are just pouring gasoline on that fire. So I just want you to know, wherever you're at with your brand, this episode is going to be really helpful for you. But if you've not, go ahead and join the challenge and get the VIP tickets because every single time the VIP room does sell out. Because it is five days of live personalized coaching in a group setting with you and these other incredible business owners. So let's get started with today with why we're rebranding. Marketing is so broad. So marketing, like going to market could mean anything. And there's ways that you can market your business outside of paid advertising. You could market your business by going to a local farmer's market. You could market by going to a networking group. You could market through direct mail. You could market through a newspaper. You could, you could go to market and have your your yourself in an article like PR is marketing traditional advertising. Traditional marketing, as I like to call it, is also marketing. So I used to call this the Marketing Matters podcast. And honestly, it was an overstatement because although I do kind of sometimes say, oh, I'm your CMO on the go for some of my highest level clients, I do consult on your marketing and advertising strategy, but specifically your ads strategy. So there's a difference between marketing and paid advertising. And because this is so broad, I've decided to niche down into paid advertising. And if you've been listening to the podcast, you've heard it, you've seen it, you already know that. But if you're new, that is one of the reasons that we're rebranding and just putting a full, you know, full court press on updating the brand to be win with paid ads. So the book is Win with paid Ads. The challenge is Win with paid ads. And now this podcast is when with paid ads. Because ultimately at the end of the day, I am growing a community of rainmakers. And rainmakers are winners. They're winning not only with their ads, but in their life and their business, as parents, as friends. And that's what I want for you too. Whatever that winning life looks like, whether it is a like, for me, honestly, it was this morning. It was walking out on my front porch as the sun was coming up. It was pure quiet. I was listening to the birds and I was able to have my coffee. I knew that today was about to be an incredible batch recording day. I got to be with my sons as they woke up this morning. And I get to do work that does not feel like a four letter word. It's fun for me. Because of paid advertising, I get to work with the very people that I'm excited to work with. The people that are already sold on ads, they already wanna scale their business. They have big mindsets, they have big goals, they wanna change. That's the people that I get to work with every day. And so I just did an episode and if you haven't listened to it, you need to go back and listen. And it is with Amelia Simmons, and she's one of my clients. And we were just talking about how one of her favorite things about paid ads is that she gets to work with the people that she's wanted to work with. She said her mom was asking her, amelia, how'd you find Duke University? And she's like, I didn't know Duke University. Duke University found me. She has become findable. And so there are people just like with me, with you, with Amelia, that are waiting to find you. And when they find you, your brand needs to be on point, which is why we're talking about branding today and how your lack of branding can really break trust. So I just wanted to share with you what a perfect time to talk about the power of a brand, a personal brand, how you develop it, the mistakes that you're making, and just why kind of the behind the scenes that we're rebranding too. And it's specificity. You want people to land on your website and hear your brand and see your message and be like, yep, that's me. And you want them to know that very quickly. And I'm going to share with you about why. So here are, let's see, five core reasons why branding is so powerful. And then I'm going to data back it by examples. But these five things are probably going to change how you think about branding. So I want to start with the first one, which is people buy from people they know. And the caveat is 95% of my ads budget that I spend on my business is for new people, people that do not know me. Right? So you're like, wait, Ashley, you're saying people only buy from people they know? Well, how do they know you? Ads. Ads are how people find you. And then your brand is how they can compress time to get to know you more quickly. And so a strong brand creates familiarity. And especially when you do ads the right way, that brand and that familiarity is so consistent. Right? So when people feel like they know you through your message, through your visuals, your personality, they are more likely to trust you and buy from you. And remember this, no trust, no transaction. People are not going to buy from you if they don't trust you. And how is trust built? Think about relationships, think about your marriage, think about your friends. It's built through consistent action over time. And yet some of my clients come to me and they're like, why is nobody buying? And some of them are in their beginning stages of business versus I have clients that are eight figure businesses or seven figure businesses and hundreds of thousands of followers. They're having no problem with their ads. Like they're profiting immediately. You can actually profit immediately even with a very small audience. When you have good branding, when someone lands on your website, it is not about the size. It is about how you communicate what you have to offer through your brand. So number one, people buy from people they know in trust. And number two is having a brand builds authority without you needing to explain yourself. When I see that Nike check mark, no explanation is needed. When people land