When something is unfamiliar to you, you may easily be swayed by and believe in myths that surround it. Surprisingly, for an increasingly popular yet seemingly complex concept such as digital marketing, there are several myths lined up that await to be debunked.
Along with the growth of the internet, the past few decades have seen the exponential growth of digital marketing. True enough, a growing number of companies are shifting towards this digital trend in marketing products and services. Some of these businesses truly recognize the benefits of having digital marketing strategies in place, while others just seem to be riding the trend.
Despite these, however, there are still many business owners who hold back when it comes to availing digital marketing services whether it comes to consulting an SEO analyst or a digital marketer, or hiring a digital marketing company, because of fear of the unknown. They remain in the dark when it comes to what’s real and what’s not with respect to several aspects of digital marketing. As a result, they end up sticking to the traditional route.
But digital marketing is not rocket science – with enough knowledge and skill, any business can be successful at it. Are you one of those resisting the change? If any or all of these concepts sound completely foreign to you, here’s a quick look at some conceived myths and the corresponding truth about digital marketing:
Digital marketing plays a significant role when it comes to a company’s success.
Your company primarily relies on profits in order to thrive. And when it comes to income and revenue, numbers from sales are still the go-to yardstick for measuring how your business performs. But while tasks involving digital marketing remain incomparable to point of sale, it is actually part of what successful businesses have in common. This is because your business’ selling approach is still a product of your marketing plan. And these days, it’s all about going digital. So, whether you’re planning on B2B or B2C tactics, know that digital marketing plays a significant role in your sales process which translates to overall business success.
Digital marketing can only be afforded by big companies.
Nothing can be further from the truth! Marketing campaigns, hiring a reputable digital marketing agency, a link building company, or an SEO specialist, all these come may pop up in your mind when the word digital marketing is mentioned. And of course, the notion follows that the more hands you deploy, the more you have to spend. When it comes to digital marketing services, however, there are many affordable options to choose from as well as affordable (but effective) marketing tactics that you can employ. So, even if you are a small business owner or a newbie entrepreneur, you have many digital marketing techniques and options to choose from without having to break your budget.
Digital marketing is only concerned about the numbers.
You’ve probably heard about how massive digital marketing data and analytics information can be. Or perhaps you have first-hand encounters hearing marketers discuss performance as if it was all a numbers game. But digital marketing is more than just your total website traffic or your projected brand awareness and reach. It even goes beyond some of the pointless marketing metrics that preoccupy most marketers these days.
For example, while quantity in terms of website traffic says something about
your current campaign, digital marketing also concerns itself with how it
impacts your business’ target users. Simply put, digital marketing is not just about
counting your influx of site visitors. It is also about evaluating the kind of
consumers your brand and website attract.
Another important yet very applicable cliché: content is king. Typically, this is perceived as a form digital marketing tactic that prioritizes quantity (i.e. how many articles or posts your site releases daily), or length (i.e. article length based on the number of words). But the truth is, the phrase “content is king” emphasizes substance. This means there is value offered by your digital marketing content as shown by reliable facts, originality, and good sources or links.
Digital marketing is just about websites and automated emails.
And then there is the myth that puts forth a very limiting view about digital marketing. This paints you a picture of a digital marketing team whose tasks revolve around web creation and design, content generation, and email marketing. While all these do reflect digital marketing strategies, there is so much more that digital marketing can offer your business.
First off, digital marketing also involves SEO (What does SEO stand for? Search engine optimization). This means getting your website to land among the top results after a search engine query. And while this gives rise to another digital marketing myth (i.e. SEO is dead), the truth is SEO is not dead and will never die. For as long as there is a search engine that exists, there will always be SEO jobs, SEO digital marketing services devised to help make pages and websites rank their way up the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Second, digital marketing also extends to social media and engagement. If you haven’t heard of it, social media is rumored to be a marketing marvel. And a well-executed digital marketing plan deployed through your business’ social media arm sounds very promising. Because aside from providing a platform to widen your marketing reach, you can also use this to your consumer engagement advantage. Not to mention, digital marketing with the use of social media gives you a wide window to connect directly with your target audience – something you cannot easily do with traditional marketing practices.
Finally, the field of digital marketing also branches out to customer service. And these days, this is done on a whole new level. Many thanks to artificial intelligence (A.I.), supercharging your business with chatbots equates to performing customer service coupled tasks with real-time digital marketing tactics.
As technology advances, incorporating digital marketing into your overall business strategy will be inevitable. And as you familiarize yourself with this uncharted territory, you will come across many ideas, some of which pose to be absolute facts when in reality they are simply myths and misconceptions. While hands-on experience can greatly help you discern fact from fiction, debunking these myths through careful research and evaluation will always reap better rewards.