The Importance of Creating a Marketing Plan with Diversity

Does putting all of your savings in a single stock seem like a good idea? Clearly not. Diversifying your investments is important to long term growth and the same goes for your marketing.

Case and point: Facebook & Instagram crashed for hours on Monday. Did your business stall?

If you answered yes, then we need to talk, my friend. It PAINS me to hear how a few hours without a social media platform has cut off business owners from their clients. And I can 100% assure you, you are NOT alone in that.

There are entire business and marketing strategies built around showcasing and selling products and services on Instagram. Entire businesses have been created to teach you how to do just that.

The Big Problem

While I am ALL FOR entrepreneurship and very much believe there is plenty of business out there for all of us, there is a huge fly in the ointment of those business plans.

They rely on an audience that someone else owns.

And that someone is none other than Mr. Mark Zuckerberg. You may have Followers or Likes but unless you have email addresses for each of those people, he owns the audience you have created, not you. Whether that is 500 or 500,000 people that totally sucks.

Kinda scary to think of someone else having control of a business YOU created and YOU put in the time/effort/money to build, right? I think so too.

The Good News

All is not lost?? Even if you got freaked out and felt a little lost and disconnected without Instagram and Facebook this week, I assure you that:

1. You are not alone

2. We can fix this starting today.

Step 1: Gather emails for every single person who follows you.

Look at their profiles and see what info you can grab. Share a post asking for emails straight out so you can get to know each other better and still be in touch should the platform fail again. Do your research and get that list together.

Step 2: Send an initial engagement email.

This should tell that list why they are hearing from you now (i.e. you want to take it offline and get more personal), what they can expect to get in emails going forward (i.e. not spam) AND include a link at the bottom for them to unsubscribe should the content not fit. No hard feelings!

Including each of these elements is important so they stick around. And if they choose to leave? All good! That’s one less unopened email dragging down your open rates. Win-win.

Step 3: Create an email marketing strategy.

Email lists are what you own. Your website is what you own. Use them to the fullest extent possible and you’ll have a sustainable business.

This does NOT mean you need to email every single second (i.e. more than twice in a week.) Please for the love of all that is good in this world, no spamming people??

What it DOES mean is getting directly into the inboxes of the people who are your people. The brand advocates, customers, referral partners, colleagues and prospective clients. Cut out the middleman, go straight to the source!

When it comes to email marketing you can do the direct approach (as I do) with sending emails when I have something to say and then not when I don’t. This means my list may hear from me twice in a week (as they will this week because there is a LOT going on they need to know) or they could hear from me just once in a month. But when I DO email, they open and that is what matters.

– OR –

You can take the newsletter approach. Weekly, biweekly, monthly or quarterly, the choice is yours. This video training goes through all the details of what each requires and how to do it.

Big Takeaway

Social media is for fun and brand awareness. Emails deliver sales. Just as you diversify your investments to avoid losing your shirt, you need to diversify your marketing strategy to avoid losing your business on the whim of someone else.