5 Big Reasons Why You Need to Expand Your Lead Generation Channels for Steady Business Growth

 

As you all know, I am a HUGE believer that anyone can start a business, now, using the power of social media. I mean, with Facebook you get an enormous audience with an almost eerie ability to target a highly specific customer. You’d be a fool to ignore its power and precision.

 

Some will argue that you can run a business entirely from a single social channel, and while this may be wholly possible for some, and definitely a smart start for bootstrapping startups, savvy businesses with an eye on massive growth will understand this: becoming overly reliant on one lead generation channel can be risky, and social media is only one delicious slice of the online presence pie. ????

Why Diversify?

Should a Business Have Multiple Channels for Lead Generation?

In a word: YES. Here are 5 big reasons why:

1. Avoid Dependence on One Channel

A classic problem among up-and-coming entrepreneurs today is the tendency for the social media platforms we use and love to abruptly change their algorithm, update policy, and test new features. This can be great – however – it can also result in an irreversible reduction in traffic or effectiveness of current social media campaigns.

 

When Facebook began reducing organic reach of business pages to spur ad buys and encourage interaction between peers, many small businesses felt the pinch. Organic reach from business profiles was decimated and the need to buy ads became vital.

 

This was a game changer for so many small, struggling businesses. The algorithm change resulted in a scramble to keep their brand alive by either allocating new budget for ads or revamping their entire marketing approach.

 

Another example, a friend was doing very well selling chatbot training to his facebook group, but he was a little too successful, and when the chatbot platform decided to launch their own training courses he was inexplicably booted from the entire platform – he had to make a switch with a quickness to keep his active community engaged.

 

Similarly, changes to the Instagram platform resulted in shadowbanned hashtags and AdWords has banned certain industries (like drug rehab) due to concerns over the quality. Neither platform was especially open about these changes and left consumers to figure it out when their traffic and clicks dropped suddenly.

 

And of course, we are all familiar with the recent GDPR ruling and its profound effects on email marketing tactics.

 

A company with healthy diversification would certainly take notice of these changes or sudden drops in traffic, but it wouldn’t cripple their business.

2. Cross-Platform Promotion

Your core audience is not in one central location. Make sure you reach them in all their frequented platforms but in a highly targeted manner.

 

While the percentage of adults using Facebook is enormous, the content you work so hard to produce for this one narrow vertical has immense value outside of it.  Don’t do all that work for nothing!

 

Use the content, ideas, and copy you create and repurpose it for multiple platforms. Craft the messaging specifically for that channels vibe and speak to your audience’s individual needs in order for your message to hit home.

 

Take the time to think about where your target audience is hanging out, what types of content get the most interaction, and how to effectively engage them.

3. It’s an SEO Metric

SEO stands for search engine optimization, or the technical process of optimizing your web presence so that you can be found, indexed, and shown to searchers that are looking up words and phrases associated to your niche.

 

While SEO is a complex and multi-layer cake, one of the major tenants is link building. Links are essentially a “vote” from one website to another that the content is quality. When a site has links from a wide spread of website categories, content, and audience types, it sends a signal to Google that your content is trusted widely by a varied crowd.

 

Once your trust factor is raised, the chance that Google will return your content to a user’s query raises significantly. So in short, varied marketing channels make Google trust you more and show you to more people.

4. Avoid Becoming Obsolete

You should always be preparing your business for future market fluctuations. By diversifying your marketing strategies early, you set yourself up to be able to pivot during times of change.

 

I’m sure we don’t need to hammer home the lessons from large companies who failed to adapt and innovate, but The Flexible Leadership Model illustrates how leaders must balance attention to people, processes, and innovation to keep their organization moving forward.

 

Adaption is listed as the most important metric when a company faces stiff competition or a risk of becoming obsolete due to industry changes. Sound familiar? I don’t know about you but my competition is stiff and industry changes have become almost fluid and constant in today’s accelerated tech environment.

 

Why did so many large brands find it so difficult to adapt to technology changes? In short – they weren’t very good at it. They didn’t have a process set up for innovation and the larger an organization becomes the harder it will be to implement new strategies and make change. So systemize it early! Create a process for dabbling in the new-new and split testing your results. You may be shocked at the results!

5. Avoid Boredom & Becoming Cursed by ‘Ad Blindness”

Finally, if you diversify your marketing strategy, you avoid becoming a route, boring, and predictable voice who falls victim to the ever-present marketing threat: ad blindness.

 

While traditionally referred to as banner blindness, the social media era has finely-tuned our collective bull**it meter. We as humans have the amazing ability to subconsciously detect and dismiss items that ring our “sales bell”. Serving up repetitious content is a great way to get put in that box.

 

To drive this point home, let’s talk about Facebook ads. There is an undeniable link between the “frequency” by which an ad is shown to a user and the “relevancy score”. The tipping point is debatable, but most agree that it lies between 2-3. Meaning once an ad is shown to an audience more than twice, its relevance to that audience drops significantly.

 

If the frequency is too high, the relevancy score drops. This sets off a chain reaction of a lower click-through rate, which results in a higher cost per click. Yikes, not ideal.

 

This Facebook example is a nice microcosm of the greater digital landscape. Apply this theory across all platforms – don’t over saturate one channel with the same or very similar content, or risk your relevance dropping like bricks.

 

Serve up variety! The spice of life! Offer videos, podcasts, and text/image content to your power channel. Revamp an existing piece of content to thrive in a new environment and reach a fresh audience, and diversify the way you generate leads to stay relevant long-term. As they say in business, diversify or die 😉

 

Want to get even more actionable advice and hacks? See HOW to implement a diversification of your marketing strategies in my free ebook! ——>