The Dilemma of Digital Marketing: What It Is and What It Isn't Used For

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When marketing automation is first introduced, it can seem like it will do everything for you. Instead of thinking about your business, your team and your operations as a whole, you’ll see everything through a single view—your marketing plan. You’ll have all the time in the world to create the perfect marketing plan and start optimizing your marketing spend accordingly. C well-designed and executed marketing has even more potential than that. The reality is that most businesses—and most digital marketers—will struggle to imagine anything but a department or part of an organization as a data warehouse full of data sets filled with information on every consumer purchase possible. Given this reality, what we’ve dubbed “the Dilemma of Digital Marketing” has become an ever-more pressing challenge for marketers looking to get their business one step closer to automated strategies that work.

Digital Marketing is an Information Warehousing Thing

Here’s a thought: How would you like to build a report into your digital campaign that lists all of the products, services and brands you sell and everything in between? Or, how about a report that gives information about all of the products, brands and services your competitors sell? Or, how about a report that gives you the sweetener that makes your choices for your products or your services so much more obvious? How would that look? Digital marketing is the process of gathering and putting together data in order to create marketing collateral (or digital content). It’s not just information that’s put into the system but also information that’s made available through the systems. The collected data can be texts, images, links and even sound files.

Marketing Automation Is a Business Strategy But Doesn’t Have To Be

When marketing automation is first introduced, it can seem like it will do everything for you. Instead of thinking about your business, your team and your operations as a whole, you’ll see everything through a single view—your marketing plan. You’ll have all the time in the world to create the perfect marketing plan and start optimizing your marketing spend accordingly. However, this is not the case. Marketing automation is not a “strategy” but a “ methodology.” When you look at it from this perspective, it’s not about getting to “mastering the art” of marketing but about getting better at it—so much better that you can automate almost anything.

Digital Marketing Can beasfied and customized to your business

Marketing automation starts with the idea of creating digital marketing collateral that’s focused on the specific needs and wants of your customers. You won’t have the luxury of deciding what your customers want or what they need. You’ll have to make sure that what you create is tailored to their particular needs and budget. For example, you might want to create a marketing campaign that drives traffic to your site, but also has a specific content type You might want to create a landing page that visitors can click to get started with their account setup, but also has a certain look and feel You might want to create a digital product introduction page that explains everything you’re about to purchase, but also has a certain feel

It's Not for Everyone — For Different People

Marketing isn’t for everyone. Even for those with high ideals and an advanced understanding of branding and marketing, it can feel like a lonely job with few opportunities to interact with other marketers. When you’re in the business of marketing yourself, you have many contacts and opportunities to interact with other marketers around the world. You might even know a few people in the industry who work in marketing or business communication. When you have this opportunity to collaborate with other marketers, you can learn a lot about how they think, how they market and how they sell. When you’re marketing yourself as a single professional, you have even less interaction with other marketers. You have to decide when and how often you want to meet with other marketers so that you can learn a lot about their work and how they market. When you decide when and how you want to collaborate, you’re also making the process of marketing a lot easier because you won’t have to worry about looking out for yourself.

Digital Marketing is Done by someone in the company

Marketing is a team sport. It’s a team effort. It’s not self-service. And yet, the marketing automation industry has seen a dramatic shift in the way that marketers are being led and managed. As more and more businesses are exploring digital strategy options, there’s been a shift in the way that marketers are being lead and managed. More and more businesses are looking to their digital team for digital strategy recommendations. Traditional marketing teams are being replaced by digital teams that are empowered to make informed, unique and diverse digital strategy recommendations.

Don't Forget About Video Marketing

When it comes to marketing automation, you want your video, no matter how short or long, to be the Center of your digital strategy. You don’t want to forget about video because it’s a great way to get your content into the right hands and use the right channels to drive your audience to your website. Your video content should help establish your brand and help build and build brand-new relationship with your audience. It should also help create a connection with your audience and give them an opportunity to engage with your brand. Your video should have a purpose other than “selling.” It should be about something that drives people to your website—whether that’s shopping, signing up for a product, or checking out from a website. Your video should have a story behind it so that people can understand what your brand is about and what they can expect from you in exchange for their money. Your video should be between 2 and 10 minutes long. If you’re running a short video and want people to pay attention to you, that’s fine—but if you want them to watch your video for 30 seconds and then leave before purchasing anything, don’t even think about it.

Conclusion

Marketing is an ever-more-possible thing. It’s what we do for a living and it’s what we do for a living so nicely that you can do it for free. But it’s not always good enough to be automated. When you have to follow the rules and follow the process, there’s a good chance that you’ll fail at least a little bit. However, that doesn’t mean that marketing is a dead or buried art. Marketing remains an essential part of business strategy making and management. There is a lot of room for improvement, but the digital marketing industry is making great strides toward being more accountable and transparent with their practices. But there’s still hope for marketers who want to automate their marketing processes and create better digital collateral for their customers. With hard work, a little bit of luck and a solid strategy, you can make marketing automation a reality.