Do you remember when Facebook and Instagram went down a couple months back? Like many of our clients, I bet you do. When other companies were scrambling to find an answer to the outage, we were busy kicking our backup plan into high gear. Being able to plan ahead for unforeseen circumstances and actually leverage it to you and your client’s advantage during a make or break moment can set you apart from the crowd.
Always Be Prepared
You may have heard the saying, “Proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance,” this holds especially true in the business world. When your clients are facing a crisis and turn to you for help, your job is to provide a solution. If you don’t have a plan of action, it could cost you the client.
Adapt To The Situation
In the case of the social media outage we were able to provide a solution to our clients whose ads weren’t running on Facebook and Instagram. Our solution: switch platforms! During the outage we shifted our clients advertising spend to different platforms like Youtube, Google, LinkedIn and other advertisers.
By being prepared and having this process up our sleeve for a time of need, we were able to quickly tweak client messaging to match the new platforms, allowing clients to reach their desired audiences in a different place and not lose out on any potential customers that day.
Take Advantage Of The Opportunity
An unforeseen circumstance or technical hiccup can sometimes lead to an opportunity, if you recognize it quickly enough. When it comes to developing marketing strategies it can be easy for clients to fall into ruts and not realize what they’re missing out on. Once they see a steady return on their investment it can be scary for them to want to change or switch gears. In the case of the social media outage, being prepared with a Plan B presented an opportunity to us and our clients.
By moving clients onto alternative advertising platforms, we were able to showcase what a diversified marketing strategy could look like for them and how it could protect them from future events like the Facebook and Instagram outage. In many cases, this was something we had proposed but they had opted not to do. This outage opened a new door of possibilities to some of our clients that they had previously been closed off from.
Diversification Matters Because Technology Will Fail You
So, what’s the real takeaway here? Always be prepared. Have a contingency plan in place to deal with even minor setbacks. It’s not about being prepared for if technology fails us, it’s about being prepared for when technology fails us, because it will. And if you’re not ready – your client won’t be either. Being able to provide a solution to your client in their time of need is going to set you apart from the crowd. For more business tips tune into our podcast It’s Go time! or subscribe to our blog!