Introduction
Beware of digital marketing myths that hurt your business growth. Unfortunately, you’ll find them everywhere—word-of-mouth and all over the internet. If you’re a small business owner or solopreneur, you need high-performing strategies that help you build brand awareness and acquire customers.
So, let’s start the new year by kicking out these ten digital marketing myths.
#1. Blogs Are Only For Bloggers
We used to think about blogging as more of a platform for stream-of-thought consciousness. In fact, Mark Zuckerberg published a blog before he launched Facebook. Everyone from thought leaders to journalists to moms was blogging on various topics. That was then—this is now.
A website blog is one of the most powerful tools to have in your digital marketing arsenal. A business blog
- helps you grow your organic audience
- keeps visitors on your website longer
- creates trust in your brand
- serves as a platform for thought leadership content and purpose-driven marketing.
#2. I Don’t Need A Website
This is one of the more common digital marketing myths making the rounds today. As social channels make it easier for you to interact with your customers and engage in transactions, it can seem that a website is not so important. You want to kick this myth out the door.
- You own your website, but not your social media channels.
- A website establishes that you are a legitimate business.
- Consumers looking for products or services still use search engines. However, they’ll be more likely to click on a website link than a social media post.
- If you don’t have a website, you’ll lose potential customers to competitors with websites.
- Your website provides you with essential data about your organic and consumer audience, enabling you to create and deliver personalized content.
#3. SEO Is Not That Important
Search engine optimization (SEO) is still important, and you don’t want to skip over it. You’ve probably seen many articles on the subject, and some can give the impression that SEO is dead. But it’s not; it’s just become more challenging to tame. With search engines constantly changing their algorithms, you might want to throw your hands and consign SEO to the dustbin. However, considering the trillions of bits of content on the internet and billions of daily searches, SEO is still one of the fundamental ways to move your business to the top of the SERPs. So, while it is a digital marketing myth that SEO is not necessary, it’s true that you need to rethink how you do SEO.
We’ll focus more on this in 2022, but for now, it’s essential to know that your main task with SEO is to understand how consumers are using Google.
- Longer search phrases
- Voice search
- Local search
- From mobile devices
You’ll want to incorporate these habits into your SEO strategy, such as using keyword phrases in the form of questions.
#4. I Need To Market On Every Platform
Among all the digital marketing myths, this one can really slow you down. Today, we have many marketing channels that you can use to grow your brand and customer base quickly. However, unless you’re a big business, you’re not likely to have the staff or resources to publish marketing content on every digital channel. Furthermore, your consumers may subscribe to several social media platforms, and they won’t want to see identical content everywhere. This means you need to create different content for every platform. That’s a lot of work.
Pick two or three digital channels that will help you reach your marketing goals. To do this, you need to
-
- establish your marketing goals
- identify your target audience
- know where your consumers hang out.
Marketing on every platform will tire you out; you’ll lose momentum, get burned out, and may not reach your marketing goals.
#5. It’s Better To Save Money And Do Everything InHouse
If you’re a small business or solopreneur, your focus is naturally on saving money. Maintaining a healthy cash flow is one of your primary objectives right now. Therefore, it might make sense that you’ll save money and do everything in-house rather than hiring a digital marketing contractor.
An in-house marketing team or staffer is more in touch with your business vision, goals, and objectives. And, of course, they’re more accessible. However, outside contractors have a global vision, review your performance with a fresh set of eyes, and have their finger on the pulse of marketing trends. But, of course, both approaches have pros and cons, so you want to think strategically about it before making a decision.
#6. E-mail Is Dead
This is one of our favorites on the list of digital marketing myths. Yet, amazingly, it keeps popping up. E-mail is not dead; in fact, it is very much alive.
As mentioned earlier, the internet is overflowing with content. You might be creating and publishing stunning content, but your audience may never see it. Tech giants own social channels, and they have the power to alter algorithms, feeds, and many other aspects that impact the visibility of your content.
However, similar to your website, you own your e-mail list. According to Statista, 2020, e-mail marketing revenue hit 7.5 billion in US dollars, and by 2023 this figure is projected to exceed 10 billion USD. Furthermore, Statista reports that “few if any other channels can compare with e-mail marketing’s average ROI.”
E-mail marketing continues to be one of the most effective ways to personalize communications with your consumers.
#7. Quantity Is Better Than Quality
One of the digital marketing myths floating around is similar to a shot-gun approach—throw out a lot of content everywhere and hope it sticks somewhere. Not only will you exhaust yourself and your resources with this approach, but you may never reach your marketing goals. This is because the competition for the attention of your consumers is fierce. The e-commerce marketplace is crowded with branded content, and readers’ attention spans are shrinking. Your consumers are looking for quality content that addresses their concerns and needs and builds trust between them and your brand. So focus on quality over quantity.
#8. High Traffic Means More Revenue
Everyone is hoping for that viral tweet or Instagram post, even small businesses. However, a thousand views or “likes” don’t automatically translate into a thousand sales. Unfortunately, we’ve been conditioned to focus on reaction icons rather than converting those readers into customers. The same is true about how we look at website visitors. High traffic numbers are great if visitors go to your product page and purchase your services or products. And, many views of your social media content are amazing if those viewers click your website link and successfully move through the funnel.
#9. Followers Equal Customers
Focusing on followers is another one of those digital marketing myths that push you to focus more on increasing the size of your audience on social media. It’s similar to the above myth equating traffic to revenue. Of course, you want engaged followers who will serve as brand ambassadors and help you increase your brand footprint. Using storytelling and consumer-generated content will help you grow your audience and lead to more traffic to your website. But ultimately, your primary goal is to sell your services or products and increase revenue. Fewer followers who are customers are much better than thousands of followers who never purchase anything from your business.
#10. Personalization Is A Violation Of Privacy
Consumers today are indeed very concerned about privacy issues. Fears over data breaches and unauthorized use of personal data have led to a series of laws and regulations that limit how personal data can be collected and processed. Yet, at the same time, according to research, consumers are more likely to make a purchase when you offer personalized experiences. Additionally, consumers want their brands to adjust content based on their current context. Therefore, it’s clear that personalized marketing is a critical tool to use in your marketing campaigns.
So, while the statement that personalization is a violation of privacy is a myth, you do need to achieve a balance between delivering personalized communications and protecting your consumers’ data.
- Inform your customers in advance how you will use their data.
- Allow your consumers to opt-out.
- Only collect data that is relevant to your business.
- Use high-performing cybersecurity tools to protect yourself from data breaches.
Bottom Line
The most critical element in creating and implementing a successful marketing plan is relevance.
- Are your marketing strategies relevant to where you are in the growth process?
- Will they help you achieve your brand goals?
- Do they help you connect with your consumer audience in a way that results in sales and long-term customers?
A big shout-out to all our followers. We’d love to hear from you. Let us know what you’d like to see us cover in the new year. And for those of you not yet followers, please be sure to join us!