Beware The Most Dangerous Number in Business

Have a look at this recent message that Amazon sent to its customers:

"From July 1, 2021, due to a change in French VAT rules, Amazon has been limiting orders above EUR 150, fulfilled directly by sellers for delivery to France, from a location outside of the European Union (EU).

How are sellers affected? Customers are not able to place orders above EUR 150 for delivery to France for items that you store outside of the EU. Amazon continues to facilitate all orders from inventory stored within the EU to customers located in France."

This ruling probably did not impact you but imagine that you’re a business in, for example the USA, and you’ve developed a product that’s very popular in France. And you’ve used Amazon as the main way to build your business. People in France order your product on Amazon, you ship it to them from the USA. You’re getting half your sales and customers from Amazon in France.

Except now you can’t. You woke up one day and were told that half your business is gone. Who is to blame for the chaos that follows? Is it Amazon, who are actually entitled to do what they want? Or is it the business owner who made the mistake of putting all their eggs in one basket?

The business owner in question would come to learn one of the most important business lessons of all — the most dangerous number in business is ONE.

ONE key source of customers. ONE distribution partner. ONE product. ONE key employee.

"Any business who has one main source of customers is incredibly vulnerable."

It’s a common misconception that businesses fail only because of economic problems — the customers stop, the sales stop etc.

But businesses can also fail because of a shock to the system. A perfectly good business that has its foundations removed through no fault of their own.

Of all the areas where the most dangerous number in business is one, the area where we see this play out most frequently is with Marketing.

Any business who has one main source of customers is incredibly vulnerable.

"One of the challenges of today’s Marketing world, where Google and Facebook are such powerful sources of new customers, is that we are increasingly dependent on one or two companies as a source of customers."

Until recently, thousands of Entrepreneurs had grown 7-figure businesses purely using Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). By manipulating the search engine results on Google they got their websites at or near the top of the search results and the money flowed in.

Until the day that Google changed its search algorithm and many of these business owners saw their site go from the top of page one to page 27.

If SEO was their only source of customers, that was the end of the business.

One of the challenges of today’s Marketing world, where Google and Facebook are such powerful sources of new customers, is that we are increasingly dependent on one or two companies as a source of customers.

It’s a frustrating but accurate reality of being an Entrepreneur that the more amazing the results we get from, for example, Google, the more customers they bring us, the more success we experience, the harder we have to work to NOT be dependent on that one source of customers.

Imagine being the owner of a computer repair store. You test Google Ads. They work. You scale up the campaigns. They’re so successful that you don’t need to use any other forms of Marketing. You can hardly cope with the number of customers that Google is bringing you. Why engage in any other forms of Marketing?

Because the most dangerous number in business is ONE.

Last year Google banned ads for computer repair stores. No more customers for our favourite local computer repair store who got all their sales from Google.

There are numerous similar examples from Facebook. If anything, Facebook is worse. They use algorithms to detect ads they don’t like and frequently turn off the ads, even the accounts of perfectly legitimate businesses.

There is only one solution to this.

You MUST use multiple Marketing methods to get customers.

You must get to the point as soon as possible where, if you lose one of your customers sources, you just shrug your shoulders and turn up one of the other sources. To protect your financial future, multiple sources of customers are an insurance policy as much as they are a profit strategy.

"Last year Google banned ads for computer repair stores. No more customers for our favourite local computer repair store who got all their sales from Google."

Given that Facebook and Google effectively own online marketing, it’s also important to incorporate some offline marketing into your customer acquisition.

So instead of being dependent on one or two sources of customers, what if you had 10. For example, Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Bing, Remarketing, Direct Mail, Referrals, Telesales and PR.

The good news? When you go from using one or 2 sources of customers to 10, you don’t just protect your business for the future. You’re putting everything you need in place to grow your business to stratospheric levels of success.

Call (+44) 330 097 2882