Is Digital Marketing just a Buzzword?
It's as a catch cry or a buzzword has been around now for a few years, and it's still as popular as ever. Why? Is there a general belief out there that The Internet has made the job of marketing any different at all? If you are any marketer of note, to not include"digital" on your resume would be a big mistake. But digital is just a channel, just like radio, just like television. True, you do need specialist skills to be able to create a website fit for purpose or an email campaign that gets results, but what dictates the content of that site or email? The answer is good old-fashioned research, analysis, segmentation, branding, production, campaigning and channel management. Do any of these so called "digital experts" really understand just how much work needs to go into a Facebook update? I've lost count of the number of leads I have spoken to that "just want someone to do my social media" and that "don't need any marketing done". I have heard stories first hand from digital marketers that keep losing clients 3 or 4 months into a campaign because they simply don't demonstrate their value. Measuring click growth or follower trends doesn't measure dollars.
The first question out of any marketing person's mouth should be "What are your current sales for the products or services we will be representing?". Second should be "how much more could you handle?". Any conversation about digital marketing needs to be left until you are ready to start campaigning. We recently worked with a business whose products were lucky to get searched for globally more than twice a day - regardless of what keywords or phrases we developed. The products are fantastic, they look good, and everyone who experiences them have nothing but great things to say about them......but nobody knew about them. It took good old demand generation that included digital as part of the noise making exercise to kick those clicks up. There was a good two months worth of research and segmentation to be done before we started any creative work. Once we started targeting the segments we had defined - the clicks started coming in - none of them from search...but they'll come in time as the demand starts to grow. If you are looking for cheap marketing - save your money. You need to at least be spending between 5-10% of your turnover on marketing - and it needs to be spent wisely. That's where we can help.