The recently mooted Google and Facebook legislation has created a cloud of uncertainty for business, with many investing heavily in Google AdWords and Facebook social ads.

It has brought to light the lack of diversity in many business’ marketing strategies and digital marketing agency Xugar chief executive Sagar Sethi is suggesting organisations need to adopt hybrid strategies to safeguard and build their business: “Putting all your eggs in one basket is risky in any venture. When it comes to marketing you need to diversify and adopt a hybrid strategy that protects your business while ensuring growth.”

Tech is changing faster than regulators can keep up with and a string of recent events has forced us to confront a truth we already knew: tech giants, the Zuckerbergs of this world, truly do call the shots when it comes to digital. Not our marketing teams, not our IT specialists and not the government.

“It’s a clash of the titans and Australian businesses could be caught in the crossfire if they don’t take appropriate action to protect themselves,” Sagar says.

The historic banning of news on Australian Facebook pages left businesses scrambling to deal with the sudden and unprecedented removal of content.

The event took place in the shadows of Google threatening to remove its search engine services from Australia and shortly followed by Apple now providing iOS 14 users with the option to essentially opt out of tech that removes the capabilities of targeted marketing on the iOS Facebook platform.

“Businesses need to take back control and ensure their business is based on a broad and sturdy foundation by adopting hybrid marketing practice,” Sagar advises.

“Hybrid marketing allows businesses to diversify and spread their investment across multiple channels in a way that best suits their objectives and needs – it’s not always just about ROI. There’s always somewhere to go after Facebook ads. Digital marketing agencies should be helping organisations understand what works for their business.”

He adds that by investing time and finance into deciding which channels work best for their business, they can insure themselves against future snap crises like the Facebook one, which will keep happening.

“You wouldn’t buy a house or car without insurance, so why run a business without it?”

24 Hour Melbourne Plumbers owner Dean Elabbas has adopted hybrid marketing during COVID and saw leads increase by 413% in three months.

“Our marketing tactics just weren’t working. We were advertising on Facebook, spending money on print media and that was about it,” he says.

“When we hired Xugar to help with digital marketing, they suggested we adopt a hybrid approach to cover more bases. This meant spreading our spend across SEO, GoogleAds and social media advertising.

“Having a tailored, hybrid approach meets the needs of our business and provides security in the event that one of those platforms or channels changes their rules – like we’re seeing pretty frequently lately. The added benefits are evident in the huge uptick of customers.”