Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, I ran an ad account for an ecommerce store. It was doing okay. We were spending a little over $20/day using Google AdWords and the ROAS was +/- 3.
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Meaning: for every $1 that was put in we were making $3 back!
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(I know it's not some impressive numbers but it was one of my first clients)
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So I was very pleased with myself. Like Icarus, I was flying high, enjoying my greatness, basking in the glow of my achievements.
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And like Icarus… I was about to be humbled badly.
The Worst Business Mistake
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One day I log in and I notice my Google account is blocked and the ads are paused. I assumed there had been a mistake. Some hiccup somewhere. Went for lunch, didn’t stress about it too much.
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Few hours go by and it’s still blocked. So I get in touch with customer service.
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I sent in my problem and… Waited.
And kept waiting.
Three days go by and I finally get an answer. Turns out my ad account got blocked because someone somewhere thought that the ads were ‘possibly misleading’.
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Keep in mind, these are regular e-com ads. There’s nothing particularly weird or off putting about them. So I get embroiled into a ton of discussions and in the meantime there are ZERO leads coming in.
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Why?
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Because I got dependent on ONE source of leads. And that’s the dumbest possible thing you can ever do.
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The Worst Number In Business
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At first I blamed Google and their systems and a whole lot of other things.
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Then it hit me.
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This was ALL MY FAULT.
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I failed miserably because I got too dependent on ONE source. One is the worst number in business.
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One key staff person.
One source of leads.
One big client.
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And what happens when you’re ONE is taken away? You’re dead.
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And that’s the nasty thing about business. Everything that CAN go wrong eventually DOES go wrong.
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So I set out to fix this issue and vowed to never get in that position ever again.
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Making Your Marketing Hard To Kill
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I made it a point to spot the “ones” in my business. Because every ‘one’ is an attack vector. A vulnerability waiting to be exploited. Ticking time bombs. You get the picture.
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And it’s even worse if you ignore a specific ‘one’ because you’ve convinced yourself that “this one is different”.
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Spoiler alert: “this one wasn’t different.”
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When it comes to marketing this means we’re always looking to get an ad to work… and then we branch it out across many different platforms.
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Meta ads working? Awesome.
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Let’s look at Youtube.
And Google.
And direct mail.
And cold email.
And autoresponder marketing.
And affiliate marketing.
And referral marketing.
And anything else we can think of.
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This is the only dependable way to become ‘Hard to Kill’ or ‘Hard to Cancel’.
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Talk soon,
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Mikkel