If you are just starting out with an online presence, then you will be well advised to start with Google Adwords to gauge the market and quickly decide how good your sales funnel is. Google Adwords is a reliable traffic source if you know how to work it. However, you’ll be doing yourself great harm if you stick with it alone (or any other traffic source for that matter). Here are reasons why diversification is key to your long term growth and success:
1. Sites Change Their Policies
There used to be a time when you could drive traffic straight from Google Adwords to a merchant’s page via your affiliate link. There was a time when you could drive traffic straight from Adwords to a squeeze page (In the original sense of the word — Just a sign up form). Those days now seem like centuries ago. However, Google changed their policies repeatedly and those things are NO longer possible. In fact, Google almost wants to tell you what you can or cannot sell on your site (Even the government isn’t that controlling). But, it’s their site that you want to buy traffic from and so they make the rules. While the rules for your traffic sources might suit you today, it is important that you understand that there’s NO guarantee that they WON’T change it before you wake up tomorrow.
2. Sites Lose Their Followership
How many people still log into their Myspace accounts? It used to be THE social site NOT too long ago. If all your marketing was focused on driving traffic from that site then you definitely went through a very rough patch when it lost followership. Some people are currently swearing by Google. They’ve NOT asked online marketing veterans about Altavista. I guess many people don’t know what that site is about. However, there was a time when it was THE search engine. What happened? Better sites emerged and they lost their audience.
3. Better Options Emerge
Yahoo was the search engine to beat at a time (Actually, a directory). They were so powerful at the time that the insisted that webmasters had to pay to be included in their index. Young, small Google issued a statement that they’ll never introduce the pay-for-inclusion model. Yahoo was NO longer the best option. People started moving over to Google. Now, to “Google” is generally accepted as a word that means to perform a search for something. Smart phones and portable devices are fast becoming the most used platforms for connecting to the internet. With their emergence come new options.
4. Return On Investment Can Become Unreasonable
When last were you able to find a buyer keyword (with reasonable traffic) that had a click price that was less than a dollar? It is becoming more and more difficult for many people to get a good return on their investment via this traffic model. Organic search traffic has turned to a very unpredictable battlefield where many people are growing gray hair wondering why Google keeps changing the rules so frequently. So even if you find yourself ranking highly for choice keywords today, don’t go to sleep. It takes only one update for all your rankings to disappear.
Bearing these in mind, it is important that you build a wide variety of traffic sources into your overall marketing strategy. Yes, you still have to start with one. But, if you are still on just one source after a year then you are NOT shielding your business from challenges that will be far beyond your control.
Here’s a few suggestions to try:
- Media buying
- Ad swaps
- Solo ads
- Thank You Page adverts
- Offline promotions
Try as many different traffic sources as possible and incorporate the effective ones into your overall marketing strategy. This will keep you safe and secure in the face of the ever-changing web.
