Mother Zucker! What Facebook Taught Us About Marketing This Week

Happy Friday, friend.?

?How are you? I hope that you had a better week than Facebook.?

Perhaps you heard? Facebook suffered a mass outage that left billions of users unable to access the platform for six hours. It?got only?minor?attention.?

A Facebook-free day doesn’t sound so terrible. It might have?forced?helped you get some work done or inspired you to spend more time outside instead of arguing with your conspiracy theory-loving Aunt Carol.?

Not?too?bad unless you are one of Facebook’s?10 million active advertisers?who rely on the site (and properties like Instagram and WhatsApp) to promote your services or communicate with customers, vendors, and the folks that enable business to take place.?

?Then, well, it was a tiny mess.

For many of us, the outage highlighted just how reliant on Facebook we’ve become--not just in our personal lives, but for conducting everyday business.?

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A Moment of (Hard) Truths

1. If it's not your site, it's not your audience. You don't own the people you pay to put ads in front of, nor the ones with whom you share content organically. You are renting their attention.
2. You can be kicked off a third-party platform at any time?without warning or a just cause. Your booting can be due to an outage, an algorithm change, an updated Terms of Service agreement, because the site said so, or entirely by accident.?

Renting eyeballs is profitable and terrific until the very moment it is not. Here's how you can protect your business.

Diversify Your Marketing Mix

Let's be honest -- if you own a business or market one, you probably advertise through Facebook. I mean, of course, you do. Facebook offers a massive, engaged audience with highly detailed and granular targeting options.?

The sky is not falling.?You do not need to stop advertising on Facebook or other third-party sites.?In fact, squeeze every valuable morsel from them that you can.?

Yet, this outage and the arrival of Q4 presents an excellent moment to examine your total marketing mix to determine if you are allocating too many resources to any one channel. Putting all your eggs in one basket--whatever that basket might be--is never a good idea.??

Instead, look to:?

• Build a strong brand.?

Be known for more than what you do. Differentiate. Add value. Having a strong brand makes you less reliant on outside sources because your customer isn't looking for a product or service?like yours. They are looking?for you.?Measure brand strength through KPIs like direct traffic, branded queries, share of voice, and high CTRs on content assets. Consider adding a public relations or influencer campaign to brand build and balance out more product- or service-focused messaging.?

• Build your home base.?

Your website. Your blog. Your newsletter. Your podcast.?These are vital (I'd say your MOST vital) marketing channels because they represent platforms you own and control. Invest in making them stronger and getting them to work better for you.

• ?How can you improve your website to better showcase your value to the end-user?
• ?What's a great content piece you can close out Q4 with and repurpose in a dozen different ways??

?HECK YEAH, put that content on TikTok. Advertise on Spotify. Be where your audience is, and then make sure that?content connects back to your home base?in some way.?

• ?Build your lists & ownable touchpoints.?

RSS was once the pre-eminent channel for owning eyeballs without requiring a website visit. Now we have email marketing and SMS and automation to serve as a direct line to our customers, but only if you actively collect this information. Build your lists--again, lists you will?own--to ensure you are not bound to someone else's traffic, terms of service, or data. Create your own connections so that if an unforeseen situation arises, you can pivot quickly.??

• ?Build a diverse paid strategy.?

This isn't about abandoning Facebook or paid advertising, as?both can be crucial to growth.?But be aware of what your paid mix looks like and seek opportunities to create more balance if it feels heavy in any one direction. You can use the data you have from Facebook to build well-targeted audiences on other platforms. Identify new platforms that may capture different, unexpected attention (we're big on native advertising). Use paid to strengthen organic and your home base.??

?A Final Hard Truth

??? Facebook doesn't care about you or your business.?

?The same is true for Google, Instagram, Twitter, Bing, TikTok, and any other site you want to throw into the mix.?

?Each has a business of its own to worry about-- one where?you?are the product. These sites can change how they work and the tools offered to you at the drop of a hat. The data you've relied on?can suddenly go away.

?Your job is to cement a presence stronger than that, so as the platforms change, your content and brand are findable all on their very own.??

?Build your brand.?Leverage the channels that work for you.??Stay open to new opportunities and ways to diversify. Build a business on land you own.?

?This week was not a "Facebook is canceled" moment, just a reminder that relying on any single channel is a recipe for disaster.?

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The Hero We Deserve???

There's no way I could end this without a shoutout to Albany Public Library. They used Facebook's blackout to drop?some knowledge and some shade?to the delight of the whole Internet.

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If you’re looking for an extra smile with your Friday coffee, click through and check out the entirety of this thread. Library Twitter is truly the best corner of Twitter and APL is never one to be outdone.

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