The Best Marketing Campaign is a Diverse One

The Newsy Neighbour Magazine

www.TheNewsyNeighbour.com

May Issue 115

Article Provided By: Kyle Penn

Get Your Name Out There – On All Platforms!

The idea of investing can be a nerve-wracking one, especially as a small business owner. You work hard for every dollar that you bring in, so it can be a little scary to consider parting with that money, even with the promise that a well-invested dollar will pay itself back, and then some. When you go to the bank and are looking to invest, the first bit of advice that anybody will give you is to diversify. You want your investments to be spread out over a number of different options and portfolios – that way, you’re not putting all your eggs into one basket, and you’ll be taking advantage of the strengths of multiple different industries and trends, rather than just relying on a singular large investment to hopefully pay off.

This knowledge holds just as true when you’re looking to invest in marketing for your business. A dollar spent on marketing can often result in a big return on investment for your business. Unfortunately, though, spending money on bad marketing will result in the same outcome as money poorly invested at the bank: you may as well be throwing it into the wind. So, how do you make sure that you’re spending your marketing budget in an intelligent, thoughtful manner? Start from the same place you would if you were investing in stocks, and lean towards diversity.

The whole point of marketing is to get your company’s name out to as many different people and places as possible. Discussions about content and branding aside, a successful marketing campaign is one that reaches as many potential clients and customers as possible. In the digital age that we live in, we often see small businesses relying entirely on free-to-play social media marketing to get the word out about their companies. While social media can be an incredibly potent marketing tool in the right hands, it’s important to keep in mind that it’s only a tool, and should never be your entire toolkit. Relying on Facebook as the only means of marketing for your business is like throwing all of your money at a single stock – there are better, more effective ways to go about doing things.

Not only is focusing solely on a platform like Facebook limiting the potential audience your brand could reach if you branched out to other mediums, but it also means that your advertising campaign will only be as successful as you have time to put into it. Just setting up a Facebook Page isn’t going to do anything to spread the word about your business – you have to invest time into engaging with other Pages, liking, commenting, posting viral content, and running ad sets and campaigns. On top of this, you’re subject to the whims of the programmers who maintain the social media platforms that your business is now relying on. As an example of what can happen when this sort of situation goes sideways, many Instagram business accounts have recently fallen prey to what’s referred to as “shadow banning.” Essentially, if an algorithm decides you’re recycling hashtags too often, or that your content somehow lacks originality, you’ll be shadow banned. Nothing changes on your end, and you don’t know that you’ve been banned, but none of your content shows up when people search for it – meaning that if you’re running your entire marketing campaign through Instagram (a platform that’s owned by Facebook, as it happens), you’re essentially dead in the water.

Now, I’m not looking to scare anyone from online advertising. As I mentioned, social media is a great marketing platform, especially when you’ve got someone knowledgeable in your corner helping you to navigate the oft-murky digital waters. What I am encouraging you to do is to think about diversifying your approach to marketing. When you’re setting up a marketing budget for your business, make sure to leave room for digital and traditional marketing. As useful as social media is for advertising, there’s still a lot to be said for print. How often do you see an ad for something online that you’re actually interested in, but then forgot what website you saw it on? Print has a very real advantage in that it’s a physical form of media. As such, people can really spend time absorbing the message of an advertisement – it doesn’t just swap out for another ad on a 5-second rotation. Further, potential customers can consult back with a print ad. They can cut it out, save it, reference it in the future – all impossibilities with digital advertisements.

Now, you might assume I’m a bit biased, being as how I write for a print publication, but I’m certainly not advocating that you spend your entire marketing budget on print advertisements either – you’d be missing out on all the great opportunities that digital ads present! What I am recommending is the same advice that any decent investment banker would give you: diversify.