Digital Marketing Hype Vs. Reality: 3 Examples & 5 Ways To Separate

In digital marketing, there’s always the next big thing. Always a hot trend. Always a different strategy to consider. And they often come with considerable hype. There’s no shortage of tools, apps, or best practices that “will take your business to the next level.” (After all, who better to market something than marketers themselves? ; ) 

Sure, some work, but as a digital marketing agency focused on delivering real results, we’ve learned most of them don’t.

So how do you know whether it’s something you should invest your time & effort into?

Here are our top 3 most overly-hyped things in digital marketing and 5 questions you can ask to separate the marketing tactic pretenders from the contenders.

EXAMPLE #1 SEO: Ranking for Keywords Just to Rank

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a big part of most digital marketing agencies’ strategies. In our experiences, it’s the highest quality traffic you can get so the hype is real if you take the right approach. By getting too excited that you’re ranking for certain keywords but if nobody is searching for those keywords! Or the keyword is not relevant to your business, or the search queries are low-converting. If any of those are true, you won’t see your desired result of getting more traffic and customers. 

We once met a fellow who pointed out proudly that he was ranked #1 for ‘York Region advertising agency’. He was but if we look at what Google tells us about the number of searches monthly:

He was ranking for this…

When he should have been ranking for this…

Or, better yet, this…

(The Marketing Garage actually ranks on the first page for this term. Are we good at SEO or what?)

Don’t know what keywords YOU should rank for? Here’s how to find the best ones?

EXAMPLE #2 – Facebook – You’re Still Focused On Getting Page Followers

The days of building up a Facebook fan base and then posting on your page on the assumption that everyone who follows you will see it is over. Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social sites changed their algorithms over the last ten years to such a degree that the average percent of a Facebook page’s fans who actually see their posts organically (without paid boosting) declined from 16% to less than 1%. 

This is an old chart from 2014. You can imagine where it’s gone since!

It’s become a paid advertising channel. The good news is that, in the right hands, marketing messages on social sites can be hyper-targeted by geography, job titles, and interests and provide a way to test messaging.

EXAMPLE #3 – The Big Website Build

We often say that building or re-building a website is kinda like giving birth. It’s going to take 9 months and there’s a lot of pain involved. Of course, website development companies want you to do that big expensive rebuild but if you look at the biggest, smartest sites out there – Google, Amazon, Facebook – you may notice something: they never seem to undergo these massive complete overhauls. They just constantly tune. The changes they make are almost imperceptible but they just help the site getting better and better and better.

Of course, the other related mistake people make is they assume that once they have a website up and running it’s time to move on to something else. The reality is, with most digital marketing tools like a website, it is a continuous process that requires constant improvement. 

Smart digital marketers study the data from Google Analytics and then use click maps and visitor recording sessions to understand where their site is leaking money. Then act on that data (vs boardroom burnout wanting something fresh) to move a section, tweak a button, fix a page, add a chatbot, etc.

This scroll map showed that almost nobody was getting to the bottom of this site suggesting an opportunity to shorten and redesign the bottom half. The top half was working fine.

5 Questions To Ask To Separate Digital Marketing Hype From Reality

How do you know which digital marketing trends to jump on immediately? Which ones should you skip over? You need to dig a little deeper:

1. Look at case studies: You can learn a lot about the success of a strategy by reading case studies. They can tell you what has worked for other companies and what hasn’t. Just make sure they’re really case studies: they demonstrate real results with real numbers, not just theory or faith.

2. Does it fit your business model? Not every trendy digital marketing strategy will fit your business model. More importantly, how do you monetize it? How will the strategy help you get more leads, increase sales, and fit into your current sales and marketing process? An Instagram program that generates direct visits to a company’s Shopify site probably won’t help an insurance company that uses a salesforce.

3. Are other companies in your industry doing it? What are the leaders in your industry up to? Have they jumped on the latest trend? If yes, what are they doing? Could you adopt it for your business? (We’re big believers in ‘R&D’: rip-off & duplicate. : ) If not, there is probably a good reason for it – see if you can find out why. 

4. Trend or fad? What does your gut tell you? Do you think the tactic is a long-term trend or a fad that will fizzle out quickly? It’s not an easy question to answer. If you see some potential, commit to looking into it further. If you think it is a fad, keep the idea in mind and monitor it. A fad could turn into a trend and then become a staple. Just look how much social media has evolved over the past 15+ years. A fad is a wave but a trend is a tide. What’s TikTok?

5. Listen to the experts: What do marketing experts have to say about the trend or strategy you are considering? Read some blogs, listen to podcasts, and watch some videos from a variety of marketers to get a better sense of if it’s worth pursuing. But like case studies, be wary of ‘experts’ who don’t offer real results and just have a vested interest in promoting it. Some of our favourite experts include MOZ, Search Engine Journal, and Conversion Rate Experts. (Not so big on Social Media Examiner.)

Like many of our clients, you are inundated with new marketing opportunities all the time. Some are very enticing, but most are not worth your time unless you are willing to invest full force into a strategy. Not sure if a digital marketing strategy makes sense for your business? Ask us about doing one of our data-driven audits.

The Marketing Garage is an award-winning Toronto digital marketing agency. Our data-driven approach combines traditional proven ad development techniques with the test & learn capabilities of today’s online marketing.