There is a reason why the show “Mythbusters” was so popular when it debuted.
We all have those things that we accept as fact, but they are based on no such thing. No, your blood is not blue until it hits oxygen and turns red.
Yes, it is totally okay if you wake someone while they are sleepwalking. And, no, there is no such thing as the five second rule. In fact, the amount of bacteria that is transferred to a piece of food when it hits the floor is the same no matter how long you let it sit there.
So, you think that you know all there is to know about digital marketing. Or, you believe that what you do know is actually fact, and that you are doing things to foster your business, not hurt it. But, do you know for sure? We are here to debunk the most common seven myths that most people believe about digital marketing practices and how they work.
Marketing Myth One: More Traffic to Your Website Translates Into Increased Revenue
All you have to do to increase your bottom line is drive more people to your website and kaboom…your profits will soar!
The reality is that yes, you want to drive people to your website, but not all traffic is the same. The only kind of website traffic that will translate into profits are the ones that can convert leads to sales.
Traffic is not just the number of IP addresses that make it to your page. Traffic is the audience that makes it to their intended target because behind those IP addresses are people who have the motivation, desire, problems and need for solutions.
What you have to do to make that traffic viable is to communicate to those people who do make it to your website that you have something valuable for them to invest in. You have to give them cause to take action and use your product or service, not just make it visible to them.
So, you can argue that more traffic might increase your bottom line. That part might not be a myth. What is not true is that just getting people to your page is enough to convert them to increasing revenue.
More traffic means more sales, but only if you have the right type of traffic and if you focus on the quality of the traffic flow rather than the quantity, which leads us to the second myth…
Marketing Myth Two: Your Ads Need to be Appealing to a General Audience to Attract as Many People as Possible
In the same respect that more traffic converts to more money, appealing to everyone across the board as being the goal of digital marketing is, likewise, not true. More customers do not always mean more sales.
If you run a campaign and throw out a huge net in hopes of catching everything, what you end up with are a whole lot of things you need to throw back and not a lot of what you were searching for. If you don’t specify your message to your target audience, you might appeal to more people.
But, in the end, you aren’t going to have the right message to get the specific niche that you are trying to capture. It is like fishing in the middle of the sea to get as many fish as you can instead of figuring out where the species of fish that you want to catch live.
So what is the answer?
It’s alright to use a campaign that not everyone is going to get, or an image that isn’t going to catch everyone’s eye. The key is to find out what makes your intended target tick, what gets them to focus attention and use that marketing to attract them.
The goal is not to appeal to everyone on earth. The goal is to appeal to everyone on earth who might be interested in using your product and service. And to do that, you have to find out not only what they are looking for, but what sets them apart from everyone else.
Marketing Myth Three: Email is as Dead as a Doornail
Sure, email might not be the end all be all that it used to be before things like instant messaging and texting came along, but there is no end to it. And the potential that it might present for your business is still valuable!
Although click-rates for email might be lower than other mediums, they tend to generate a lot of sales. In fact, the DMA found that for every one dollar that a company spends using email marketing $38 was generated in revenue. That would indicate that no, email is not dead, not even by a long shot.
Once more, according to Campaign Monitor, using email marketing is more effective than both Twitter or Facebook at generating leads that convert into sales. When you combine that with the fact that everyone, yes, even your grandma uses email, that says a lot!
Email is not on the decline, statistics from Statistica show that the number of emails both sent and received, is somewhere around three hundred billion, not million, literally billion, and that number is increasing every year.
Marketing Myth Four: All You Need to Succeed is an Excellent Ad, Campaign, Landing Page, etc…
A lot of digital marketers will tell you that all you have to do is get one thing right and the revenue will start pouring in. They believe that if they come up with the right ad, slogan, campaign of combination of things, the end result will be an instant success. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if that were only true?
The problem with their philosophy is that it neglects what the facts show, most customers aren’t a one-hit wonder. What I mean by that is it usually takes more than one look or glance to get a customer on the hook. In fact, there is a process that the average consumer goes through before they go from a “first glance” to a “sold.”
When we can explain the complexity of converting a stranger to a sale to our clients, they quickly see that you can’t build your business or your brand on just one hit campaign. There are several steps and processes that you need to go through before you have them hooked.
