Working in digital marketing for almost 20 years means constantly hearing advice handed down as doctrine and as a guarantee of success. With every new concept that emerges in the business and marketing world, a flood of professionals falls into the trap of believing that it should all be taken literally, like a ready-made little recipe that works the same way for any company and any product. But we know it’s not quite like that. Nothing that really works can be implemented in a day or two without prior study or real knowledge of what will be done and what results it will bring. Here are some of these doctrines, which take time and hard work to show their true colors. 1. Knowing your business’s keywords is mandatory Talking about keywords has become more than a fad. There isn’t a single company working in digital that hasn’t bothered to plan which keywords could be worked on in the business.
But knowing exactly how your audience looks for you is useless if there is no plan of concrete actions and goals to incorporate this into every strategy. Keywords aren’t just in your language, but also in your website’s code, in the campaigns you run, in your content, and in the way your company is mentioned by partners. In addition, they need to be constantly updated by a professional who understands SEO and makes good use of the platforms. The most important thing here is to identify how your company searches for your product or service, not how you want them to search. 2. Your company is required to have a content blog
It’s no accident that Google has articles in its results for anything you search for. There is a vast number of small blogs with shallow content ranking first on Google’s pages, all conveying an image even worse than that of each company’s official website. There is no point in creating a content blog for your company if all the articles are shallow, don’t address your customers’ pain points, and aren’t conceived within a robust strategy. The best content is written in smaller quantities, by the professionals who are actually experiencing the sector, and delivered to customers in a personal and segmented way. 3. You are told you must hire a digital marketing agency There will be no shortage of offers urging your company to quickly sign up with a digital marketing agency that promises you the world. Hiring a digital marketing agency without knowing exactly what you want from it, without setting real and tangible goals, and without the patience to wait for long-term results will not be advantageous in the least. Nor is there any point in thinking that the agency will be responsible for all your marketing work. You need an employee, or your own internal control, overseeing the actions the agency carries out and understanding the processes from start to finish. Working on your organization’s digital marketing isn’t a whim; it’s a necessity. You just need to be smart enough not to fall for the marketing smooth talk of those who pretend to know what they are dealing with.
My tip here is: don’t outsource your business’s intelligence to an agency. Outsource the manual process; after all, no agency knows your business or is as dedicated to it as you are. Beware of agencies that promise miracles; pretty monthly reports mean nothing. What really matters are the results we can see, and that goes far beyond isolated pieces. Your strategy today may be focused on lead generation, but know that this is only the beginning.
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