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Chances are you’re on the Facebook bandwagon, transfering most of your budget into Mark Zuckerberg’s bank account.
This is great. I too spend a lot of money on Facebook ads, and it’s made me a lot of money in return. The problem is, a Facebook Armageddon is coming, and although it’s hard to say when, it will come.
When it does, it will literally bankrupt thousands of businesses overnight.
I don’t mean to scaremonger, but this has happened before and it will happen again in the future. Every time Google or Facebook (or any other platform) decide to alter their rules, it ruins people. It happened to my friend a few years ago, who was making $500,000 per month.
But then certain rules changed, and he could do nothing but watch as his ad accounts closed one by one, transforming his $500k per month businesses into a $50k per month one practically overnight.
The same happened to another friend of mine, whose $10 million per year agency went under, all because he relied on a single platform. This will happen to Facebook, and thousands of people will disappear as they are either priced out of the platform or have their accounts banned altogether.
There’s another way, and it’s something you can take action on today. Because although today’s big platform may change, the three types of traffic sources won’t:
- Paid Traffic
- Organic Traffic
- Partner Traffic
Inside of your business, you need to utilise all three of these so you don’t have to worry when Facebook Armageddon arrives. You can future proof your business today, and this is how…
1: Paid Traffic Sources
When it comes to paid traffic, most people pump most of their dollars into either Facebook or Google. This is fine, and like I said earlier, I do the same.
BUT… there are many alternatives, and the sooner you use them, the sooner you future proof your business. So instead of focussing only on Google and Facebook, consider the likes of: Twitter ads, Youtube ads, Podcast sponsorship, Outbrain advertising to name a few.
There’s an entire online universe out there for you, and there are sites and platforms perfect for you and your industry. It isn’t to say you shouldn’t advertise on Facebook or Google, because you should.
Just don’t discount all the other options because they aren’t as ‘cool’ as FB.
2: Organic Traffic
This used to be “the” way to grow your online business, but as online advertising grew more sophisticated, the idea of organically growing your brand became a lost art. It shouldn’t, because there are dozens of ways to organically drive traffic towards your business:
- Content marketing
- PR
- Podcasts
- SEO
- Youtube channels
- Blogs
- Index sites
- Forums / communities
There are many options relevant to you and your business, and although organic traffic can take longer to build (and often more time consuming) you shouldn’t forget it because advertising on Facebook is easier.
Once you build momentum here, it often works effortlessly in the background, exponentially growing at the same time.
3: Partner Traffic
Finally, there’s partner traffic, which again is fast becoming an afterthought in today’s ad-driven world. Part of this is because onliner marketers overwhelmed the internet with affiliates and Joint ventures a few years ago.
Everyone seemed to partner with everyone else, doing the same webinars again and again.
As such, partner traffic lost its way, but none of this means it’s irrelevant today.
The point of partner traffic is to partner with other people who share an audience with you. Whether you do this through a joint venture, affiliate arrangement, interview or whatever else, the point is you partner with other people who can introduce you to their audience so you can then build trust.
Sure, you can do this in an unethical way and do what everyone seemed to do a few years ago, or you could create value for their audience and think outside the box. The opportunities are endless here, and like organic traffic, once you build them they will often continue to work in the background and earn a return for you as you sleep.
No matter your business or what industry you are in, you need to utilise all three of these traffic sources. If you only use one, you’re highlighting a point of weakness within your business.
It only takes a few changes to break everything you have built overnight. Whether that’s Facebook changing the advertising game, Google updating their latest SEO algorithm, today’s big platform becoming the next Myspace, or online marketer ruining your hard work through unethical tactics…
So long as you focus on a single traffic source, you’re vulnerable.
I don’t say this to scare you, but I do mean to wake you up. You need to invest your time and money further, because a single platform is not enough. If you want to scale from 6-7 figures in this fast-paced competitive world, you need to become omnipresent and relevant.
Omnipresence doesn’t happen on one platform. It never did, and it never will.