on my page and they see these testimonials and these stories and this consistent posting over and over, it is building understanding without me needing to explain who I am or what I do. It's picked up very quickly. And we're still working on that too. It's not perfect, but what I want for you is for you to have a brand that builds such authority and trust that you don't have to explain. Like, the brand actually speaks for you. And I wrote these notes. It says your brand should be doing the heavy lifting. And here's the example. Beyonce says, I'll be here and guess what happens? Her brand says, it carries the weight and people show up. I don't even know if Beyonce has to advertise at this point. Right. She is so big. Actually, I'm pretty sure Ticketmaster is still selling the ticket. So there's still an advertising layer. To get more people to know. Because people love Beyonce. They just don't know that her concert's coming up. Hence paid advertising. But what's cool is the brand. Once someone finds her from an ad or sees that a concert is coming, the brand carries the weight, right? And that's what can happen for you, too. But it can't happen on day one. Even Beyonce had 200 followers before she had 2,000, before she had 200,000, before she had 2 million, before she had 20 million. And it's the very same thing with you and I as we're building our brands, too. So a clear, consistent brand presence communicates expertise before you say a word. And over time, your content, your visuals, your reputation will actually precede you, like it does for Nike, like it does for Taylor Swift, like it does for Beyonce. And all these. These people that we know so well. Number three, it attracts aligned opportunities. The way that my DMs have grown over the past even six months of people coming to me and saying, hey, we would love for you to be a speaker here. Hey, we see your value. We'd like for you to come in. I recently had someone who has millions of followers in the last two weeks send me a message and say, hey, can you come teach our community about paid ads? Aligned opportunities? And it's because of the brand that I'm slowly and consistently growing. And that's what can happen for you, too. It's almost like your brand is honestly like a magnet. And the stronger that magnet is, the stronger that pull is for people. When they see you, they're so gravitated and pulled towards you. And what you do, and that is done through branding. The next thing is you gain pricing power. You know this, I know this. The more people that know you that trust your brand, the more you can charge. Some of you are so feeling the pressure of, well, well, so. And so is charging this. So I need to have my prices higher. Your pricing, that's a whole separate podcast episode. In my opinion and experience. I base my prices based on supply and demand. We have three ways that we work with business owners that I share at the end of the Win with PayDads podcast. And of those three ways, we have one that's an intro, one if you're at a kind of middle stage in your business and you've got a good bunch of sales and you're really trying to scale. And then I have one for people that are already at seven or eight figure owners exclusively. And so we've created these different tiers and so I've been able to gain pricing power and be able to charge. It's still a fraction of the value. And that's actually how I price is based on the value. But you get to gain pricing power as your brand grows and as the testimonials grow that you're creating for your business, which is really cool because when your brand is positioned as the best, you get to charge higher than the rest because you've built that brand power and authority and people don't haggle with you. If someone tries to haggle with me on pricing, I kindly say, hey, this may not be the best fit. And that is okay. Because the people that I've been able to, I'm just so blessed to work with, they see the price and they're like, no brainer, I'm in. They're like, oh, this is something I can have me or my team like have in my brain and it can pay back over and over and over again, no brainer. And so someone who's gonna question a $97 purchase or a couple thousand dollar purchase or even like nearly a six figure investment, they see the value in it so quickly. So it's a no brainer. And so when you have a strong brand, like if someone were to go to Beyonce and be like, hey, can I get a discount on your ticket like that? No, because there's plenty of people that are happy to pay for the value because of the brand that she's established. So pricing power. And the last one is your brand compounds over time, like compounding interest. Every post you make, every YouTube video you post, everything is compounding over time. It's laying and laying and laying and building this big brand and big business. And so every piece of content, every client win, it all adds up. And honestly, the earlier you build it, the stronger it will get. I mean, we all have to start somewhere with a brand and start from scratch. We're kind of, we're not starting from scratch, but we're like adjusting, we're pivoting just a little bit. And the sooner your brand can start working for you, the sooner you start building it. So those are the five things people buy from who they know. It builds a good, a strong brand builds authority without you needing to explain yourself. Number three, it attracts those aligned opportunities like a magnet. Number four, you gain pricing power. And number five, it compounds over time. So let me give you a little bit of a backstory and I'm going to share some elements of your brand that you really need to consider. Like Specific things that matter for branding so that you can have a really strong and powerful brand. So I'm going to dial back or like, kind of go back in time. About a year ago, I started working with a friend of mine named Chelsea, and she owns a social media consulting