What the European Commission’s squabble with X can teach us about mitigating risk in marketing
Communication leaders the likes of X and Meta are notoriously unpredictable, holding accounts to standards and guidelines that range from extreme and explicit to confusingly ambiguous. And that’s before regional laws come into play.
Being at the mercy of these privately-held giants can leave users in hot water should they run afoul of such guidelines—guidelines that, famously, can be manipulated at the whims of the company’s leadership.
Most recently, the European Commission lost access to its X advertising control panel following accusations by the media giant of taking advantage of an exploit in X’s Ad Composer. This suspension came about following a €120 million fine imposed on the company by the European Commission for not adhering to privacy laws, and specifically was brought about in reference to a post by the Commission promoting said fine.
Why businesses should pay attention
The situation raises an interesting issues for businesses to consider: the potentially ruinous effects of putting all of your eggs in the same basket in the digital age.
The European Commission will soldier on without access to X advertising in their toolkit… but would your business be able to say the same?
Most businesses have a winning platform; the one where content performs the most easily and your audience stays engaged. Perhaps it’s your founder’s LinkedIn account or your company Instagram or, for that matter, a high-performing X account.
Really, it’s wherever you find yourself most frequently (and successfully) interacting with your audience.
Now, if you look at The European Commission’s X predicament, you’ll start to get a picture of why this approach can have some very serious implications for your business. One wrong step, and that audience you’d worked to hard to build could be gone in an instant.
What would happen if you lost your main channel tomorrow?
It’s an important question to ask yourself. A few more points to consider: where is your audience clustered now? And if you lost contact with them that way, would you have another means of staying in touch? If not, what would that mean for your visibility?
Despite the sheer volume of so many channels at our disposal in this day and age, many businesses find themselves confining their marketing efforts to one big one and a few little ones. What happens if the big one disappears? And if your audience was that easy to lose in the first place… were they ever really yours to begin with?
What at first seems to be an exaggerated thought experiment can quickly reveal a large gap in not only a company’s marketing strategy, but their overall risk mitigation.
So, the next question to ask yourself: do you own your audience?
If your customers are all in a long line on Instagram, that’s great for now, but they’re about as much as they are yours as they are your best competitor’s, and they’re as good as gone if the Meta rules against your account for any reason.
How do you own your audience?
Luckily, there are strategies that you can employ to ensure that your audience is being accounted for and protected from random extinction events.
Spread out your risk. Utilise other channels thoughtfully—which isn’t to say send the same post out on five accounts. You need to make sure that there are clear benefits to following your business across platforms; no rinsing and repeating, but expansion and added value on each platform your audience follows you on. If your newsletter is where they look for breaking industry news, your TikTok should be where they find short-form tips and tricks, and your LinkedIn should be where they stay aware of new services, tech, systems or products that your company is introducing.
Create an ecosystem of content. Dip in to new mediums and find creative ways to integrate them into your current content strategy. Try snippets on TikTok that point to long-form videos on YouTube. Start building a community on Instagram that’s connected to an email newsletter where people can stay apprised of daily, weekly, or monthly industry insights. Make sure that your audience feels that each platform offers unique value, but are frequently given good reason to cross the boundary of one to the other.
Optimise your CRM and data collection. While the likes of Medium or Substack may be tempting, you need to build a community that you are completely in control of. In this day and age, collecting your customers’ data (within acceptable and generally respectful privacy guidelines, of course) is how you stay on top of any potential issues across channels. This is how you own your audience and protect against any broader turmoil in the open waters.
Ultimately, it’s one of the key risk mitigation strategies you can employ when it comes to marketing and visibility.
Many eggs, many baskets
Now, all of this isn’t to say that you should leave your current audience to the wolves. That’s the beauty of this multi-channel, digital-first world: you can, and should, nurture your customers and prospective customers across mediums. This will allow you a high level of visibility, adaptability and resilience.
The key is to find balance and stay aware of the potential risks that can arise when relying too heavily on one. And most importantly? Have a core audience list that you can truly say that you own; they will be the backbone of your marketing strategy.