The thing about misconceptions is that they tend to get popular, and in time be seen as facts. At that point people start believing them without even delving into the source. This can be applied to the world of digital marketing as well. An idea without an actual base comes to life, then it gains traction, and a lot of people start thinking that it’s true.
Sometimes businesses even build their digital marketing strategies around these misconceptions, which ends up having a debilitating effect on their marketing efforts. Here are some of the greatest misconceptions businesses have about digital marketing.
SEO is dead
Everyone once in a while you will come across an article where someone is saying that SEO is dead and that it no longer matters. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Even with social media websites gaining popularity and power, the main source of web traffic are search engines.
The majority of online users are using, and certainly won’t stop using search engines like Google to find the information that they need about a company and their products and services. This is where digital marketing steps in as an essential factor for how well you rank on the SERPs.
I can’t compete with the big names in the industry
Even with the fact that building a fresh fan base with your newfound business and trying to beat your competition is a challenge, contrary to what some believe, the playing field is actually levelled by digital marketing, so every business has an equal footing.
While traditional marketing made it nearly impossible for you to compete with the big guys, digital marketing enables you to reach your customers via websites and a number of social media channels, regardless of what your budget is.
You’re able to spread a unique message to your targeted audience, create a one-of-a-kind brand identity and have an impact on the market no less than big businesses do.
I can’t track the success of my online campaign
A lot of businesses believe that, even though digital marketing is good, they can’t really determine whether it’s the source of the increase in sales or customers.
The truth is that digital marketing is actually relatively easy to predict, and you can get the necessary numbers and graphs that will help you to learn about how effective your digital marketing strategy is. You can analyse the quality of your website’s traffic with solid metrics, as well as determine the conversion rates, which can generally be seen, for example, from the number of lead forms that were filled.
Digital marketing depends only on large traffic
While it is of course true that a great amount of traffic lets more potential customers learn about your business, that doesn’t mean that every visitor to your website will convert into a customer and generate profit.
The formula of good digital marketing is quality over quantity, especially when it comes to gaining the attention of the right kind of visitors. It’s far more useful if a website has about 100 visitors who will convert into customers than a thousand who don’t generate any profit. The focus of digital marketing is to attract the targeted audience that is looking specifically for your products and services.
Digital marketing works only for some industries
If you’re thinking that your business is too traditional for you to deal with the world of digital marketing, you’re wrong. There is no rule that determines how well a digital marketing strategy will form for one industry over another.
Digital marketing covers a great variety of techniques and tools that work of different purposes and come up with different results, depending on what your business is after. For example, a café may prioritize customer relationship and branding, while an ecommerce business will care about the number of online checkouts.
In summation
Don’t believe everything for a fact, and always check the source about anything that’s being told about digital marketing. There is a great number of misconceptions running around and generally hindering the success of marketing campaigns, just because people tend to believe anything they’re told. In order to run a good digital marketing campaign, educate yourself thoroughly about matters and don’t let yourself be misguided by untruths that a lot of marketers are spreading nowadays.
