Five Digital Marketing Myths
Digital marketing keeps shifting as new tools arrive, evolve and fade away, while people’s attention spans grow shorter and audiences tire of ad styles that once felt fresh.
Some things never go out of style though, and certain marketing methods keep working regardless of the trends. It is easy to get lost among constantly shifting trends and to follow advice that is simply wrong.
Here are five persistent digital marketing myths worth ignoring today.
The email is dead
Reports of the demise of email are greatly exaggerated. Opening rates are holding steady, for a start, and the fact that people can customise the number, type and subject matter of their emails means that they are getting missives that they actually want! As long as you listen to what your customers want in their inboxes, you’re OK.
SEO is dead
Nope – again, a bit of an exaggeration. SEO is changing, every day, pretty much. More than 90% of online purchases involve a search and companies that invest time on their organic SEO campaigns see great returns. Of course, the black hat SEO tricks are a thing of the past (and so they should be), but as well as Google, people are using other search engines like Amazon and Facebook, where SEO can work its magic.
Posting your material everywhere
If you have some news to share, it’s tempting to splurge it over every single channel or outlet – Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn… This can backfire, though, as posting exactly the same material in the same style on every platform can fall flat. The content you post on Twitter should be different to what you post on LinkedIn, as the styles of these two platforms are so different. For example, your news on LinkedIn can be long-form, whereas Twitter should be as concise as humanly possible.
If we build it, they will come
Yours isn’t the only show in town! It doesn’t matter how great your website design and content is, you need to draw the crowds in yourself. Use your demographic stats, look at your influencers, and think about what will attract them – other than your quirky fonts.
Pageviews are vital
They’re important, but not the be-all and end-all. Just because you’re getting lots of views, this doesn’t mean you’re succeeding. You need to look at bounce rate and the average time spent on each page, as well as the industry standard stats and the biggest teller of all – your conversion rate.
