What is platform reliance?

In this post I am going to explain what platform reliance is and how you need to be careful about doing it.

In short platform reliance is when someone or business invests too much of what they do on a certain platform and need the platform to move forward.

I will be looking more specifically at getting work from a specific platform that you don’t have 100% control over (e.g. Facebook). This has stemmed from a few conversations I have had recently where people have expressed that it is an absolute necessity to be on Facebook because it gets them ‘all’ their work. These people have also considered getting rid of their website. So this post is about looking at it from the view of someone who wants businesses to grow and prosper.

The platform issues

There are many issues that I can see happening to those who rely on a specific platform. First is that they are going stumble on growing their business. ‘How so?’ you say, ‘they get most of their business from this platform?’ Well you are correct, but as they don’t have control of 100% of that site they must abide by the site’s rules. This doesn’t sound like a bad idea? Not at first but you have to follow a set layout to show off your business and what you do. You can get your branding over in images but does that go far enough? I don’t think it does. How can a user understand what separates you from anyone else when you all look the same? Some would argue that you can with messaging and proposition, which to some extent is true but too many people have similar messages in the same areas. Everyone says the difference is ‘them’ but how does a generic page help you get this message across?

‘Ok, that’s not an issue I’ll get some targeted ads and directly get in front of the people who want to see my business!’ - Great work! It is good to be proactive, target and reach out to an audience which is most likely to be interested in what you do. The small issue is you paid for it…but you have no control on the cost of the ad and know little about the many ads your target user is being bombarded with on the platform? How much is that engagement costing you? Over time the platform may increase the ads from your competition as more and more people are fighting to get their space on the turf.

Searchability of your brand is another factor to take in to account. Being on these platforms is great for linking you with the users on the platform but what about people who aren’t? Is it easy enough to go to a search engine and find you or related search terms of what you do? This platform reliance now seems to be discounting many, many other prospective clients.

The platform solution

It may seem that I’m saying that it is foolish to rely on a platform - I’m not, I’m just trying to make you aware of it’s limitations and how you could be hindering your business without even knowing it. You need to be mostly in the area that is getting you work and helping you make your living. But if you want to grow then dip your toes into other platforms.

The first platform to keep in mind, the one that you have total control on the look, feel, and messaging is YOUR website! If you’re one of those who doesn’t think your website generates enough work for you, have you ever thought about why that is? This can be answered by doing a few checks and searches online but may take time to implement. So you have to do some work? Well yes, but it can be done for free depending on your time and patience. You can perform a better job at marketing who you are with the power of your website than any other platform.

Now to really blow your mind if your one of the platform reliance people - Collect emails from these platforms and use your site to convert! Or even direct them to a landing page from another platform and use the power of your brand to seal the deal. (There are many other positives about linking up platforms but this post would be too long.)

By keeping your toes in other areas, keeping an eye on them, seeing what’s happening, you might see advantages to take. This can be in new features, better ads or their user base. It might cost you less on another platform to get in front of people you want. The user base of a platform changes over time. Some platforms are hot for 5 seconds, some pass the test of time. So it’s a great idea to see where and what people are doing. Platforms will try to outdo each other on features and continue evolving to keep the public on them and to attract new users, they may release something which will help you.

Try building up audience in different places, this goes back to ‘not everyone is on that platform’. Build and build everywhere! Have as much spread on the internet as possible. Make as much noise about who you are and what you do as you can. It’s difficult to get others to do this for you (you know what you do best) so take advantage of the ability that you can.

Sum up

I’m not saying don’t focus your time on the platforms which are currently working for you. I think if one is heavily bringing in the business then think about doing something like a 80/20 split. 80% focus on what is currently working and 20% on looking into new platforms and being on others.

Have a website to help support your branding and story. You have control here! SEO (search engine optimisation) is long game for most, so keep going. It’s great for linking up with other platforms.

Be where people are and places that can help you AND be vigilant about new features, ads, user bases. Do your research, things can change and if done right you can take advantage of this!

Keep up the good work everyone and if you need help, Kraken can do just that! Just get in touch to arrange a consultation (and if you’re local, maybe grab a coffee!).