company. And so she came in, she just gotten started with her business and we partnered together and she helped me grow my social media. So she was a contractor to the company. We were friends. She did a great job. And over time I realized and I'd been sold on the value of content and I. It was kind of in this time period, as we were leading up to the summit of this year, the 2025 summit, where I told myself in January of 2025, I'm gonna bring social media in house and have a full time just expert and team that can really see content through a different lens. And so that is where Veronica has joined the team, which has been really helpful and incredible because everybody on your team is going to see things better and differently than you do in a really good way. So with our social media, I had told myself, make it pretty later. Like, let's come back. Let's make the theme be consistent. Let's make it pretty later. And so we're in the middle of the pretty. We're like, okay, let's also make it pretty now. Because I've delayed having something consistent for so long. And so I would rather you get your message out there. And it's like this order of operations. Get great content, allow people when they come to your page to be able to find you and know exactly what you do. And then there's a certain point where like, okay, we need the esthetics to, like, say something about the brand. And so that's what we're working on behind the scenes too, is that make it pretty later. And so now I'm going to lead you to why, like, the coloring and the branding and the visuals matter so much for you and can create you honestly more sales so that when people find you from your ads, they are successful and fruitful. So 8. Oh, sorry. 81% of people say that they have to trust a brand before they buy. That's from a study from the Edelman Trust Barometer. So you're probably the same Ray. You don't want to give your money to someone that you're like, oh, do I trust this person? Are they really good? Are their intentions good? Do they really have the experience? 81% of people say they have to trust a brand before they buy. What does that mean for you, if you have three followers on Instagram or 30 or even 300, you're in the beginning of building a brand? I have an incredible photographer in the mastermind, and she's actually killing it with her photography business. But she decided to create a new page for her photography coaching. And on her last launch, it actually didn't do as well as the original launch she had when it was on her original page that had, I think, 1,000 or 2,000 followers. And so one thing that is true, and you know it's true, if you have a couple followers, you're gonna be like, is everything all right here? Right? When you see someone, you're like, I love them. But then I get here and nobody else is around. It's kind of vacant. It's part of building the brand. But you know that as your audience grows, so there will your automatic credibility. Think about it like this. If it takes this long for people to trust you, if you have 100 followers, it's probably gonna take this long for people to find you or trust you. If you have a thousand followers, you have a hundred thousand, you have a million. Do you see how the time that it takes for them to trust you and think you're credible actually depends on some of that audience size, right? Because people, oh, it's like, it is human behavior that we want to follow what others are doing that they know are working well. We're like, let's get on the train with this. Right? So 81% of consumers that they have to trust before they buy. Second thing about your brand, it takes 0.05 seconds for people to form an opinion about you and your brand. So the moment that they see your ad and they click on that Instagram profile and they're like, is this a kid's page or is she trying to sell luxury purses? Is this a book company or is this travel account? You don't want people to wonder and be in between. It takes 0.05 seconds. Our brain actually processes visuals over 50 times quicker than and text. So when someone gets to your website or your Instagram or your email and they can't very quickly see what this is about, that that can make a difference. And it's just so important that they. That opinion that they form of you is one that is favorable. You know, I was. I was looking at this. I got an ad the other day, and it was this belt company, and I was like, okay, these are cute. I was waiting to see the price point. I was like, these look Kind of nice. And I was watching and watching, watching. And then I was like, oh, it's only $40. And it was like an adjustable belt. So if you're a little bloated one day, or if you're, you know. You know, postpartum or you're like this. This region is adjusting. Okay. What's cool is the belt has, like, little clickers. So it's like, one day, you might only need a couple of clicks. The other one, like, it was really a smart company. And so I was watching. I was on the ad. I was watching their videos, and then I was like, let me just go check out their Instagram profile. And I clicked. The website looked amazing, but I clicked on the Instagram profile, and it looked inconsistent. I didn't see. I was like, is this the owner? Is this, like. I don't know. I had questions. I think that's the whole point. I had questions because it wasn't clear. And I formed an opinion, and I was like, I don't think this is the brand I want to move forward with. I scrolled down on the page, and I was like, ooh, this is really good down here. This was, like, the original content. And then it, like, pivoted. There was a very clear, this is the brand we're building. And then it, like, pivoted. And so it caused distrust because it was inconsistent. And so I didn't buy the belts. Right. So that first opinion really matters. My first opinion on the website was exceptional. My first opinion on Instagram was questioning. And so I didn't move forward with