Your boss has asked you. Your parents have asked you. You maybe have even asked yourself:
Why the hell are we doing this digital stuff?
While it’s easy to cite digital marketing efforts as the “future” or essential for brand awareness and marketing, these claims do little when it’s time to decide how to allocate resources, most importantly time and money.
If the value of your online efforts is unclear, it is easy to put off doing them. On the flipside, if you are unaware of the value of your online efforts, it is also easy to throw money at the problem and feel comfortable that someone is doing something for you.
While most people do not fall in to these extremes, there is usually a bit of these issues in every organization. For social media to work, you need to know why you are online.
The Opportunity
Digital media and digital marketing are everywhere. You have heard webinars, conference talks and numerous digital marketers like ourselves tell you why you need digital marketing. You see social media logos on everything from tv commercials to the jerseys of basketball players. Does this mean you need it?
The general rule of digital marketing is there is no general rule. Every business is different and depending on your own goals and capacity, digital media may or may not be the best place for you. Without knowing anything about your business, I’m guessing there is a massive opportunity for you online, but if you don’t have the sales process or capacity to even take on that new business, you might need to prioritize other changes before getting started online.
The only way to know what the opportunity is for you is to measure it. We do this with our clients through digital audits, you may do it by checking the stats of your site regularly to know if social media is driving traffic, leads and sales.
Challenges of Digital Marketing
Therein lies the challenge. Measuring. Most marketers don’t do it.
Spending on digital media is increasing dramatically. According to Wildfire, 75% of marketers are planning to increase spending on social media this year while the CMO Survey reports that marketers expect to spend nearly 20% of their budgets on social media in the next five years.
While spending is increasing, measurable results are not. Research by Awareness, Inc. noted that 54% of marketers identified the inability to tie social media to actual business results as the leading difficulty with digital marketing. Even more incredible, despite the fact that 83% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business, 53% of them do not measure their success!
WHAT?!
That’s like the Twins agreeing that Mauer is essential for the middle of their lineup, agreeing that they should spend millions to keep him and then not bothering to count how many hits or home runs he gets that season.
As you can tell, this disconnect drives us crazy. So, we’re here to help.
Digital Audit Webinar
Next Thursday at 1pm CST, we’ll be hosting a free 30 minute webinar on how to conduct your own digital audit. Learn what to measure, how to measure it and how to interpret the data to know what you should spend your time on in 2013. We’re here to save you time and add metrics to your busy efforts. Questions and hecklers alike are welcome.
Without measuring success or auditing your online efforts, it is impossible to decide which efforts are working and which ones to eliminate. What we have found in our experience conducting digital audits for businesses around the globe is that on average 30-40% of digital marketing spending is ineffective and can be quickly eliminated or reallocated after holding up the magnifying glass of measurement.
This holiday, spend 30 minutes to save hours of wasted work. Social media doesn’t work if you don’t know what it is supposed to be doing. Make social media work by joining our digital audit webinar.
Photo: Jason Wermager
