Photo by Brian McGowan on Unsplash - A Free Site for Web Images.
Marketing is an expense. Rightly or wrongly, most organizations only spend on it when they can afford it. And spending on the wrong things can be disastrous.
We all know the Covid-19 pandemic forced many organizations to digitize their sales process so they could still operate in a contactless world. This was a boon for eCommerce platforms, but as companies invested in their online operations it came at the detriment of their promotional marketing.
In the past year (March 2020 - March 2021) advertising spend has declined overall. The one bright spot is that digital marketing's proportion of total advertising grew.
Digital's share of advertising will continue to grow. But so will its cost and complexity.
Although digital is the cheapest and most efficient way to reach an audience, increased demand is putting upward price pressure on media and service delivery costs.
And an increase in digital demand also brings out unproven digital marketing purveyors hoping to cash in on the trend. We've seen it before: Ten years ago the rise of social media ushered in an onslaught of new "social media agencies" that promised to turn your business into the most popular brand on the block. And most failed to deliver.
Digital marketing expertise is NOT somebody who is simply good at attracting followers on social media. You can buy followers, but you can't buy customers. That's because customers are earned through hard work, good service, and reliability. The customer journey is complex and conflating "likes" with "loonies" is a fool's game.
The future requires a lot more than re-purposing a print graphic into a digital ad. The future of digital marketing will belong to those that understand advertising technology, user experience, web/app development, search optimization, and analytics. Bringing creativity to the table is a given, every agency offers that, but turning creativity into online performance requires technical understanding.
Would you rather have a friend who claims to empower you or one that is technically dependable and can tell a good story?
You can't fight the future, but you can prepare for it. Have the right people alongside.