When setting marketing goals it can be difficult to know where to start. You want it all! More customers, more traffic, better SEO, grow your email list and you want it all now. The issue is your budget doesn’t allow you to achieve all these goals at once, this is why having a goal will allow you to break down the strategy down into steps which you can achieve and by doing these steps, eventually you will reach your main goal.

Time VS Budget VS Investment

All marketing comes down to - How long does a task take? How much does it cost? How much are we willing to invest in time/money and when will we get an investment back? This means looking at short term and long term plans. Do you want a quick turn around on the marketing you are doing or are you looking at the longer plan and investing in future returns?

Short term

If you are looking to do shorter plans then PPC (pay per click) is most likely what you will be doing, but where? You now need to figure out where your target audience is and advertise there. Facebook is one of the best places to do this because the opportunities of delivering ads to targeted audiences is great. Ad words on search engines is also an effective mean as you can target specific terms that the user is looking for. So as long as you are relevant then it’s a great place to increase traffic to your site.

Long term

What if you don’t have the budget but are willing to put the time in to make future gains? Then you could do it by making content; getting a list of subjects and keywords you want to rank for and making relevant content for these. Guest blogging can also help with backlinks and pushing relevant traffic. Making improvements to your site so content is easier to scrape from bots and page load times are better (although this can be a short-term plan if you know what you are doing). Building an audience and using that audience for your business goals.

Investment

This is simply how much time and money are you willing to put in. If you have the budget but don’t want to spend a lot of time on your marketing then PPC will get you to where you want to be. If you have no budget but time is something you’re willing to invest in then looking at content creation and documentation will help you. If you have no budget and no time your marketing will be bad.

Setting Your Goal

So now understand about what you are willing to put in: Budget + Time = Investment

To start with you can now look at:

• Content marketing
• Social marketing
• Email marketing
• PPC

And see how far you are willing to dive into each area. Make sure you track how your marketing is performing to adjust and grow. With statistics, you can move forward in a more productive way.

It is important to remember that the goals can change and you should review your strategy and goals regularly.

Conclusion

All goals need to have a return. You need to figure out what investment you are willing to put in. From here it should help with which selection of marketing options to go down. If you are lucky enough that you have both a budget and time it’s important that you break down what you are doing efficiently. It may be worth focusing on certain areas and expand your marketing later.

Focus on areas of importance on what you are willing to invest.

Building good habits with your marketing will be the difference between success or failure.

Review your goals and strategies at regular intervals.

Go forth and prosper!!!!!

Achievable Steps - extra

When planning a strategy its very difficult to plan achievable steps if you don’t realise the implications of what is needed. This can be budget related or time related. Understanding how long tasks will take and the money which that task will cost is very important. Is the task going to cost more time than you are willing to give up? Is the cost of the effective reach too much?

You may want to take smaller steps to start with to help change your mindset towards the marketing you are doing and slowly build up how much you are doing. This also applies to the PPC side of your marketing.

In todays modern world we give names to everything. So we introduce “Content Marketing” a term that is pretty big in the marketing world right now. Which is marketing that focuses on using content to sell a product or service. This could be a video, blog, a social media post, etc. This shouldn’t be the only form of marketing you do but differently should be a part of your marketing/sales strategy.

With your content marketing you need to think it’s about a strategic marketing approach that is focused on you creating and distributing content (content needs to be valuable, relevant and consistent) to attract and retain your clearly defined audience. Using these to drive profitable consumer actions.

So rather than just pitching your service or product, you give content to prove that you can fix a potential customers issue and get them on board with problem solving that they believe you can offer.

So this happens in a cycle:

plan

Who are you trying to engage with and what content are you going to produce. Once you pick your content matter you need to think about what content type you will choose to get this matter across.

The different content types you can choose could be:

• White paper and ebooks
• Video
• Infographics
• Quizzes
• Guides
• Q&A
• Surveys
• Interviews
• Editorials
• Podcasts
• Blogs
• Live streams

What you pick will depend on the goals you set out for the content. Setting goals is super important as this will allow you to pick metrics to use trying to understand if the content marketing is a success or not.

publish

Make the content you have chosen. Once the content is made, deploy it to the chosen platform. This is important as by making content and getting it put there you have taken a step that a lot people don’t do and step one step closer to the spoils of content marketing.