Lately it seems that the only thing that counts is digital. Small businesses are focusing their campaigns on digital; they think that publishing two posts on Facebook , three on Twitter and five on Instagram will be enough.
Well, I think they are very wrong. I do not argue, God forbid (and my income), that Digital Marketing is a reality that is increasingly gaining strength and weight for companies, but I think we are forgetting that Marketing goes beyond the digital.
I often say in my sessions that “Marketing is the eighth art” . It is first and foremost RESEARCH . At first it acts on the opportunity, need and solution, and then it focuses on resources, objectives and actions. Well, it is not enough to work only on the digital part.
Most small businesses have seen social media as a unique opportunity to “make themselves known .” The problem is that they think it’s free, and nothing could be further from the truth. Facebook’s organic reach is the number of people who see a non-paid post from their page on their device. From 2007 to 2012, the percentage was more than remarkable and the companies’ posts were seen by the majority of their users.
digital marketing
But since then, the actual average viewing rate has dropped to 16% on average. That is, if a restaurant posted its latest signature dish to its 1,000 followers, it would only be list of telegram users in iran shown to 160 of them. But that's not the worst part, since that year the drop has continued…
By 2014, according to a study by Edgerank Checker , the percentage had fallen to 6.5% . If we go back to the restaurant example, out of 1,000 people only 65 would view the post in the latest news.
In 2016, a new algorithm was introduced that prioritized viewing posts from family and friends over those from pages; it was found that the percentage of famous people was between 2 and 4 …
Although Facebook claims that the organic figure is low because there are many publications and the most valuable and/or most relevant publications must be brought closer to the user, it is also true that there may be an “economic” issue behind it. This is simple: if companies want to increase this percentage, they have the possibility of carrying out paid campaigns, campaigns that achieve impacts on a previously selected audience.
And this is the great danger. Many small businesses have been comfortable in recent years; it was enough for them to publish some promotions, photos of their offers, of their renovated facilities or of the new addition to the team, forgetting the creativity of what they published, forgetting that there is life after social networks and, above all, forgetting that social networks are for convincing and not for selling.
Digital is necessary and essential, but Marketing has to surround itself with satellites in the form of strategies that help it advance.
And this is where I ask a series of questions, they are rhetorical questions, but if you want (and can), try to answer them:
I repeat that I am not saying that Digital Marketing is negative, far from it, but it should not be the only strategy of your company. What is more, offline actions help to enhance everything we do digitally. But in a world where it is increasingly difficult to stand out “organically speaking” , we will need everything we do to be under the same umbrella of objectives.
Guerrilla Marketing is one of the most creative (and economical) actions you can carry out. It also encourages Buzz Marketing.
Direct Marketing has a lot to do with “real time” , and few things are more recognized in sales than the current situation.
As you can see, in Marketing everything counts, but we do know and understand that digital is just one more thing. It is one wing of the plane, but not the only one. It is a way of having the same square meters as any multinational, but the latter have more money to decorate them. It is a means, but not an end.