Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, I ran an ad account for a real estate business. It was doing very well. We were spending over $1000/day using Google Ads and the ROAS was +/- 5.
Meaning: for every $1 that was put in we were making $5 back!
That’s so good it should be illegal.
I was very pleased with myself. Like Icarus, I was flying high, enjoying my greatness, basking in the glow of my achievements.
And like Icarus… I was about to be humbled badly.
The worst business mistake
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.
Few hours go by and it’s still blocked. So I get in touch with customer service.
Turns out it’s impossible to talk to a human being. Even if you spend $30,000/month you’re still considered to be a small fish. So I send in ticket after ticket.
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 ‘possible misleading’.
Keep in mind, these are regular real estate ads. There’s nothing particularly weird or offputting about them. So I get embroiled into a ton of discussions and in the meantime there are ZERO leads coming in.
Why?
Because I got dependant on ONE source of leads. And that’s the dumbest possible thing you can ever do.
The worst number in business
At first I blamed Google and Big Tech and a whole lot of other things.
Then it hit me.
This was ALL MY FAULT.
I failed miserably because I 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 I set out to fix this issue and vowed to never get in that position ever again.
Making your marketing hard to kill
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,
Sven
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