THE CONFUSING WORLD OF ONLINE MARKETING
Having recently left Google to focus purely on growing our online marketing agency has been an adventure and a half. Getting an office, winning those crucial first new business pitches, networking, building our website has all been exciting, challenging, scary, and enjoyable. Though, what has really struck me is how we as an industry, us here at Tale Digital are no exception, do not make it easy on the 99.999% of people who don’t work in online marketing. We sometimes take it for granted that people know what SEO, PPC, SEM, Programmatic, DSP, SSP, GAP (or GA360) stand for, and even when we are aware that this means nothing to anyone else – we still cover our websites in these often meaningless terms.
Let’s take a look at what I mean. Imagine you are a Solicitor with a successful business built up over 40 years. You know your old trusty marketing channels are seeing diminishing returns, and you know there’s an opportunity in marketing yourself on the internet. After a while considering it, you go off and see what you can do and are quickly confronted with the following excerpts from some of the best online advertising agencies:
“We are Digital Conversion specialists… providing Pay Per Click management, Programmatic Display, Google Analytics consulting & Conversion Rate Optimisation”
“A genuinely different performance marketing agency. PPC, SEO, Social, Display, Content & Analytics”
“We believe digitally connected people want digitally connected businesses and brands. There are huge opportunities everyday for smart agile businesses. Digital media done properly and intelligently is no longer just an option . . . which is why we exist”
Now I realise these are positioned at often large brands, or companies with Digital Marketing managers etc, but what happens when someone who is not so experienced comes across this? I’ll hazard a guess – they decide they wont do anything with any of these experts and give in to the sales pitch from Yell.com to let them promote their business online – not necessarily the best option!
Even at large brands there may be a Communication Director with 40 years in the industry, who could tell you everything you needed to know, and more, about TV and Outdoor. A key decision maker, though again this doesn’t communicate to them – what do you think they will likely do – be unfazed by the intimidating entry to the world of specialist agencies and give you a call? Or more likely call their Network agency or TV buyers, and say “go ahead, we’ll run our online marketing with you guys”?
So let’s make a promise, from now on we will try to think of those wonderful people who don’t work in online marketing – and quite rightly don’t know their SEO from their elbow, ever want to have to know what an ad-server is, and quite rightly think a DSP is a next day delivery service.
Why don’t we try and start off with a friendly open version of “this online marketing business can be unnecessarily confusing, but we can help you make the absolute best decisions to make you more money”?!