.png)
If you look the definition up on Google, a media buyer is somebody who's basically buying ad space and time for things like TV, radio, newspaper, digital, many different things. What AdClass actually specialize in is paid advertising on social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and others.
We highly recommend that if you're going to get into media buying that that's the area that you focus on because that's the area that right now is extremely needed and is consistently growing year over year. What do you actually do as a media buyer? Media buyers essentially are focused on doing work for a client or for the business that they are working under. The idea is that the business owner or the client has some sort of goal that they want to achieve with their advertising.
Most of the time that goal is to get more sales.
Sometimes they're media buyers who are focused on branding campaigns or engagement campaigns, and that usually can be a part of the sales campaigns as well. But the main goal that business owners really want to see is an increased ROAS. which stands for return on ad spend. And that means that the business owner is looking to increase their return– the sales that they're getting for the ads spent.
Your job as the media buyer is basically to build a campaign with the client or business owner's goals in mind. So if that's increased sales, you're gonna think about your advertising campaign with that goal in mind. You're then going to structure your campaign with targeting and audiences that you believe should be seeing the advertising message that you want to deliver. And then lastly, you're working on the creative and the copy that's actually going to be shown to the leads on an advertising platform.
So when you're scrolling through Instagram or Facebook and you see an ad, let's say it's a guy who's selling a t-shirt, that actual video of the shirt is the actual creative. Then the copy that you see on that page is whatever text there is. That's basically the job of a media buyer– thinking through that campaign, building out the audiences and working on the creatives and copy that’s going to be shown to those audiences.
Lastly, the media buyer is going to focus on optimizing those campaigns and scaling up those campaigns for the business owner. You will be getting into accounts, seeing what's working, which ad is actually causing people to buy that t-shirt or whatever it is that you're selling. You're going to continue to grow that for the business owner and if you can do that well, if you can do that efficiently, that's what makes a good media buyer. Someone who can take the goals of the business owner to make a campaign that works and continues growing that for the business owner.
The starting pay, if you look up on Google for a media buyer, is going to be somewhere around the $50,000 to $60,000 range at a company. Now that doesn't sound like a lot, but that's because you're at a company! Where the real magic happens is if you're able to service your own clients and work in that way.
On average, the clients that we service in the media buying world right now tend to be paying anywhere between seven to $10,000 a month in income, and that's coming in from each of those clients. Now, when you're getting started, you're probably not gonna be charging that sort of premium fee. You're probably gonna be charging somewhere around $3,000 to $5,000 a month for clients whenever you're getting started. And depending on where that client is currently at, let's just say that you can get two clients that are paying you $5,000 per month. If that's the case, you're making $120,000 a year, literally only servicing two people, two business owners. If you can get them at 5,000 a month, now you might be thinking to yourself, “man, five grand a month? That sounds like a lot, who is gonna pay me that?” You would be shocked at how business owners actually really, truly, need this skill.
You might just have to start with a three or $4,000 a month client and show that you can get results and then start showcasing that results to future clients. You're probably gonna be making somewhere around $50,000 or $60,000 right off the top. If you can land a second client in your spare time. Now you're in the six figure engine. You can start scaling up from there. One other cool note to add here is that if you're considering doing media buying as a side gig or a side hustle, and you're working full time in another job, it's very realistic for you to be able to service one client in that spare time that you do have.
Let's say there’s 10 hours a week that you can spare to basically a side gig or a side hustle. Let's say that in that side hustle, you're able to land the client that's paying $5,000 a month. That's $60,000 a year in additional income just from landing that one client. So you can see very quickly how awesome it is to be able to actually grow this if you can start landing a few clients.
The number one thing, and I will shout this from the rooftop, scream it from the mountaintops is this. The number one thing to get started is community, community, community. If you can surround yourself in the right groups with the right online marketers, I promise you eventually, there's going to be an opportunity that comes up for you to start doing ads. What you should look at first is joining Facebook groups. We actually have an “AdClass” Facebook group full of media buyers. So it's a really great place to get started. But even if you don't join that group, join a Facebook group.
