This week Google made some major changes which have had a monumental effect on a large amount of Internet marketers. I’m not going to talk about those changes here, but I do want to take the opportunity to talk about diversity.

Diversity is a term thrown around many areas of expertise – really it just means having a relatively even spread of different types of whatever element you are referring to. Diversity in marketing means to have a spread of a number of different marketing channels – but more importantly to see that your lead generation is spread out over all those channels.

The Internet marketers who were hurt this week were only the ones who focused too much on one method – even if they practiced a diverse set of marketing methods, there was a crutch. That crutch was taken away and they fell on their face.

So you need to make sure that you won’t be falling on your face.

Property management marketing is about lead generation. Focusing on residential (as an example) you create your marketing to draw in prospective tenants. So diversification for property management marketing is really about diversifying tenant lead generation. So how can you diversify? More important than how diverse your approach is, how diverse is your lead generation?

There are certainly a wide range of ways you can go about marketing your properties: Signs, billboards, fliers, radio, tv, in person, mail, email, direct internet marketing, website, seo, paid search, Facebook, twitter. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Remember I said the most important thing is diversifying your lead generation. If you have an excellent online based management business then you probably have several lead generation tools that you use regularly – your website, facebook, twitter, email. These can be very powerful tools. You may also indeed use offline lead generation tools as well. I ask you though, if you think you have a diverse marketing strategy, where are your leads coming from?

If you look at this and find (hypothetical) that 40% of your leads are from Facebook (leading to your website), 40% of your leads are from your website (via SEO or email practices) with 20% from offline sources – what happens if something changes which causes your website to no longer be effective? Are you prepared to lose 80% of your lead generation?

This month brings a not insignificant change to Facebook Pages which has some people in an uproar. The Facebook Timeline (which I personally find fabulous for interactivity) changed the way people will be using Facebook Pages – one of the most critical changes is that you can’t force people to a landing page in your Facebook page (if you have ever tried to visit a Facebook Page for a business and found yourself looking at a ‘like us for access’ then that’s a landing page).

The actual effect of that change wasn’t too dramatic (although I think the new timeline pages will prove to be more interactive so in the long run it will probably be positive change) – but my point is that change can happen out of your control, and have an effect on your business.

In a world where change can happen at the flick of a switch, if you rely too much on one element and that element is taken away from you – your entire business can be sunk in the blink of an eye.

So do yourself a favor – go look at your lead generation practices and figure out where your customers are coming from. If you have lopsided lead generation, you should strongly consider implementing better or different strategies in other areas of your marketing – you don’t want to fall on your face.