This article originally appeared on www.MDAndersenCPA.com
A mentor once told me that “the worst number in business is one.”
You don’t want to be dependent on “one” of anything in your business. If you’re dependent on one key employee, and he quits, you’re in trouble.
If you’re dependent on one key piece of equipment, and it fails, you’re hurting.
And the same concept is true in marketing. If you’re reliant on just one “method” of growing your business and it dries up, you’ve got a real problem on your hands.
I’ve seen this happen to friends of mine. I’m thinking of one in particular who built an entire business based around Google AdWords. He was doing very well until one day Google changed their ad policies and disallowed his advertisements. Literally, overnight, his leads dried up. And because that was the only source of his leads, the business died within a month.
A business that he built over nearly two years, killed overnight because he was completely reliant on one single source of leads.
Post-COVID, many business owners are experiencing this for themselves.
Many people have primarily built their business through face-to-face networking, but thanks to the pandemic, now find themselves stuck at home unable to network.
The critical lesson: you can’t be dependent on just one source or method of generating business.
In my own business, the goal is to never have any one source of leads responsible for more than 25% of our total leads. And ideally, I’d rather have nothing responsible for more than 15%, but we’re not there yet.
If 25% of our leads dried up overnight, don’t get me wrong, that would really hurt. But it’s something that we could recover from.
The good news is that there are many different viable marketing channels for your business. You just need to make the commitment to get serious about developing them. For example, I currently have clients that are experiencing success in a wide variety of marketing channels, including:
- Facebook ads
- LinkedIn ads
- Video marketing
- Email marketing
- Pay-Per-Click advertising
- Direct mail (sent to homes, not commercial buildings)
- SMS marketing
- Podcasts
- Virtual events & workshops
And that’s just a partial list off the top of my head.
Bottom-line: you need to have a diversified marketing system if you want to build a sustainable business. If you’re dependent on just one or two sources of new customers in order to grow your business, you’re vulnerable.
COVID-19 has made this lesson crystal-clear. Get serious about building a diversified marketing system for your business!
Danny Decker
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