A lot of our clients have built their business on word of mouth.
Some have reached half a million dollars in annual revenue purely from doing a bloody good job, and being fortunate enough that their clients tell their network about it.
They’ve never had to learn how to advertise. Instead they’ve coasted along, going with the flow, riding the wave....
Until all of a sudden, the referrals stop flowing in.
Holy sh*t. What do I do now? How will I pay my rent?
The same thing can happen even if you are marketing your business, but are only focusing on one channel.
Just say you’re pouring everything into Facebook ads.
All of a sudden, Zuck and his crew decide to ban your ads account.
Or Facey rolls out a glitchy update and all of a sudden, you can’t get any ads approved (this actually happened to us about 3 months ago).
The thing is, when you’re running your business and a strategy is working well, it’s easy to get comfortable and start relying on it. Too much.
There’s a lesson here for diversification.
Diversification is your business’ safety net. Or series of safety nets.
When you’re running advertisements across multiple channels, if one bites the dust (even temporarily)... it’s not the end of the world.
Sure, you can still have your ‘Golden Goose’ - that marketing channel or campaign that just keeps coming up with the goods.
But when things are going well in your business, that’s actually the perfect time to invest your focus and efforts into other things.
If you’ve got a campaign that’s profitable, why not invest some of that profit into experimenting with YouTube? Or Google ads?
Here’s what I want you to try…
Portion off a segment of your profits from a campaign that’s already running.
Save that money for 6-8 weeks. That’s now your ‘Research & Development’ fund.
Choose a new platform to run an experimental campaign on. Make sure it’s a place where your audience would hang out.
Book some time on your own calendar for ‘Project Diversify’ - aim for 3-4 hours a week.
Create your presence on your chosen platform, and build your first paid campaign.
Test, track, and measure until it’s clear that you either need to improve your ad, change your approach, or move to another platform.
Repeat until you’ve got another reliable marketing stream bringing you leads.
And please let me know how it goes!
I actually do read and reply to every email 🙂
And if you are still relying on referrals to keep your business going, let’s get you out of that frying pan - fast!
Just hit reply and let me know what business you’re in, and I’ll hook you up with some resources to get your first campaign up and running.
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