Instead of focusing on a one-hit wonder campaign, you have to create many different streams and campaigns to generate both engagement and awareness to the consumer. Once you get them to subscribe to one campaign, you shoot them another, and then the target is to get them to convert to sale by campaign three. It isn’t a once and done proposition. And anyone who tells you it isn’t, isn’t doing the groundwork necessary to make you a success. Marketing Myth Five: Don’t be Creepy by Retargeting
No one wants to be a stalker; that isn’t cool. That is why most marketers stray away from retargeting ads to their consumer. They fear that the general public will get creeped out by being followed around the wide web. But do consumers really feel that way?
According to a study done by Wishpond, retargeting ads are viewed much more positively than negatively. That is why savvy marketers know this little secret and use it! Retargeting is one of the best and most efficient ways of bringing people back to your website. And we all know what that means…don’t we?
- Website visitors who have been retargeted with a display ad are 70% more likely to convert
- Over 70% of online shoppers abandon their shopping cart and only 8% of those lost consumers return to complete the purchase
- Ad retargeting brings over 25% of lost consumers back to finalize their sale
The more they visit, the more likely they are to bite. In the same study done by Wishpond, it was revealed that most digital marketing professionals would insist that retargeting is the best use of marketing there is.
So, no retargeting is not creepy. Not to retarget gives the consumer the impression that you aren’t all that interested in them, and overall, that you aren’t all that interesting.
Instead of focusing on a one-hit wonder campaign, you have to create many different streams and campaigns to generate both engagement and awareness to the consumer. Once you get them to subscribe to one campaign, you shoot them another, and then the target is to get them to convert to sale by campaign three. It isn’t a once and done proposition. And anyone who tells you it isn’t, isn’t doing the groundwork necessary to make you a success.
Marketing Myth Six: Content is King
Just because you find something that catches and sounds official, that doesn’t mean it is. There is a great argument brewing that content needs to take off the crown and take a step back. The reality is that the online content is quickly exceeding the demand for it. But that isn’t really the problem.
For purposes of marketing success, content marketing isn’t just about putting out a good blog. Content marketing is about something called full-funnel, or the concept that content is there only to lead your potential consumers through the process of awareness to evaluation ending in conversion.
If content is done correctly, it educates potential prospects about what they have to know to appreciate the full value of what you produce or service is and why they need it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be content. There are many ways to get your point across including lead magnets, a podcast, a webinar, or a video.
So is content king…the answer is definitely yes! But not in just one medium or forum.
The best way to convert potential consumers is through using all the content avenues possible to get them to realize the value of what you are offering so that they “gotta have it”!
So, sorry…. That is one myth that can not be debunked, brought up to date yes, but wrong, no!
Marketing Myth Seven: SEO is all in the Keywords Early in the dark ages SEO was pretty simple. You found a keyword, you used it, your audience found you. And once you found that keyword, you went about stuffing the heck out of your pages to signal search engines “come find me.” Then, there was a point where you don’t want to appear to be stuffing so you used hidden text (BTW, huge no-no).
The problem is that many SEO professionals still treat keywords like they are the magic key that will open any door. Don’t misunderstand, keywords are important! But if you want to beat the SEO machine, you have to consider more than finding the right word to punch in and wallah!
You have to consider not just the keyword but the intent that people have when they do a search to really understand a word’s importance and then make sure that you write content that is targeted toward the intent.
Google is Google because Google knows what Google is doing…am I right? Their entire success relies on people having a good experience using their search engine. So if someone does a search and they don’t get what they want, that isn’t going to make them happy or leave a good impression.
If you can make content based around exactly what the intention of the viewer is looking for, then they will stay put on your site. And when they do, Google counts it as a very low “bounce rate,” which means how long someone stays on your page because you had the information they needed instead of bouncing to another page. The lower your bounce rate, the higher your ranking.
So keywords are enough to get them there, but to keep them there you have to provide what a consumer is researching or looking for. So, keywords are still necessary but only to the extent that they point you in the right direction as well as the internet browser.
So, what do all of these myths have in common?
Although the myths we presented were in fact mythical, that doesn’t mean that they weren’t based on some truth. It pays to understand what the myth is to alter what works and what doesn’t. For instance, yes, people are okay with retargeting so that is a myth.
But, no, they do not want to be inundated hundreds of times a day…that IS stalking. More traffic does not necessarily convert directly to more sales. But if you have more traffic and give the necessary tools to those who need it, you have a higher likelihood that you will convert.
If there is one thing that is true about digital marketing, it is ever changing. So, what works today might not work tomorrow. That is why it is important to understand the process, not just the cliff notes.
At Fu Dog Media we take great pains to stay ahead of the game, to recognize what is truth inside of the myth and to always stay ahead of the game to keep you ahead of your competition. Contact us today to discuss how we can convert your SEO into successful sales.