In this article, I’m going to answer three important questions:
What is good digital marketing?
What makes digital marketing ineffective and bad?
Whether the kind of marketing you’re doing for your business at the moment is going to bring you results or not?
The good news is that most of the businesses are now aware of the concept of “digital marketing” but the bad news is that most of them are still engaged in bad, ineffective and unproductive digital marketing.
Digital marketing is not posting on social media, or sending emails, or running Google ads.
Digital marketing is the process of using digital technology to bridge the gap between your product and your customers.
However, if your followers on your social media channels don’t engage with your company, if your emails are not opened or read by your subscribers or if your Google ads are ignored most of the time, then how are you bridging that gap? Take a moment and think about it.
If you still continue doing what you have been doing, then you are just making that gap become bigger and bigger. You’re not paying attention to those signs given by your audience again and again which is saying out loud that “something is missing” and that’s the reason why we don’t engage with your posts, or read your emails or see your ads.
When we compare on the basis of results, there is a possibility that we may turn myopic and get influenced by instantly-gratifying numbers disguised as results.
Let’s say you’re craving a pecan pie right now. To satisfy that craving you can go to a nearby bakery and get some pecan pie from there, even though It doesn’t taste that great, has too much sugar, and a lot of non-organic, highly-processed ingredients. Or you can wait for some time and let your beloved grandma cook her one-of-a-kind, very delicious pecan pie for you.
The latter is going to be delicious but is going to take time. The former is going to give you instant gratification but not going to taste good.
Add to that, when the temporary pleasure gained through devouring this bakery pie will start fading, you will realize that there was nothing like your grandma’s home cooked, healthy pie.
So, decide what you want – instant gratification or better results?
Never Lose Grip On Your Long-Term Goals
We all know that good things take time.
This is the reason why good movies take many years to make. For example Jurassic World took 10 years. When we expect to create a movie like Jurassic World in 2 months, disasters happen.
Sometimes we get distracted by the initial hype that the marketing has created for the project but as it starts to die down, we realize that this is not what we wanted.
Even a bad movie has the capability of attracting viewers on the first few days after its release day but those days don’t define the success of that movie. The success of that movie is measured in terms of its long-term performance.
Same goes for digital marketing. Don’t let short term results make you lose your grip on your long-term goals.
Seeing 1k followers gain on your Instagram should not blind you from seeing why actually are you using Instagram for your business.
If just gaining followers was your goal, then you need to redefine your goals as you are trying to build a ranch when you could have built an Empire State building. If your goal is more than that, let’s say to get customers, or to make sales through Instagram, you have to always keep your focus on it.
You need to think if those 100 followers you gained belong to your target audience and will they buy from you.
The Effectiveness Of Your Digital Marketing
Here’s are two most important factors for deciding how good and effective your digital marketing is going to be:
Do You Have A Digital Marketing Strategy?
I can’t emphasize the importance of a digital marketing strategy enough. Only 1% of the small business owners and young entrepreneurs I have interacted with had a digital marketing strategy. Rest everyone was just doing whatever they thought would count as digital marketing.
They were on social media without ever figuring out what they are trying to achieve by being on social media or if their current actions are leading them closer to their social media goals or moving them farther away from it.
Before you start doing digital marketing, you need to have a strategy and a plan. A strategy which is going to identify who your audience is, where does your audience hang out in the digital world, what do they like, what makes an impact on them, how to use those any digital channel for marketing in tune with your vision and long-term business goals and how to regularly measure those goals.
A digital marketing plan is going to outline how you are going to implement your digital strategy. It’s going to have all the steps and actions you need to take now and in the future.
Let’s say you want to run a blog for your business, you need to brainstorm the following question for creating your blogging strategy:
There are a lot more questions to brainstorm to form your blogging strategy than these. But this gives you an idea how you work towards a long-lasting success of your business through digital marketing.
Are You Reading Your Numbers?
Yes, numbers are scary but that shouldn’t keep you away from analyzing the performance of your digital marketing campaigns. Numbers can tell you so much and can also save you from unnecessary and unfruitful work.
To keep doing the same thing over and over again is not going to bring you different results.
Let’s say your goal is to get customers through your Instagram channel and you regularly post there but have never read the numbers there. In such a case, you are doing a thing over and over again without ever knowing whether what you’re doing is actually working or not.
Let’s say whatever you’re doing on your Instagram is working. As you’re reading your numbers, you won’t be able to figure out how to make it even better and multiply your results.
However if the numbers are not as pretty as you wanted them to be on Instagram, and if you still continue posting on there, then you’re just wasting your energy and time. Doing the same thing on repeat is not going to change the mind of your followers but will end up harming your image even more.
You can learn so much from your numbers and can shape your digital marketing strategy for achieving extraordinary results.
To illustrate your social media can tell you:
Who your audience is?
Whether they are reading your post or not?
Are they engaging with your post?
Are they unfollowing you after your posts? What is the unfollow rate? And so many other things.
All these details are very useful in deciding what to do and how to use all these digital channels. If you’re not reading your numbers, you’re not doing digital marketing.
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