The recently mooted Google and Facebook legislation has created a cloud of uncertainty for business, with many investing heavily in Google AdWords and Facebook social ads.
This, in my view, has brought to light the lack of diversity in many business’ marketing strategies. In order to safeguard and build their business, I advise organisations to adopt hybrid marketing strategies moving forward.
This means spreading marketing spend across SEO, Google Ads, and social media advertising, rather than pouring it all into, say, Google Ads or Facebook advertising.
Putting all your eggs in one basket is risky in any venture. When it comes to marketing you need to diversify and adopt a hybrid strategy that protects your business while ensuring growth.
Tech really is changing faster than regulators can keep up with and a string of recent events has forced us to confront a truth we already knew: tech giants, the Zuckerbergs of this world, truly do call the shots when it comes to digital. Not our marketing teams, not our IT specialists and not the government.
It’s a clash of the titans and Australian businesses could be caught in the crossfire if they don’t take appropriate action to protect themselves. The recent and historic banning of news on Australian Facebook pages has left businesses small and large scrambling to deal with the sudden and unprecedented removal of content.
The event took place in the shadows of Google threatening to remove its search engine services from Australia and shortly followed by Apple now providing iOS 14 users with the option to essentially opt out of tech that removes the capabilities of targeted marketing on the iOS Facebook platform.
To take back control, businesses need to ensure their practice is based on a broad and sturdy foundation by adopting hybrid marketing strategies.
Hybrid marketing allows businesses to diversify and spread their investment across multiple channels in a way that best suits their objectives and needs. It’s not always just about return on investment.
Digital marketing agencies should be helping organisations understand what works for their business and there’s always somewhere to go after Facebook ads.
By investing time and finance into deciding which channels work best for their business, they can insure themselves against future snap crises like the Facebook one, which will keep happening. I figure one wouldn’t buy a house or car without insurance, so why run a business without it?
One of my clients Dean Elabbas, owner of 24 Hour Melbourne Plumbers, saw his leads increase by 413 per cent in three months after approaching me for hybrid marketing during COVID. Their marketing tactics just weren’t working – they were advertising on Facebook, spending money on print media and that was about it.
By designing a tailored, hybrid approach for customers like Dean, it meets the needs of their business and provides security in the event that one of those platforms or channels changes their rules, as we’re seeing pretty frequently lately.
The benefits of hybrid marketing are evident in the huge uptick of revenue. I would recommend, for any business spending money on marketing, researching new platforms to explore what they can do for your business.
Sometimes trying new strategies is the best way to know whether or not it will work for your business.
