It has been a volatile time for Twitter of late. With a new leader in Elon Musk, staff layoffs, and feature changes, this is a time of adjustments and new decisions. Whether or not you are actually using this platform for marketing, there is a lesson to be learned here for every small business. Those who examine it may set themselves up better for the future, so let’s examine it today.
Any third-party marketing platform, tool, publication, or event you are using could stop working for you.
Any third-party marketing platform, tool, publication, or event you are using could stop working for you. #marketing #business #smallbusiness #smallbiz #biztips #smb Share on XSit with this idea for a moment. Other companies are another company’s business. Another business can:
- Go out of business
- Be bought by another business
- Acquire or merge with another business
- Change their terms and conditions
- Change their mission or core values
- Change their business model
- Say or do something that makes you not want to be connected to them anymore
Even if the company makes no changes, the market may shift, the target market may move, and you could find that a tactical marketing approach that was working well for you in the past may start to take a downturn.
The business landscape is changing more quickly than ever, and businesses that are marketing in a way that is responsive to these changes are much more likely to survive and flourish. Twitter is just one of many cautionary tales.
Whether and how Twitter rides this storm may or may not specifically impact your business, but chances are that at some point you will see instability from some marketing platform, tool, publication, or event you are using. As business marketers, our first job is to notice the downturns. In what way are you evaluating whether your marketing methods are working as well, better, or worse than they were in the past? Some marketing approaches give you numerical ways to track ROI, some do not. Is there a way for you to evaluate the things you are doing, especially those that don’t give you obvious analytics to measure? Very often, downturns happen over time, and it is our responsibility to see it and decide what to do about it. For more on this, read here!
When you look at the most effective ways you have right now to market your business or generate brand awareness, which of those methods leave you at the mercy of another company? My suggestion is not to get rid of all of them, but to diversify as needed. Within the bandwidth you have to market, how can you make sure that your eggs aren’t all in one basket? Good marketing isn’t about going to the extremes of spreading yourself too thin trying to market in too many places or putting all of your energy into one source. It is about finding a balance.
Your marketing plan could include a variety of approaches, such as events, partnerships, lead generation tools, social media platforms, publications, advertising outlets, and more. If an important marketing method starts to decline for you, it will be a lot easier to cope with if you aren’t fully reliant on that one method to sustain your business. Businesses that have planned ahead will be in a better position to spot the downturn, ramp down or modify their efforts in the area they are seeing less return, and ramp up the other tools that are working more effectively.
Also, the potential for any third-party marketing tool to fail makes it all the more important that you have a means of gathering direct contact information for your leads. The earlier in your marketing strategy that you can gather emails, phone numbers, or mailing addresses, the more easily you will be able to incorporate direct outreach to your list. Having contact information will also enable you to do a blast to your whole list if anything major changes for you. If you are looking to build your list, check out this blog about lead magnets!
Not every small business will be impacted by the current journey that Twitter is undergoing, but let this inspire you to think about what would happen to your business if a tool you are using became uncertain. Plan for it now and you won’t suffer later.