Having been 'in' marketing for 28 years and mentor of marketing I have some points of views from looking at the facts - i.e. the results of marketing from what hundreds of businesses are experiencing.
Starting with social media marketing, its my least favourite strategy. Posting often
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Having been 'in' marketing for 28 years and mentor of marketing I have some points of views from looking at the facts - i.e. the results of marketing from what hundreds of businesses are experiencing.
Starting with social media marketing, its my least favourite strategy. Posting often leads to nothing but wasted time.
With all marketing from experience it needs to start to show some form of 'encouraging' results within weeks or a month, even for SEO. That point of view upsets a lot of marketing service providers!
The challenge with every marketing strategy is in the majority of cases not the strategy chosen but the execution of it.
Most businesses have a website and it can and is a fantastic lead generation tool, however over 90% of all websites are very poorly executed. They are built by programmers more than marketers and so while they can look pretty, they fail to generate quality and high volumes of leads. The majority of websites fail in dozens of areas in how they are built from the design, to the wording, to the offers, to the page types and contents to the SEO on page.
The number one reason why marketing execution is poor is because the focus is on how great the business is, showcasing its products and services and the greatly overused use of the word "we" everywhere. This self-promotion focus is the primary reason why any marketing strategy will fail.
Keeping poor execution, in mind social media it why most businesses will fail with it. That and the very poor reach of any posts. These days you're lucky if 3% of fans/followers see any post from a business. Good execution can increase it significantly but that execution requires hours of research and investigation.
Rarely will I meet a business owner who can state their social media marketing is working for them. Less than 5% do.
Google Adwords.
This is the best way to lose $1,000,000 if ever you wanted to, and get nothing in return. No other platform (except for perhaps TV) can burn up cash for little result as fast.
Execution is the number one reason, however there's another big reason.
The allowable Acquisition Cost to buy a customer.
Talking to expert Adwords managers has revealed that it is very common to pay 25% minimum and up to 50% or 100% of the average sale value seen, just for the advertising cost.
How many businesses can afford to pay 25% or 50% of the sale value? Some can like high margin retailers.
As the marketing company is focused on "Cost Per Lead" and not "Customer Acquisition Cost" many businesses aren't making money from their PPC advertising.
Determining what the allowable acquisition cost is per sale/product/service is wise, before thinking of any PPC campaign.
28 years of measuring advertising results and profits on sales has shown 10% of the average sale value as being an excellent figure. If a business sells a product at $100 then it would be 10% of the sale value can go to advertising to convert the lead into a sale. This may require tracking all leads to a source, which is achievable although sometimes challenging.
Retailers can pay more than 10% as their rent is their primary 'acquisition' cost. In a service business, it has to achieve a net profit ROI on advertising spending so it can keep on paying the cash for advertising.
Excellent, highly experience Google Ads management providers can assist with lowering the acquisition cost of buying customers and they need to. If they only want to focus on Cost Per Lead then find someone else.
Google Ads can be very profitable, if you find a great management company. That's your greatest challenge.
I can only recommend 2 businesses after looking for many years. It's so complicated it needs a very focused company with many years of experience.
SEO is the most controversial marketing topic there is. Every business wants to rank number 1 and are willing to pay (gamble) on companies to assist them to achieve this almost impossible goal. So many promises are in the space on getting businesses to position 1 or on page 1.
SEO definitely works as a good strategy, for some but not all businesses and that's only if you can afford the learning curve and patience for results that can take months or years.
There are "white hat" and "black hat" methods that can be used with SEO. Look up these phrases to learn about them.
I don't like the 'lock-in for 12 month contract' approach of SEO providers as the business takes on all the risk with no guarantee of results.
The challenge with SEO, Google Ads or Social Media is not having a clue what's important to understand with any of them. So business owners pay for service providers with a lot of "hope" they will receive value for what they pay.
Ignorance is extremely expensive.
For 22 years I've mentored business owners on marketing principles, starting with how to measure their results. It's always where I start and if you're reading this post to try to identify what you need to know about the 3 main forms of digital marketing, I suggest you start with education.
Ask questions online in Google searches such as... 'how to measure SEO results', or critical ingredients of 'google ad results', or 'social media success ingredients'. Learn about marketing and even pay some money to learn from a mentor or from a course etc. You pay once and then benefit for years and years, but without education you risk thousands of dollars for years and years.
SEO starts with on-page work and that makes the biggest and fastest difference.
I like SEO because of its rapid improvements - i.e. 2 to 4 weeks to see a traffic increase, when well executed. That's if its started with on-page work first.
All 3 types of digital marketing can be successful for most businesses however, its 100% determined by the execution of the strategy.
That said, social media success doesn't mean every platform will work great for a business. Facebook is terrible for my business whereas LinkedIn is good. Choosing which platform to focus on is the first step with social media and asking if its even likely to be successful. You probably won't get a truthful answer from a platform 'expert' which are abundant these days.
Keep that in mind if you're considering spending money on any form of digital marketing and all the best with your success.
