Getting Banned From Online Marketing Platforms [LNIM232]

The risk of getting banned from online marketing platforms and how to manage it. In this episode, I tell a story about my Facebook friend, Allison. It’s a cautionary tale for you and your business.

Show Notes

There are dangers in building your business on YouTube or on Facebook. If they decide that your business is inappropriate, or if they don’t like you anymore or you did something that they didn’t like, you are at risk of being shut down. It’s tough because you don’t have an email list so you don’t have any way to contact your customers directly. That’s why we always talk about building and having an email list that actually belongs to you.

You are also relying on the algorithm of these platforms to decide who sees your message so if the algorithm changes or you somehow get in trouble, you’re toast.

A person that I am familiar with on Facebook named Alison Melody posted that she got censored. She was using Kartra, an all-in-one customer relationship management software suite. Kartra identified the content (the healing power of food) that she mailed to her clients for her membership sites, sales funnels, online courses, etc., as unacceptable. They have disabled her Kartra mail – which was the heart of the program. All of her landing pages and everything are integrated to that.

They shut her down and was told that they were doing that because they needed to protect the integrity of the Kartra system to protect their email deliverability, and they were not able to allow her to mail unsubstantiated medical claims with regard to the things that she was selling online.

So what does this mean? The first thing is that you should understand the terms of service of every platform that you’re using. The second thing is that you should always operate under the assumption that what you are doing could be shut down whether you’re using a hosting platform or you’re using an all-in-one tool. Understand what you would do in the event that something dramatic happens.

In Allison’s case, she should immediately take her email list and move that to another email service provider. There are cases when accounts get locked and you might not be able to download your list so I definitely recommend that you have strategies for periodically capturing information such as sales copies, landing pages, email list and the like. Place it someplace safe, like on your backed up hard drive in your home or your office.

Again, the key takeaways from this are:

Actually read and understand the terms of service for the platforms that you’re using, particularly the ones that are business credit.
Have a backup and recovery plan (in corporate, we would call this a business continuity plan) for cases where your service is interrupted.

Links Mentioned In This Episode

Groove
Free Video Courses on How to Start Your Business Online
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