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When it comes to digital marketing strategy — which admittedly barely exists in some companies aside from “I think we have a Facebook page?” — there are a couple of big lies that need to be addressed.
I got going down this rabbit hole by reading a transcript of a podcast from Northwestern’s Kellogg School. A lot of this podcast is about the problems of digital advertising. See, the great promise of digital advertising was how trackable it would be. In some cases, that’s true. But TV still has bigger numbers — even if you have no real idea who’s out there and if the ads led them to buy anything — and because marketing teams love the shrine of big numbers, TV and print often win out. (Plus: how many times a week do I get a Facebook ad or event for something I could care less about or don’t live by? I think their algorithm is a mess right now.)
OK, so … this is the first problem with digital marketing strategy. Often the sheer concept doesn’t exist, because people are off chasing bigger, badder things that will make them look better to their boss. There was some research in early 2015 that most CMOs have no digital marketing strategy, which is depressing. By 2015, Google had been around for 17 or so years. Feels like you should be thinking somewhat about digital by now just because of that anniversary. Maybe I’m misguided.
