At October’s Pubcon — the premier social media and search engine optimisation conference — event in Las Vegas, I came across companies and entrepreneurs who had lost over 70 per cent of revenues and were close to going out of business, or worse, had already gone out.

Why? The simple reason was that they had invested all their online marketing into a single channel and platform. It’s a bad investment strategy.

The ‘best advice’ that many independent financial advisers offer is to diversify your portfolio across a range of asset classes such as property, commodities, cash, bonds and equities. The same reasoning can be applied when investing in online marketing.

The value of an online channel can rise and fall and it is better not to be caught — and caught out — if one investment lets you down. So, identify your risk profile and spread the risk accordingly.

In online marketing investment terms, Google is the super commodity, the secure bond, the ‘safe as houses’ investment. But is it? And can you rely on it exclusively and put all your online marketing eggs in their basket?

In October 2013, Google launched Penguin 2.0. This new search algorithm change affected around 1 per cent of all websites — a small percentage of an extremely large pie, so a very big number. The new algorithm penalised websites that seemed to have ‘spammy’ back links pointing to the website and so challenged Google’s objective of ranking high quality websites (those with a high number of quality links, indicating popularity and usefulness) accurately.

Following the introduction of Penguin 2.0, websites that may previously have been ranking at the very top of search engine results pages (SERPs) were suddenly nowhere to be found, often on page 50 or lower. Collectively, websites that are visible on the first page of Google’s SERP generally receive about 54 per cent of clicks for a particular search term (source: Moz.com). So, the impact on these websites and businesses was a sudden, huge loss of revenues and potential closure of the business.

Were they unlucky? Maybe. When investing in online marketing, what is the best independent advice? Like any investment, spread the risk and increase your protection.

Online marketing should be based on a diversified and multichannel approach. Clearly, Google holds the key to success for many businesses online, but let’s not forget that there are other options.

These include using relevant social media platforms specific to each business. Millions of people within a business’ target audience may be on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+ and Pinterest. Many of these platforms offer businesses the opportunity to publish content as well as highly-targeted ads to reach their audience.

Creating and executing a content marketing strategy can help a business and key personnel build a loyal audience and help position it as a highly respected thought leader within the industry. This content can be produced in the form of text articles, images, infographics, videos and podcasts with each having its own distribution channels. The content can also help support social media activity and have a big impact on search engine optimisation.

Using customer databases and email lists offers a fantastic opportunity to reach both new and existing customers and feeding them with information on new products, opportunities and general areas of interest. These lists can be used not only for traditional email marketing, but also on social media platforms that allow you to use the platform to speak to your customers.

While the largest use of PPC (pay per click campaigns) is through Google, it’s still vital to make sure that you have visibility when potential customers are searching for your type of business or a service that you provide. Google’s display network also offers great opportunities for businesses to gain visibility in the form of advertising banners that can be easily broadcast to millions of websites almost instantly.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Bing also provide PPC opportunities that can deliver excellent return on investment.

Such options will help spread the risk of investing into online marketing and protect against future risks such as algorithm updates, while still providing a predictable and reliable source of new business leads and revenue opportunities.

— The writer is CEO of Dubai-based Nexa, an integrated digital marketing agency.