What is the “albatros” around your marketing plan?

Many businesses put all of their eggs in one basket when it comes to marketing, often because of their relatively smaller budgets and constraints on manpower. This can put you in an extremely precarious position in the event that something goes wrong. No single marketing medium is more prone to this than search engine optimization, or SEO. This is because despite the amount of work that you or your marketing company puts into your campaign, many external factors can adversely effect on it. If a search engine’s algorithm (the formula that determines the importance of a particular web page) changes, your ranking can plummet. Likewise, if one of your competitors pours a ton of money and manpower into their SEO campaign, they can often take your position in the SERPs leaving you with nothing but memories of the business you used to get from your web site.

While there is no way to completely stop things like this from happening, you can minimize the effect they have on your business by diversifying your marketing plan. Instead of relying solely on search engines to deliver prospects to you, add a few additional channels, such as networking, print advertising or email marketing. In doing so, you’ll have a more stable business model, sleep better at night, and generally run a more profitable business.