Digital marketing is a wonderful world to live in for those who live and breathe technology, the internet and follow the exciting and ever changing digital technologies. In the modern age, you simply cannot run a successful business if you’re not making use of various digital/internet marketing techniques. For example, imagine running an organisation without having a website? Unthinkable in the 21st century!
As with almost any concept or idea there are a many myths, misconceptions and irrational fears of digital marketing. We bring to you and debunk our top 5!
1) Digital Marketing is a luxury
Organisations may argue that a digital marketing department or plan is not a revenue generating platform and this thinking may be more prevalent in smaller businesses who possess limited funds. This could not be further from the truth. If we turn to the traditional purchasing cycle, once a consumer has recognized his or her need for a commodity, they research the product and perform comparison with similar products. An increasing number of people turn to online for this information gathering process, which involves looking at the content of a company’s website and social media pages. Adding to this, consumers turn to social media to glorify or gripe at a product, therefore this online/social visibility is important- you need to shout about yourselves to customers and hear what they’re shouting back at you! All in all, a sound digital marketing strategy compliments the sales/business development department in going out and reaching the right customers.
2) Social media is only for B2C businesses
An easy misconception to make is to assume that organisations that are solely in the B2C market will reap the rewards of their digital marketing efforts. When we think of B2B we think of large corporate organisations that are so high up in the sky that they’re impossible to reach. Behind all organisations are a group of people and though these people may not be on Facebook or Twitter for business purposes, they may catch a glimpse of your organisation and remember you!
3) It’s all about quantity
It is great to see increasing Twitter followers, Facebook fans and YouTube views, however, simply having a strong online presence in quantity terms is not enough. Of course, quantity does have an impact to an extent- it shows you are posting material and writing content that is relevant to acertain group people. The important question to ask is whether these online fans are the type a company desires? For example, you may run a competition and resultantly witness a spike in followers, who are not totally interested in what business has to offer and are only there in the hope to win this competition. This will leave a portion of passive followers who are not engaging with your business and skewing your social media figures. Another way to think about it is to present the analogy of a brick and mortar company where people walk in and out of the shop without buying anything.
4) We’re going online, we can forget about old techniques
There is absolutely no need to reinvent the wheel! The old techniques is the bed rock that will formulate your digital marketing plan. In layman’s terms you are converting and adapting traditional methods to seamlessly fit the digital shift. Digital and traditional do not need to be separate entities, rather you apply the knowledge you already possess whilst taking advantage of the time and money savings apparent in digital.
5) I cannot measure how my blogs and social posts increase number of transactions
This may have been the case to a certain extent in previous times but in the present day the wide availability of data and software that track and monitor data means a link can quite easily be established between transactions and digital marketing activities. Transactions are not necessarily monetary or sales related. An online company could put in place multiple transactional objectives concerning sales, newsletter sign ups, enquiries, quote requests and so forth-these are examples of transactions that can occur between a customer and business. Utilising tools such as Google Analytic enables one to see, for example, which landing pages are most visited the most from social media posts and subsequently any transactions that ensue as a result.
If you are an organisation that wants maximum exposure of their businesses through digital activities but are not sure where how to start, send us a message containing a short brief and we will get you up and running!
