Marketing is an ever-evolving industry, with new trends popping up every day to help businesses and brands connect with their customers. It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing everything you hear or read about marketing, but some of the things that get repeated most often are myths that no longer hold true in our social media and mobile world. Here’s a list of 7 marketing myths debunked, along with why they’re no longer true and what you should do instead.
- I’m too small to digitally market my business.
One of the most popular misconceptions about digital marketing is that it’s not worth the investment for a small company because they don’t have enough capital.
This couldn’t be further from the truth! Large companies do invest heavily in online marketing, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for smaller businesses to succeed too. Research proves that no matter what size company you are – whether you’re running a single-person shop or an enormous corporation – you can make use of digital marketing strategies and experience success.
Best of all? It won’t cost much to get started with these sorts of methods!
- Great products and services sell themselves
Having quality products or services is important, but what good is that if nobody knows about it? You could have a competing company and they could take your customers while you stand idly by.
Every brand needs to communicate and relate to its target audience so they can convert into customers – then once the customer has bought your product, they’ll validate your marketing claims.
- You must post several times a day to be successful on social media.
One of the more pervasive myths about digital marketing is that quantity beats quality.
This may have worked in the past, but it’s no longer the case. The idea is that if your competitors are posting 10 times per day and you post 15 times per day, then you will get more traffic than them. But this isn’t true anymore — Google has gotten smarter over time with its algorithms and it understands when companies are trying to manipulate their search results through keyword stuffing or spammy link building strategies.
For content marketing, the quality of your content is far more important than the quantity. Just one piece of exceptionally high-quality content can generate more traffic than dozens or hundreds of lower-quality pieces. Answering questions that your customers might have will bring you more organic traffic and more sales. You might even end up on the first page of search engine results, which is your goal.
- Advertising and Marketing are the same things
Advertising is a company paying for space to promote a product or a service. The goal of advertising is reaching as many people as possible who are willing to pay for what a company sells.
Marketing involves a much broader picture of how customers connect to a brand. A marketing strategy can involve running several types of advertisements, but marketing looks beyond the success of an ad campaign.
Businesses leverage advertising to promote their products and services for sale as well as establish corporate culture and branding. When employed properly and strategically, advertising can drive customer acquisition and boost sales.
- Marketing results are instant
All too often, those new to the marketing sector find themselves disappointed when their efforts do not work out immediately.
If you are not seeing a payoff to your marketing right away, surely you must be doing something wrong, right? Wrong.
If you use an online approach of marketing instead of more traditional ways – then yes, it’s true that you’ll likely see results faster than if you relied on them exclusively. But even this type of branding will still take time before paying off. It may take many clicks until one individual decides to contact you or make a purchase—and that’s just fine!
The majority of the most effective organic branding approaches are known for taking months before sizable results can be seen (even though they’re quicker than others). For example, paid advertising methods like sales funnels take some time too before getting qualified leads.
You’re going up against established opponents and big companies when using any type of branding campaign – so adjust your expectations about how long things will take accordingly.
- Creating a website is enough for your marketing.
Business owners often believe that investing in social media or a website is enough. But this isn’t true since both serve a different but interconnected goal – so neither alone is enough.
A website is one contact point, out of many others that you need to be successful in business. If people don’t see your site, how will they know about it? And if they don’t find it, how will they reach it? So it’s important to have one place where your target audience can access all information about the products/services you offer and then connect with you or buy online with ease – which typically fulfils the aim of having a website at all.
Meanwhile, utilising social media marketing to create a community of engaged fanbase through effective social media strategies, provides another way for potential buyers to come across your brand- converting them into customers.
- WordPress and Shopify are bad
Not. At. All. Actually, we love them!
There is a reason WordPress is the most used website building system in the world: It’s really good because hundreds of thousands of developers have invested hundreds of thousands of hours into these website building systems.
It’s an honourable ambition to do everything from scratch but it is:
- Likely going to fail or lack quality
- Going to take lots of precious time and money
- Going to be less flexible for your future plans.
You are not going to find a developer who can set you up with that quality, functionality, and flexibility within a few months. You’ll also spend all your budget and more on tech and code and likely notice that it doesn’t necessarily look pretty. Because the coder is no designer and you’ll have to spend even more on that.
Also: What if you want to add new functionality like a blog or an e-learning platform later on?
You’ll have to get that coder back to do it because you can do nothing on your own in that code maze.
It is much better to start with a reliable and standard website utilising the already established website building systems and hire developers to customise it and make it yours!
Conclusion
Not everyone is lucky enough to afford the expensive marketing campaigns of large brands. However, that does not mean that marketing strategies are useless! There are many ways to market your company without relying on a hefty bank account. Avoiding these traps and following some simple steps will help you grow your business and make it stand out among
If you’re still wondering “Is that everything? Did I get it all?”Let’s talk!
At Feur Media House, we’ve worked alongside various industries from support services to skin care. Our services range from social media strategy and content creation, paid advertisements to complete website overhauls, Feur’s experienced marketing and development teams have the skills to help your business. We want to learn about your business, empower your marketing team and be your creative partner. contact us at info@feur.com.au
