I want to share a story a friend told me that scared the living hell out of me…
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, he ran an ad account for a real estate business. It was doing very well. They were spending over $1000/day using Google Ads and the ROAS was +/- 5.
Meaning: for every $1 that was put in they were making $5 back!
That’s so good it should be illegal.
They were very pleased with themselves, like a footy team on the brink of victory, celebrating early, confident in their lead.
And like that team… they were about to be humbled badly.
One day they logged in and noticed their Google account was blocked and the ads were paused. Assuming this was a mistake. Some hiccup somewhere. They went on with their day, and didn't stress about it too much.
Few hours go by and it’s still blocked. So they decide to get in touch with customer service.
Turns out it’s impossible to talk to a human being. Even when you’re spending $30,000/month you’re still considered to be a small fish. So they send in a ticket and wait for a response.
Three days go by and they finally get an answer. Turns out their ad account got blocked because someone somewhere thought that the ads were ‘possibly misleading’.
Keep in mind, these were regular real estate ads. There’s nothing particularly weird or off putting about them. So they got embroiled into a ton of discussions and in the meantime there are ZERO leads coming in.
Why?
Because they got dependent on ONE source of leads. And that’s the dumbest possible thing you can ever do.
At first they blamed Google and Big Tech and a whole lot of other things.
Then it hit em.
It was ALL THEIR FAULT.
They failed miserably because they got too dependent on ONE source. One is the worst number in business.
One key staff person.
One source of leads.
One big client.
And what happens when you’re ONE is taken away? You’re dead in the water.
And that’s the nasty thing about business. Everything that CAN go wrong eventually DOES go wrong.
So they set out to fix this issue and vowed to never get in that position ever again.
So what did I learn from this horrific story…
“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”
This saying couldn’t be more applicable.
So, I make 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.
And it’s even worse if you ignore a specific ‘one’ because you’ve convinced yourself that “this one is different”.
Narrator voice: “this one wasn’t different.”
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.
Meta ads working? Awesome.
Let’s look at Youtube.
And Google.
And offline.
And direct mail.
And cold email.
And autoresponder marketing.
And affiliate marketing.
And referral marketing.
And anything else we can think of.
This is the only dependable way to become ‘Hard to Kill’ or ‘Hard to Cancel’.
Talk soon,
Adir