Why People Dismiss Digital Marketing, and Why They Shouldn’t
We have talked to a lot of companies about the benefits of digital marketing and good web design over the years, and most of the reasons we’ve heard as to why companies don’t want to invest in it hinge on fear. There are many companies that have attempted to create their own Google Adwords campaigns for their Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategy and failed. However, most of them aren’t using it correctly. Just because you can’t dribble basketball well, doesn’t mean that there’s a design flaw in your basketball. And the reason they are not using it correctly is generally because they aren’t fully committed to it.
It is true that you need to use digital marketing because otherwise your competitors will get ahead of you. Yet how we speak and behave when we’re going through the motions of caring is vastly different from how we speak and behave when we care from the bottom of our hearts. So if you simply follow what your competitors do but your intent is not to allocate sufficient resources as compared to your other offline marketing campaigns, you will never reap the full benefits. It is like a competitive swimmer who hangs around the edge of the pool for a month, carefully dipping your toes and analyzing the water, and who then complains that his swim times aren’t improving.
It is like a competitive swimmer who hangs around the edge of the pool for a month, carefully dipping your toes and analyzing the water, and who then complains that his swim times aren’t improving.
Overall, there are 4 common excuses we have heard companies use again and again to justify their refusal to fully commit to and invest in digital marketing and we want to dissect them all. We hope this article will provide fresh talking points and facts you can use when presenting this issue to the heads of your company or department.
1. “We are not ready for digital marketing yet.”
If you are not ready for digital marketing, you are not ready for the future. The wait-and-see approach, the one most companies have used while considering when to invest in traditional platforms, won’t work for digital platforms. The digital marketing space is already starting to get a lot of noise. The longer you hesitate to build an online presence, the more you will struggle to make it work for you. The cost of an exceptional good UX and web design is getting more and more expensive. Likewise for Google Adwords. If you get into the game earlier, you will be spending less for more outreach.
You can catch up with your best competitors in your industry only if you get ahead of them early.
2. “Digital marketing is just another trend that will pass.”
One reason why companies may be slow to accept digital marketing is that for all the talk about how fast the business world is always changing and how speed is of the essence, platforms have been changing from time to time. In the past, newspapers and magazines have been getting our attention through their headlines and alluring pictures. Then radio was introduced and gave companies a new platform to experiment with. Around 2 decades later, TV was invented and then companies start doing commercials (video advertisements). Eventually, as you would have guessed, internet comes along and marks the beginning of digital marketing.
Given how advertising platforms are always changing, it is no surprise that most companies are skeptical about the viability of digital marketing as their main marketing platform. With every new introduction of platform, the old ones get obsolete fast. However, if you do not keep up with the growth and technological shifts we are experiencing today, you will be kicked out of the competition.
New advertising platforms will eventually replace the digital space but it wouldn’t matter. If your audience one day abandon Google in favor of something better, they won’t be jumping off the train, they’ll simply be moving to a new car. Move with them.
3. “We’re doing fine without it.”
This is definitely a losing argument. If you are of a certain age, you will know that you once did fine without printers, computers and cell phones, too. You’ll adjust.
How do you know you are “fine” anyway, if you are not in the trenches. If you are still getting businesses from referral and word-of-mouth, that doesn’t mean you do not need to keep up with what your other competitors are doing. While you are still having a healthy stream of income from referral and word-of-mouth, you should make use of that opportunity to grow bigger by investing on digital marketing to reach out to more potential customers before it’s too late. Those companies who waited till they have very few customers and realised that they have a shortage of capital to invest on digital marketing will eventually die off.
Any company that gets so complacent it thinks everything is “fine” deserves to go out of business — it literally means the boss has stopped caring. A competitive company is always on the offense. Always. Always. Always.
Any company that gets so complacent it thinks everything is “fine” deserves to go out of business — it literally means the boss has stopped caring.
4. “We tried it; it doesn’t work.”
Most companies just jump onto digital marketing without learning how it works. They spent on Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, etc. for six months, or worse, six weeks, and they didn’t see any significant results. Faced with disappointment, they patted themselves on the back for trying something new and then slammed the door shut. If they’re progressive, they chalked up the failure to getting in too early on an immature platform, but most are convinced the platform is hype, and not worth the effort. They’re like people who have never seen a bicycle and try to pedal with their hands, then toss the thing aside, declaring it a waste of time and impractical for transportation.
There are a lot of things to finetune for digital marketing and most companies who tried to do it themselves have failed to reach the full potential. On the surface, it seems straightforward and easy for anyone to start advertising online, but the truth is that it requires deep knowledge and experience to set up a good campaign. Companies should send their marketing team for a proper digital marketing course or engage a professional digital marketing firm for their digital marketing strategy.
The Takeaway
We think we are entering a business golden age. Small companies finally have a chance to compete with big players with digital marketing. With an optimized digital marketing campaign, you can reach customers at a fraction of what other big brands are paying. Also, with the well-established metrics, it has never been easier to track the results of your marketing efforts. We hope the points above have given you sufficient reasons to start considering on your digital marketing strategy if you have not.