So called ‘Digital Marketing’ has become an end in itself. Instead, it should be a potentially potent tool in the marketer’s toolbox when used well in the process of delivering value. I see it often spoken of and treated as if it were a separate functional discipline, then it fails. All sorts of rubbish is then wheeled out to explain the failure and move responsibility elsewhere.
It seems to me that the failure of understanding the real nature of digital marketing falls into 7 distinct buckets.
- ‘Digital marketing’ is seen as an event, a set piece, and not part of an ongoing commitment to delivering information and value to customers and potential customers.
- There is no sense of the end point, a vision, the picture on the jigsaw cover. The absence of a clear objective makes consistent production of compelling communication virtually impossible.
- There is a lack of commitment from the top. Many inhabitants of the corner office are older guys trained in accounting, engineering, and the law. Many still consider marketing to be a cost, to be managed short term, rather than an investment in the long term. Often so-called marketers do too little to address this misunderstanding. Instead, they continue to sketch out a few bits of ‘content’ to throw against the digital wall, hoping something works.
- No-one holds accountability for the work, and its results. Digital marketing tends to be a subsection of the overall marketing and sales programs, and it tends to be the least understood. As a result, it is pushed off to the juniors, after all, they know all about this technology stuff.
- All things to all people rather than highly relevant to a few. Digital is mixed up with a mistaken understanding of genuine inbound marketing activity. Inbound sounds nice, but how are we going to set ourselves up as an expert in the face of the competition. Nobody can be all things to all people. If you are a small business, be the expert in your specific niche, your geography, with those on your list of current and lapsed customers. You do not have to be the biggest in the world, just the best to a select few.
- Results are not measured properly, vanity measures are all that are collected, and they tell you nothing about cause and effect.
- The work is done quickly, without thought, passion, creativity, so does not grab a potential customer by the purse. It is just another deadline hit, then move onto the next one, tomorrow. The search for the ‘big idea’ that resonates and differentiates seems to have been replaced by many mediocre bland and ‘safe’ ideas. The big idea remains elusive, and of great value, but we seem to be no longer looking for it as we are distracted by the acceptance of the many mediocre ideas. Not a great exchange. Occasionally you find the big idea, hiding in plain sight, which is where it usually hides, but is so hard to identify.
- A final one. There is no permission, as in Seth Godin’s definition of permission marketing, as requoted in Tom Fishburnes cartoon narrative, with which I absolutely agree. This is all about the consumer, and treating them with respect, something that increasingly many so-called marketers do not do.
Header cartoon credit: Tom Fishburne at www.Marketoonist.com
