Digital marketer debunks 7 marketing lies

If you’ve heard through the grapevine that digital marketing can be a promising career, you’d be correct. But before embarking on a career in all things digital and confessing your love for SEO, social media, paid advertising and creative content, you might want to debunk some common myths.

There’s a lot of hearsay in the world of digital marketing, with new platforms being launched and new technologies around the corner that will supposedly change everything. But how do you sort the digital marketing wheat from the chaff? It’s often these myths that lead to naive newbie marketers making epic digital marketing fails.

 

Don’t worry, I’m here to help. I’ve had a career in digital marketing and come out the other side, and I’ve come to discover some whispers that plague the industry often turn out to be a load of rubbish. I think from experience, the key is to take rumours with a pinch of salt, and when new exciting ideas, techniques and platforms emerge, to do your own testing and evaluation. Below I debunk some common digital marketing lies that you shouldn’t believe.

 

1. You need to be on every social media platform

Don’t waste your time trying to crack each and every social media site, because it’s not a one size, or site, fits all kinda deal. Sure, some businesses will do well across the board, but most brands will find themselves particularly well suited to specific social sites.

Is your content more image heavy? Perhaps Instagram or Pinterest will attract the most customers. Or maybe you’ve got a strong voice and powerful things to say – well hello there Twitter. Before you jump onto every social media site or app known to man, take some time to research which social platforms your audience are most likely to be on and how to effectively target them.

2. There’s a set priority order of DM channels

People will talk about certain digital channels being more important, but it’s all relative. SEO doesn’t always come out top, content isn’t always king and PPC won’t bring in instant clicks and customers for everyone. There’s no set ranking or magic formula. Sorry folks, but you kinda have to figure it out yourself through analytics and tracking. You’ll start to get a picture of what channels seem to be converting the best for your brand, and you can adjust your strategy accordingly.

 

3. You just need a great website

Well it’s true, you do always need a quality website no matter what field you work in. But, don’t just pay a web designer thousands to throw together a sleek, impressive looking site, launch it and then sit and wait for the enquiries to start coming in. You’ll need to find ways to enable people to find your website – enter digital marketing.

4. SEO is dead

This is a sneaky rumour that pops up every six months or so, someone will announce that this is the end of SEO. Yet search engine optimisation still remains at the forefront of people’s strategies. SEO isn’t dead, it’s just constantly evolving. Chances are Google’s not going anywhere and while everyone’s still searching for everything under the sun in search engines, it’s going to remain beneficial to have a strategy to capitalise from this. The best thing you can do is keep up to date with SEO news in order to know which strategies are in, and which are on the way out.

5. Creating content isn’t a priority

So many website owners push content creation right down to the bottom of their action list. They don’t create a blog or sort out their content because they feel their time is better spent on paid activity, social media or SEO. But what’s the point in sending lots of people to your website if the content is average or worse, poor quality, and your visitors bounce anyway?

Sort your content out before you spend a huge amount of your budget attracting visitors to your website. And although a blog isn’t a quick win, it pays off in the long run. In fact, a blog will give you a 434% better chance of being ranked highly in search engines. Plus, According to The State of Inbound Report by HubSpot, marketers who prioritise blogging are 13 times more likely to achieve a positive ROI on their efforts.

 

6. Opt for the channels that produce immediate ROI

Following on from these blogging stats, showing that long term, blogs can deliver when it comes to ROI, I’d like to touch on a very important point. Don’t just go for the low hanging fruit. It may bring you temporary success, but where are your foundations. Like a poorly built house, your marketing efforts will come tumbling down. Sure, take advantage of a few techniques, like PPC, that might get you quick results, but put in the groundwork too so that you’ve got other things to fall back on.

 

7. Clickbait converts

Urgh, perhaps the absolute worst lie. OK, to be fair, sometimes clickbait can convert – but most of the time it doesn’t. If your goal is to get people to click on your website using a title that lures them in, but you’ve got nothing to back up that title then you’re wasting your time. If you’ve had 13894 visits to a post but no one’s spent any time reading it, and all your visitors bounce, you may as well have no visitors at all.