The dangers of placing all of your eggs in the online marketing basket
Was your site affected by Godaddy’s hacking yesterday?
Fortunately, only a handful of our clients went down when Godaddy’s servers were attacked by someone living in their mother’s basement–er, Anonymous. Our website managed to stay up, which is strange because our domain is registered with GoDaddy, although it’s hosted with Hostgator. No complaints here though!
But as I watched people on Facebook argue about the security of Godaddy and the dangers of trusting this particular company, I was quickly reminded of the dangers business owners face simply by placing all of their financial eggs online!
Over the past 5 years, many lawyers have been told to cancel their yellow page ads, stop hosting seminars and quit sending print newsletters because the only thing that mattered in the future would be your web presence.
Of course SEO and social media matters tremendously, but it’s only ONE piece of the marketing puzzle! At any given day, your site could go offline. Google could change it’s algorithms and your site could fall out of the search results. Hackers could strike–or unscrupulous marketing and internet companies could hold your site hostage simply because you don’t want to work with them anymore.
That’s why as a local business owner, it’s critical for you to embrace other forms of marketing to ensure your income is continuously flowing in, even if one particular source runs dry.
Every quarter, you should be mailing a print newsletter. It’s a great way to communicate about upcoming events, important legal information and build deeper relationships with your clients and prospects.
You should be running ads in places where your ideal clients hang out. Contrary to popular belief, advertising per se is NOT dead. If you are creating ads the right way and driving to free events, books/reports or planning sessions, you’ll still see great results!
You should be nurturing relationships with your referral sources. We just gave all of our clients a sample email to send to their Financial Advisors as about an upcoming observance that would be great to tie into for marketing purposes. We want to keep the good will flowing and stay on top of our key advisor’s minds.
You should be actively searching for opportunities to present to groups or hosting speaking engagements of your own.
And, now that we are approaching the holidays, it’s a great idea to create holiday cards or purchase small gifts that can be sent to your clients and referral sources. A small gesture in the mail goes a LONG way!
Finally, when possible, your firm should be participating in local charities and fundraiser events to keep your name out there while giving back to your community.
These are just a few ways diversify your marketing so that you are not 100% tied to the internet. As much as I love the web and enjoy running a online company, I am keenly aware that what works today many not even be in existence tomorrow. Please keep that in mind too as you plan your marketing out for the remainder of the year.
Would you like to talk about how we can help you save time on your marketing and help you turn ideas into action? Simply schedule a time on my calendar for a no-strings virtual cup of coffee.