What would you do if your one method of communicating with your prospects and clients dried up, overnight? How would you cope?
It’s a question a heck of a lot of businesses are asking right now given Facebook’s turning off the tap.
And it highlights a major danger and risk for any business or even community organisation who relies on what’s essentially a private behemoth (who has its own agenda) to maintain relationships with your people.
And while we’re seeing this with Facebook, let’s not forget Google and LinkedIn.
As Google giveth, Google can take away. And it does. Whole categories have been wiped out overnight because Google or Facebook or any other source like LinkedIn you rely on changed the rules.
There are two risks you must mitigate.
The first is how you attract leads. Just relying on one source is asking for trouble.
You must have multiple ways of getting your message in front of your target market. Yes, some will bring in the majority of sales, but spread your risk by cultivating the rest. You never know when you might suddenly need them.
Dig the well before you need the water.
And second, you must build up your own database of prospects and clients so you can communicate with them directly. Email, physical mail, SMS, your website. Something you can control.
To this end, a lot of the media being currently being removed from Facebook’s feed are now belatedly asking their readers to go directly to their sites.
So if you’re currently relying on any external party to provide your communication channels, I urge you to seriously consider how you can mitigate your risk.
Remember, always sleep with one eye open!
And finally, if you’d like our help setting up systems to acquire new clients and maintain relationships leading to more sales, give me a hoy.
We’ll work together to ensure you don’t get caught with your pants down! 🙂