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Despite the ubiquity of digital and mobile in marketing today \u2014 from Under Armour\u2019s \u201cI Will What I Want\u201d campaign to Let\u2019s Go Hollywood themed ads \u2014 many marketing professionals don\u2019t truly understand the digital world, don\u2019t believe in its reach, and, critically, don\u2019t understand how to craft targeted digital marketing campaigns that drive business results.<\/p>\n
Here are my top five thoughts on the digital understanding gap \u2014 and how marketers can better understand (and leverage!) digital.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>What do you do when you hear of an interesting product or service when you\u2019re on the go? If you are one of the 77%<\/a> who are always within arm\u2019s reach of their mobile, you may well grab your phone and do some research.<\/p>\n eMarketer<\/a> forecasts 2.56 billion smartphone users by 2018, up a whopping 10.8 % from 2016. The continued evolution of smartphones and their global distribution means that digital, and more particularly mobile, will be critical to the success of existing and new products and services well into the future.<\/p>\n Ironically, the ubiquity of digital is one of the biggest obstacles to understanding it. Smartphones and social media are easy to use in daily life, so the assumption is they are easy to use in marketing \u2014 and quick to execute. The sooner marketers learn that digital campaigns are just as complex (often more so) and need just as much planning as traditional campaigns, the sooner we will see digital marketing optimization<\/a>.<\/li>\n Anyone who witnessed the Spring 2017 Pepsi debacle can speak to how much brands stand to lose when big TV ads flop \u2014 but it\u2019s the smaller adjustments that can be made to digital campaigns that I think are the most exciting. Tools like Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics offer digital marketing professionals a relatively cost-effective way to swiftly recalibrate campaigns, making the most efficient use of almost-always limited marketing spend.<\/p>\n In addition, the ability to integrate different toolsets, all working together to effectively manage, track and report on digital efforts reduces the amount of human effort required for tasks, which means lower costs.<\/li>\n Unlike a big TV ad spot, digital campaigns start small \u2014 ideally as small as your smartphone screen. As a result, marketers often don\u2019t understand the complexity of what goes into a good digital experience.<\/p>\n To be fair, there is a LOT to know \u2014 SEO, SEM, Analytics, UX, CX, CMS, CRM, QA, UAT and a few other acronyms that mean you need to be an expert in digital.\u00a0 And few subject matter experts can do more than one thing, simply because there is so much to know. This ubiquity mentioned above seems to have caused an inversion in logic. Clients and agency leads don\u2019t believe the experts and can\u2019t understand costs \u2014 why does it take all these people (who earn a respectable amount of money for their expertise) to create something as simple to use as the Apple Pay app?<\/p>\n Investing in proper development is a great advantage to any digital campaign \u2014 and allows for measurement throughout the development and integration of that program. By investing in development experts, user experience and creative can be tested before a program is launched and expensive missteps can be avoided (Ahem! Pepsi).<\/li>\n \n Get exclusive insights into digital Digital is inherently nimble<\/h2>\n
Digital encourages you to start small (but not think<\/em> small)<\/h3>\n
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