Digital marketing agency? YES and NO is my usual response and here is why …
Ask yourself one question – “what isn’t digital today?”
In truth most marketing today is digitally produced, including the roadside posters that rotate messages in front of you at traffic lights, bus shelter sides as you pass, all newspapers are digital, and all print digitally originated. Even without video, social media, Adwords and remarketing included, we are a digital world. FULL STOP – it’s the way we interact. The way we receive messages that has changed – not the way we set up marketing campaigns. As marketers, we have always looked at the best channel for clients, the best avenue to reach out to customers – digital is just a progression in the technology we use.
The act of marketing hasn’t actually changed – just the way we present the messages.
The bottom line is that digital marketing has been blown up out of all proportion by people who have jumped on the exciting new bandwagon; having ‘digital’ in front of your name was somehow more special than being just a boring old marketing professional! But us boring old marketing professionals weren’t ignoring the new routes to market, we weren’t saying that we believed in ‘old school = no change’ we were saying that we believed in MARKETING and that this was just another channel to be used – it isn’t a form of marketing – it is a way to get a marketing message out.
Integration
When we pull together marketing plans for our clients we consider ALL the potential ways they can reach their customers, and it seems to me that if you only focus on one channel you are potentially missing out. Marketing shouldn’t be done because ‘everyone else is doing it, so it must be right’. Marketing has only one purpose and that is to build your business in some way.
Follow My Leader
Once upon a time, a long time ago, I worked in advertising. I knew that if I could get an advert from one plumber in the paper they would all follow like sheep. Why? Fear that their competitor was picking up more business than they were. Fear of the unknown is a powerful draw.
We see this often when we take on new clients; they are not using the same instincts to market their business as they do to run it. Often they have bought some form of advertising, or moved down one particular marketing path and they are frightened to stop; they simply don’t know what is working, or not working for them, but they know that if they stop the wrong thing, they will lose business. So money is being wasted and we marketers hate this! We hate it because it is our job to help you build your business and if something isn’t working, it should go – and we KNOW what isn’t working, because we have measured it! We don’t put money into campaigns without putting processes in place to measure response.
So why do so many companies blindly keep firing huge sums of money at marketing channels that they don’t understand, or know how to measure? Because they think they should because their competitors are doing it.
The ‘follow my leader’ rule still applies today – if your competitor is doing one form of advertising then the belief that they MUST be getting results is still embedded in the human psyche! THIS IS NOT ALWAYS TRUE…
Because marketing has become complicated; there are so many channels you can use now and these all have to be measured one way or another – AND all measurements are not equal! Personally I don’t care how many Facebook impressions I see on a post, or boosted post reach. I don’t care how many times someone has clicked on your Adwords listing. I want to see a result at the end of it, I want to see how many convert to actual actions or interaction of the right sort. As ‘turnover’ is vanity in the world of financing, so is ‘reach’ in the world of marketing if it is not converting.
So, are we a digital marketing company? YES and NO!
We are most certainly a Marketing Company and we most certainly use digital channels for our clients, but we prefer to be just a plain old ‘Marketing Company’ as that is where our professionalism is seated. We are marketers and believe the word ‘digital’ is just an extra word you don’t need to describe a function that is just a tool in our extensive armoury.
PS.
Want to know how we integrate marketing for our clients? Visit our MARKETING SERVICES MENU – and if it’s really DIGITAL you have identified as your greatest need – well of course we offer that as part of the marketing mix we use to support you; it’s just part of the regular armoury at White Knight!