Why Your Business Needs Ads — And How to Make Them Work for You

Why Your Business Needs Ads — And How to Make Them Work for You

What if the fastest way to grow your business was something most business owners are either afraid of or doing completely wrong? In this episode of You're the Boss, I sat down with Jeremy Yang — a Sydney-based ads agency founder who spent 13 years as a tradie before reinventing himself through marketing — and the conversation was eye-opening.

Here is what we covered and what you need to know.

From Satellite Dishes to Seven-Figure Ad Campaigns

Jeremy's story is one of the most relatable I have heard.

He dropped out of school, built a successful antenna installation business, left $150,000 a year on the table to go back to university at 32, and then couldn't get a single paid internship because he was "too old" compared to fresh graduates. He ended up doing a 12-month unpaid internship — and even had to pay his own insurance to do it.

What kept him going? Impatience, ironically enough.

A copywriter he worked with told him the only marketing discipline where things move fast enough for someone like him was media buying. That one conversation changed everything. He spent 11 months learning from a mentor who eventually helped him set up his own agency — Digital Glass — just before COVID hit. The timing turned out to be perfect.

"If you had something that was working back then, you could not put a foot wrong. But looking back seven years later, some of those accounts would have no chance of surviving now."

The Real Reason You Should Be Running Ads

One of the biggest myths in business is that organic social media is enough. Jeremy made it very clear — organic reach is a bonus, not a strategy.

There are two main reasons to run ads:

1. To test a concept fast. Organic content can take months to tell you whether something is working. With ads, you can test three different offers in three weeks — one per week — and know within a month what resonates with your audience. That kind of data would take up to four months to gather through organic posting.

2. To throw fuel on what is already working. Once you have found something profitable, ads let you scale it aggressively before competitors catch up. As Jeremy puts it — advantages get competed away, so when you have a window, you attack.

The caveat? You need to have something worth advertising first.

"If you are bootstrapping and every cent counts, organic is fine. But serious growth and goal hitting has to be built around ads."

Google Ads vs. Facebook Ads — Which One Do You Need?

This is where it gets really practical.

Google Ads works best when your audience already knows they need what you offer. If someone types "fire protection services Sydney" into Google, they are not browsing — they are buying. The intent is there. Google captures demand that already exists.

Facebook and Instagram Ads work differently. They are what Jeremy calls disruptive advertising — your ad interrupts someone's scroll and has to earn their attention from zero. This works better when your audience might not know they need you yet, or when it is hard to capture your niche through search terms alone.

The key lesson here is not to back one horse over the other. The budget you allocate to media buying should be fluid between both platforms depending on what the data tells you.

The Mistakes Most Business Owners Make with Ads

Mistake 1 — Getting too obsessed with structure and button clicking.

Adding more ads per ad set, tweaking bidding strategies, chasing every new platform trick. None of that matters if your offer does not convert. As Jeremy says, when you are spending $100,000 a month on ads, every little tweak matters. When you are a small business, your energy is better spent on the fundamentals.

Mistake 2 — Running ads to a bad website or unclear message.

I shared a story about a client who came to me baffled that his Google Ads were sending traffic but nobody was buying. The moment I opened his website I knew exactly why — the messaging was confusing, the visual branding communicated zero trust, and nobody could figure out what he was actually selling. Ads can only send people to your door. If your door looks like a mess, they walk away.

Mistake 3 — Getting emotional about bad leads.

One bad lead should not ruin your day, but Jeremy sees it happen constantly. Treat Google leads and Facebook leads as two completely different types of people who need different conversations, different follow-up approaches, and different expectations set from the start.

Mistake 4 — Trying to run AI-generated ads.

This one surprised me. Jeremy tested this with larger brands who have the budget to compare results side by side. The conclusion? As soon as people recognise an ad as AI-generated, performance drops significantly. Authenticity wins.

What Actually Works Right Now

Face to camera video. Jeremy was clear — this is the single biggest differentiator in ads right now, especially for coaches, consultants, and service businesses. You do not need to be polished. In fact, being imperfect might actually help because people trust real over perfect.

Proof and testimonials. If you are just starting out and you need to take a financial hit to get one strong video testimonial from a real client — do it. That investment will pay back many times over when it is woven into your ads.

Find your open lane. Before you create a single ad, go to the Facebook Ads Library and look at what every competitor in your space is doing. Use AI to analyse their hooks, their landing pages, their messaging. Then ask — where is the gap? What angle is nobody taking? That is your open lane.

The teaching pitch. One of the highest-performing ad formats is where you teach something genuinely useful in the ad itself, establish credibility, and then invite the right person to take the next step. Combined with strong proof and a clear offer, this format still works extremely well.

The Mindset Shift That Changes Everything

Somewhere along the way — probably when social media became free — business owners stopped thinking of advertising as a normal cost of doing business. Before social media, every business had an advertising budget.

That was just part of running a company.

Social media gave us a free channel and we got used to it. Now that reach is being pulled back and we have to pay to play, people feel like something is being taken from them.

Jeremy's reframe is simple and I completely agree with it:

"Are you running a business or a hobby? Serious growth and goal hitting has to be around ads."

If you are serious, you allocate a budget to getting in front of people. The fastest, most measurable way to do that is paid advertising.

Watch my full conversation with Jeremy Yang on the You're the Boss podcast and practical tools you can use today.

👉 Click here to watch the full episode

And if you are ready to look at what your personal brand is actually communicating right now — start here.

👉 Take the free Personal Brand Power Scorecard → powerbrand.scoreapp.com