There's tons of Facebook groups online with different marketers, for YouTube ads, Facebook ads, all the different kinds of advertising. There's other forums online, there's different slack groups that you can research to get involved with starting to just communicate and meet people. I can tell you that the first step that you need to take, if you're going to take this seriously, is to start to surround yourself with the people who are actually doing it. The next thing that you should focus on is education. You can be in the groups and everything, right? And you can know the right people, but if you have no clue what to do inside of the ad account, you're probably not going to be able to provide results for your client.
Start to educate yourself, watch the videos on this channel, research other YouTube videos, and take some online courses for that. You need to get on the platform you want to work with. You need to start clicking around on those buttons and you need to start understanding the structure of how all of this works. Spend an hour a day, watching some videos, getting a feel for it, and actually get inside of the ad accounts and start pushing some buttons.
Another thing to keep in mind is try not to be too scattered at first. If you're just getting started, you shouldn't be trying to learn Facebook ads, YouTube ads, TikTok ads, Snapchat ads, LinkedIn ads, take your time to focus on one thing I would probably recommend either starting with Facebook, YouTube, or TikTok. Take some time to learn one of those platforms, get in there and just start clicking around and start to educate yourself on how it works. The next thing to do when you're getting started is to be open to contractor or freelance opportunities. There's not always gonna be this magical thing that lands in your lap.
It's good to go out there and start searching for opportunities for people that are looking for media buyers, go on sites like Upwork, other job posting sites, where you have business owners who are searching for media buyers, message those people. And see if you can get your foot in the door and start testing out your skills. Some of my very first gigs in the media buying world were actually jobs that I went out and I reached out to the HR recruiter who had posted a job online saying that they were looking for a media buyer and I had emailed them an email that said, “Hey, look, I know that you're looking for an in-house employee. I would love to be able to service your ads. I'll cost less than an in-house employee will, and I will give you better results.”
That really is a great way to get started. Don't be shy. Get out there, put your name out there and see if you can land a gig that way.
So now let's talk about how to scale up. The first thing that you're gonna wanna master is delegation. You're gonna want to go ahead and look at hiring a VA or an entry level marketer that can really help you with things like data entry and automating some of the work that frees up your time to better service your clients. That doesn't mean right away. Go hire somebody to start taking over accounts for you. Don't be in a huge rush to hop off the accounts and put someone else on. That’s a really fast way to start having quality dip for your clients and then leaving. Right? So when you do start delegating, make sure that you're just delegating some of those entry level tasks that just really help you free up your time to do better work.
The next thing that you wanna do is utilize proper tracking. This is crucial when you're a media buyer and you're tracking the stats and performance of your campaigns for your clients. It's crucial that you have good tracking because it's going to save you a ton of time. If you have really good tracking in place, then you don't have to spend hours and hours and hours and hours every day wondering what's working and what's not. Clients love efficient tracking. If you can showcase their profit and their growth (remember return on ad spend) they are going to stay with you longer. They're going to believe in your services longer because you have the proof of the efficient tracking.
Number three, this one sounds pretty obvious, but do good work. You have to actually provide results for your client. Don't just think that you can get in there and just click some buttons and hope that stuff is gonna work. You actually have to provide results for your client and make sure that they're happy.
And lastly, you will want to offer referral payouts. So remember how we talked about those groups and building a community and being around people who are doing this well? Once you start to meet other people in those groups, offer them a referral payout if they send you clients. This is huge. I cannot tell you how many clients that we've gotten simply because we have friends in the space that refer them to us. Firstly because we do good work, but also because when they refer us to a client, we will pay them a fee for that referral.
So now all of your friends know if you're the expert on, let's say TikTok ads, and they have a client that maybe needs TikTok ads, but they don't know how to do it they're gonna think of you. This is because one, you're doing good work in the TikTok ads area, and two, they know, well, “Hey, if I go ahead and send you a client, you're gonna pay me out for that referral that I sent you.” Everybody kind of wins in that scenario. You get a new client that you're servicing in the TikTok ads and the person who referred that client is now getting a payout for that. It's a really easy way to start scaling if you can communicate that referral payout efficiently.
If you’re spending $30K+ per month on ads and want an elite team focused on revenue over vanity metrics, let’s chat.