Wired magazine announced the extinction of traditional advertising back in ’94. Ever since its torturous death, marketing departments have adopted two broad solutions:
- Hire a digital marketing agency
- Do it all yourself because how hard can it really be?
If you know how to use Facebook, you know how to manage an online campaign, right? Well... no. Online marketing requires a rare blend of marketing smarts, editorial brilliance, and expertise in search, social media, code, and technology. These days, agencies may even bundle business management into their marketing package. This breadth of skill demands knowledge of a niche that has become decidedly difficult to master.
Revenue and You
A digital marketing agency won't limit itself to creating and sustaining your rank and market share. Nothing great was ever built through stasis, after all, so an agency will stretch your local, and even national, borders, pushing you into the brave new world of globalization. Why should you limit your profits to your city when the internet has made those borders evaporate?
Online marketing is about more than brand power. Your business’ lifeblood should flow through all the ones and zeroes of the internet. Websites and e-commerce come with a magic side effect: they carry no rentals, utility bills, or staffing costs, so you should be able to watch your profit margins grow right before your eyes.
E-commerce is winning the business model war for excellent reason: it overcame the recession and is worth $294 billion. Nonetheless, $4 trillion in products were abandoned in online shopping carts in 2014, and this is where your agency steps in. By studying metrics, consumer behavior, and conversion, an agency will identify glitches and leverage converting assets.
Branding in a Titanic World
There are more than a billion websites on the internet, and Twitter users add 500 million tweets every 24 hours. This doesn’t prevent a professional digital marketer from telling the story of your brand across all sites and social networks. The fact that 6 billion Facebook posts are “liked” a minute doesn’t negate an agency’s ability listen to every consumer voice contributing to your brand identity. Using specialized social media listening tools and techniques, your agency will strengthen your brand wherever it's mentioned by buyers online.
The Death of Demographic Marketing
A digital marketing agency understands that your buyers’ decision-making process needs to be as sculpted as your site’s code. It’s no longer adequate to market to a single demographic, so an agency will spend time drafting and marketing to several carefully researched personas.
The marketplace is quickly shifting to virtual terrain, so an agency will hone an online campaign through media that produce genuine returns.
The era of technology has reinvented marketing utterly, requiring you to tap into social conversations in a way that tells your brand story authentically and transparently. Only a digital marketing agency has what it takes to make your brand shine online.
Casey founded Gravity Digital in 2000 after serving as the Internet Services Director for a Nashville-based Ad Agency. He's a rare breed that operates both left and right brain, so along with oversight of the company he's active in the creative process for our clients.
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