Ever assembled IKEA furniture?
You know IKEA. They are a Swedish product company known for sleek, minimal, modernist design. They have been the world’s largest furniture retailer since at least 2008.
Most of their products are awesome, but for most people, they are nearly IMPOSSIBLE to assemble.
There are tons of memes out there making fun of people that can’t assemble IKEA furniture. IKEA includes instructions that are supposed to be very clear and easy to follow. They sell furniture in 49 countries, and so instead of creating instructions in multiple languages, they use no words at all and lots of illustrations.
Many times assembling IKEA furniture with someone puts the friendship or relationship in serious jeopardy. Frustration. Anger. Tears. Lives are threatened.
Not good for anyone.
Some of us are different – I don’t find IKEA’s illustrations difficult to follow at all. Assembling a FJÄLLBO or a LÅNGFJÄLL? No problem!
So why is it so different for people who are putting their personal relationships on the line just to get some cost-effective, modernist home furniture for their teenager’s room or their hip office space?
When I think about the times that I have messed up IKEA furniture, and look back on what went wrong, it’s usually because I opened up the instructions, and immediately started on step 1 without taking the time to thumb through the whole process by looking at the bigger picture, and not understanding how everything will work together.
Doing anything well, you need more than just instructions. You need to know the fundamentals of how things work.
One of the most complex environments in digital marketing is paid advertising. In a single advertising platform, there are tons of ways you can end up with a nightmare-inducing IKEA dresser:
- Millions of ways to segments audiences
- Thousands of options to choose from when creating an ad
- Hundreds of rules you need to follow
- Dozens of ways to organize your campaigns
- Way more metrics than you have the time to analyze
Let’s make things worse, making these types of mistakes on paid advertising is expensive.
It’s all fun and games when you’re just setting up a Swedish office desk, but when it comes to paid advertising, you’re risking your company’s advertising budget and probably getting nothing out of it.
Want to talk about your search or display advertising? Want to get started? Let’s get together – We’d love to take a look at the big picture and help you with your paid advertising – No tears or threats, we promise.
