There’s no magic bullet for digital marketing success

When starting a new lead generation, mobile marketing, social media or brand awareness campaign, I’m often asked – “what is the magic bullet with digital marketing?” What are the tricks to make sure our campaign will be successful? Online, everyone seems to be looking for short cuts, but to be honest, the same as traditional marketing, there aren’t any.

Even though there are many growth hacking strategies to boost your business online, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to work for your campaign. There are absolutely no magic push this big red button; sit back and it will work process. It’s impossible to be successful with digital marketing and social media by forcing people to join your community, share all the happy experiences they had with your brand to their friends or generating leads or sales. A successful digital marketing campaign takes a lot of time and effort. Time equals money so don’t believe anything is “free” online.

With traditional offline networking, when you are going to a new networking meeting, there might be a good chance that you don’t know anyone at the meeting. If you are hoping to meet new people, generate leads or sales, do you shout at people how great you are, that they should follow you, and only talk about what is going on in your world? I’m pretty sure if you are doing this by shouting information about your products and services you’re basically chasing people away.

Getting the basics right with digital marketing

It’s really funny that so many brands are still getting the basics completely wrong with digital marketing and social media. With social media, it’s practically the same as traditional networking and does cost effort and time in making it a success. Focusing on only building a huge network of followers that are not willing to help and support you with your business goals doesn’t mean anything.

Another huge mistake online is that there are many self-proclaimed “experts” that basically automates everything. Even though you should have some level of automation in your digital marketing campaign, you cannot automate successful engagement and providing value to your target audience.

The ROI of digital marketing

Do you really understand the value of your digital marketing and social media campaign? The value of marketing online comes from action and when it supports your business goals 100%. If you are connecting and engaging with your target audience on a personal level, you have a gold mine.

You don’t always have to generate leads or sales with digital marketing if you are building brand identity, creating conversation or using it for customer support. These are all marketing expenditures that will be fully paid back in time through brand loyalty and word of mouth marketing.

Personal branding

If you are using various digital marketing and social media strategies to build your digital footprint online, the same rules apply. It takes hard work and dedication to build your personal brand online. Communication, conversion and consideration are all great words that you should use when building your footprint online. Be yourself, be authentic and always be transparent.

There’s absolutely no magic trick with online marketing success. It’s not a tick. It takes hard work, dedication and time to truly stand out from everyone else. The online world is getting more crowded by the day and is full of noise.