What was that about the darn eggs and the basket?
I know what it feels like to constantly wonder if you will have enough customers tomorrow, or next week or next month. As entrepreneurs, it seems like the next disaster is always around the corner. So here’s a little story about my mistakes that I hope you can learn from.
After seeing great success with Google advertising for some time, my previous service business one day had its Google account banned because Google decided to change the rules on us. We had done nothing wrong, and it wasn’t just us – thousands of businesses like ours got hit the same day.
There were vague policies and an upcoming program you could potentially join to allow you to show certain ads, if you PERHAPS, MAYBE were good enough. And to find this program or anyone talking about it wasn’t an easy task. It was confusing as hell and in retrospect, I don’t think Google even wanted to make the program – it was so confusing, that even today I’m not sure it exists or even existed.
This episode had us scrambling for ideas to drive new business. We had put all our eggs in the Google basket and had no idea how to market ourselves. In fact, we sucked at it.
We literally had everything else going for us; the business model was great, customers were pouring through the door (when Google ads were up), and the average sales were beyond anyone else in our industry. It helped that we had Australia’s number 1 salesman on the team, as well.
There was only that one thing we couldn’t figure out: how do we market ourselves outside of Google ads? How do we justify spending money on flyers, print, TV or radio, when we can’t properly track conversions? It just seemed like an impossible problem for us.
We worried about how it would affect us in the coming months. Luckily, we were able to use our database of customers to our advantage.
By implementing new sales processes to get our existing customer base to come back for more AND to refer new business, we survived long enough to also implement a new digital marketing strategy. This time, our new strategy would not rely on just one successful source of incoming customers.
This is a story I see all the time, also in my new business. Focusing on one source to generate new leads is not a great strategy. Some clients will say, “Oh, but word-of-mouth is working just fine”. As is often the case with our clients, it works for a while… until it doesn’t. Diversification is a successful strategy in financial markets for a reason.
There is always a risk that a company (or in our case, a marketing channel) gets shut down, an algorithm gets changed, or something that has been working for years just stops working. For example, if in September this year (2020), your website isn’t ready for mobile-first indexing, you will likely fall hard in Google rankings as Google is changing their algorithms to favor mobile UX, page speed, and content.
So this is why I’m here (I found my why!). As an SEO and Advertising consultant, I am here to help you optimize what is already working, and help you get results where you’re seeing less success. I think you know exactly what I’m talking about…
I’m here to help you diversify your marketing efforts so you don’t have to worry about one of your marketing channels changing on you. I am here to help you stop spending money on ads that don’t work. I am here to make sure that you are making money on your current and future customers.
I am are here to get you more customers. Period.