buying. Here's another stat for you, which is really cool. Color alone can improve brand recognition by 80%. So you actually just being consistent with your colors allows someone to immediately say, that's for me. Oh, oh. Because of this color, I know it's that brand. Like, I keep doing this because my husband is a State Farm agent. But, like, I know the State Farm red, and you probably do, too. You know, the Coca Cola red? Like, it just gives a color and brand and trust. And so that's what you can create, too. And so that's why one thing that we're really focusing on as a team is what colors are we using and not using? And let's be consistent with that everywhere, because color can improve brand recognition by 80%. Another stat which is really cool, it says, consistent brand presentation across all platforms can actually increase Your revenue by 23%. So what does that mean for you? The extra time that you take to make sure your Instagram, your website, your emails, your YouTube, your TikTok are all consistent, can actually increase your revenue overall, which is not only good for you, but it's good for your team. It's good for your clients. It gives them confidence. You know, when people buy something, they buy something from you. The other content that they see, Your podcast or YouTube, your posts, those posts actually confirm and validate the purchase that they just made with you. They almost assume it as an extra value. They're like, oh, I just paid for that. Oh, this is really good. Yeah, I made a good decision. So that content, that brand that you're consistently building, is building credibility not only in future buyers, but also in your existing clients too, which is really cool. Let's see a few other quick things about brands. It says brands with strong identities can charge up to 20% more than their competitors. And that is from a Harvard Business Review study. So your identity that you're building, like we are building an identity of rainmakers, people that create an unusual amount of revenue with a unique level of skill. That is what you are, right? And that's what ads can do for you, is they can make it rain. That's what we're building. You building the identity for your business can increase your revenue as well. And again, that all ties back to brand. Last few stats. Companies that invest in consistent branding see an average of 33% increase in year over year revenue and 77% of consumers. This is actually a really interesting one. 77% of consumers make purchases based on the brand name, not the product name. So here's why that's so important. It's why we rebranded the podcast Marketing Matters Broad. Okay, Win with paid ads. More specific. Oh, it's paid advertising and the payoff is winning. And I'll tell you what winners expect to win. I promise you. Tiger woods did not win the Masters and be like, I am so shocked. Odd. Can't even believe I won. No, that's not what winners do. The winners, the Nick Sabins, the Tiger woods, the big names, they all anticipated to win. They weren't shocked by it. And so that's why we named it the Win with Paid Ads podcast to attract winners and entrepreneurs and small business owners who are ready to really win with their paid advertising. So I know you're like, okay, it sounds cool, but what is the intention behind the name? All three of my programs, the name of them are so. They were created so intentionally and specifically, and it was a big progress. I didn't just wake up and be like, yep, that's it. Like it really matters. I'm so big at looking up the definitions of words and you should be too. And so this was all created with such intention. So I want you to think about how simply the name of your business, your product, your services, actually influence people's likelihood to buy. Now, there's a caveat. Amazon, Nike, Google, like, people just made up a bunch of words that made a sound and that actually created such strong contrast and brand recognition that differentiated them from their competition too. So yes, the name of your business matters, but if you want to go big, you can pull an Amazon or a Google and just make up Word and then you get to assign the brand behind that. So at the end of the day, Google and TikTok, Amazon, Meta, they were all very intentional with their, their, their branding and their naming and it has been the very reason that they're successful because of how their name just stands out from anything else. It can't be confused with anything else. So just being intentional on your name, every brand can matter. All right, so the next thing is I'm not going to talk about on this episode, so you're going to have to listen to the next one, but the next thing we're going to talk about as it comes to your brand is, is actually testimonials. And I decided to do an entirely separate episode about testimonials and third party validation specifically because I really do feel like we've created some secret sauce in the business about how we gather those testimonials, where we gather them and just our whole process and even some tools that we've used to really make it so clear that no one can find our business and not find a win from someone else. And we are going to share all the secrets about testimonials and how we approach that in the next episode. So if you haven't, make sure you register for the Win with paid ads challenge. There's another one starting very soon and we can get five days together for you to not only learn even more in depth in some strategies that I only teach inside the paid challenge, but also get five days of coaching for you so you can get feedback on your business but also learn from these other six, seven and eight figure entrepreneurs too. So comment or I guess you can't comment, but click the link below this episode on the YouTube channel or the podcast and then go ahead and click to the next episode and I will see you. We're going to talk all about testimonials and third party validation.