Russians are learning the hard way that marketing must be diversified
Before you read this article, we want to make something clear. We acknowledge that the devastation of losing one’s income is nowhere near that of losing lives and homes, as many in the Ukraine are experiencing. This article is not meant to compare the two, whatsoever.
It’s a common pattern for many marketers and business owners. They find one marketing tactic that works and double down on that, ignoring others. Where’s the issue?
Ask anyone who depended on Facebook or Instagram ads for their traffic, leads, and sales come before February of 2021. Most of those folks saw their revenue and leads go off a cliff once Apple launched its iOS 14 update, which prompted its users to opt out of behavior tracking and data sharing with third parties. It meant that advertisers who used this data to better target their ads to users were cut off from this kind of data to find new leads and sales. It was a painful situation for those who were unprepared and depended on social media advertising.
Why bring this up now? Because of Russia. Russia has declared a ban on the use of Instagram and Facebook, calling these companies “extremist”.
This official ban has created a situation for Russian business owners who built their businesses around these platforms where suddenly, their income has been cut off.
This may be an extreme example, but it’s a great one that is happening in real life to real people. This is why businesses MUST diversify their marketing approaches.
“Today’s marketers and business owners simply can not have marketing tunnel vision.”
How can businesses start the process of diversifying their marketing?
We’ve got a few pieces of advice.
Look first at your “owned” channels. Where are the places you can communicate with your target audience that won’t disappear if Facebook or Instagram suddenly go down? These are your “owned” channels, and would include your website, your email list, your physical location if you have one. Organic social media content, YouTube channels, Podcasts, Facebook groups, Google My Business could also be considered “owned” with the big caveat that again, you don’t want to go all in on any one of them
If you are advertising within one channel (Google, Facebook, Instagram), start to identify other options for paid ads. This could be another social media platform, or a completely different medium. For example, we’ve had clients see 16:1 returns using LinkedIn campaigns this year. Sponsored content, Google Adwords and regular old banner advertising still work, too. Remember to keep your marketing funnel in mind as you do so, as some marketing tactics are better suited for some stages in the marketing funnel than others.
Establish a Test and Learn approach with a 60/20/20 approach. Keep 60% of your existing ad budget in the platform that’s working for you. Move 20% of your budget into increasing effort behind your “owned” channels. (We had a client who reallocated some of their budget from Facebook ads into organic content strategy and SEO, and they’ve seen a 260% increase in traffic due to organic content alone.) And move the last 20% into a new advertising channel or platform.
Before you make any of these moves, benchmark your current efforts. You’ll need to be clear on what was working and what your historical ROI was so that that you can make a clear comparison.
Consider getting some outside help. Talk to an agency or strategist that is fluent in multi-channel marketing campaigns as well as content marketing. Such experts tend to have a higher-level view of what works across all of the marketing industry, not just within one platform or tactic.
