Digital Marketing: What Is It, and What Isn’t It?

With the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020 Ravaging the Economy, Thousands of Small to Medium-sized Businesses Have Lowered the Lifeboat of Digital Marketing, Most for the Very First Time.

And, sadly for most, that boat will sink, too.

As a career digital marketer with years of experience in this field, I’ve seen my fair share of clients and have worked with businesses across many verticals: automotive, beauty, software, medical, home decor, education, first-time Shopifiers, and more.

And there’s a common mindset that just about each and every one, with few exceptions, has had thus far:

“Digital marketing is all I need to get more customers.”

Not only is that wrong, it’s even more debilitating to your business than any global pandemic could ever be.

Before we talk about why, let’s talk about the two major categories of digital marketing: paid and organic.

Paid Digital Marketing Is a Luxury.

Paid digital marketing refers to any digital marketing efforts that require a monetary investment of some sort, either short term or long term.

For example, you’ve probably heard about Google and Facebook ads in your internet travels. These methods of digital marketing require the user to pay for exposure on these platforms.

If you wanted to create and run advertisements on Google for, say, a month, you would have to tell Google how much money you want to spend on those advertisements within that time period. How much you decide to spend directly reflects how much exposure you’ll get. The same applies to Facebook advertising.

A lot of business owners think they can write a couple of ads, throw some money into a campaign (mostly a very small amount), and begin immediately generating traction.

Then, thirty days later, they’re confused when they see that either nothing has happened or what they thought would happen didn’t.

This is the type of business owner who then proceeds to throw everything out the window and give up.

The critical error in this behavior is the assumption that a month’s worth of advertising on Google will solve your client acquisition problems.

Would a month’s worth of working out solve all your weight-loss problems?

Would a month’s worth of guitar lessons make you the next Jimi Hendrix?

Would a month’s worth of business classes make you the next Mark Cuban?

See my point?

Organic Digital Marketing Is a Necessity.

Organic digital marketing is the type of marketing that no one wants to do: write monthly blog posts, join Facebook groups, post daily on Twitter, conduct hashtag research, consistently survey the digital landscape of the market you’re in, keep up with competitors, conduct SEO audits of your website, and the list goes on, and on, and on.

Moreover, this is the type of digital marketing that business owners pay someone else to do thinking that a month’s worth of the tasks listed above will immediately start generating positive ROI.

This is just not the case. Organic digital marketing is some of the most important marketing that you can do for your business in this information age that we live in.

The catch? It’s laborious, time-consuming, and long-term, but can do wonders for ROI if you stick with it.

Digital marketing in all its forms is an investment.

With that said, let’s talk about what digital marketing really entails.

Digital Marketing Does Not Replace Sales.

Historically, marketing and sales work together to create the ultimate client acquisition machine.

The marketing team brings the right people in, the sales team turns them into customers. If you end up turning 3% to 5% of your monthly leads into customers, you’re on the right track.

Entrusting 100% of your client acquisition efforts to digital marketing will never bring you positive ROI. You need to be consistently following up with cold leads and consistently closing hot ones, and whoever does this needs to know how to sell, not just how to explain to people the value they offer.

Sales is one of those necessary evils in the business world that some people love and most people hate. It’s a lot like politics: Without it, we wouldn’t make it as a civilized society.

Without a well-rounded sales effort, your business won’t make it, either.

Digital Marketing Requires Loss before It Produces Gain.

Put this one in your “Hard Pills to Swallow” bottle.

In the beginning, at the very onset of your digital marketing efforts no matter who it’s with, you’re going to lose more money than you’ll make, most especially if you’re hiring someone to do your digital marketing for you.

Why? The answer is simple: Digital marketing is a process that starts with & thrives on tests.

These tests aren’t necessarily designed to be positive ROI-churning machines; rather, they’re designed to discover what the best, most cost-effective way is to get you more customers.

Due to the inherent nature of PPC advertising especially, running these tests costs time and money. As a result, you shouldn’t expect to see any major type of return until you’re a couple of months into the process.

Whoever you’ve hired to handle your digital marketing should know this and should be actively communicating with you throughout this process, setting the right expectations and keeping you informed on how your money is being spent.

Digital Marketing Is Not a Silver Bullet Solution.

As I mentioned before, digital marketing by itself will not solve your client acquisition problems.

More often than not, having great digital marketing will actually expose the real problems your business needs to address.

If you run a service business and if your digital marketing is generating consistent, qualified leads at an average or below-average cost per lead but none are turning into customers, you need to be taking a look at your sales effort, what you say to leads over the phone, how you follow up with your leads, what you’re offering your leads to get them to take the next step, and the list goes on.

Bad digital marketing will take the focus away from what you really need to be working on because you’ll fall into the trap of believing that your bad digital marketing is the problem.

Nine times out of ten, it’s not. It’s usually a much larger problem.

This Is the Time to Examine Your Product, Not Your Marketing Efforts.

The most successful businesses in the world do not rely on marketing.

Everyone at some stage in the game has to start with some sort of marketing to boost awareness and get the word out.

But with how the Coronavirus Pandemic is shaping and evolving the world of digital business, now is the perfect time to be taking a good, hard look at your product and how it’s stacking up against the competition without the aid of digital marketing.

Doing that is how your business will survive in the years to come. If you have to rely on digital marketing completely to get you customers, you’ll never scale.

The problem with digital marketing is that there are no rules. There’s no absolute truth, no handbook, no guidelines, nothing at all. Just experience & proof.

So if you’re ready to start working with a lead generation agency that not only has that proof and experience but that knows how to generate consistent, qualified leads for your business each month the right way, contact us and let’s get started.