Why businesses can become disillusioned with one-dimensional digital marketing

With well over 20 years of small business ownership in Perth I think I can say I've tried my fair share of marketing methodologies.

Some have provided me with a great deal of success and others were an outright waste of time and money. I still shudder at the thousands I threw away on 3 x 3 booths at the wrong expos!

And I've found that what might be an unmitigated disaster for one business might be hugely successful for another (yes, including 3 x 3 booths at expos). 

But how could that be? 

I mean, if we just throw a mountain of money at digital marketing we'll gain more sales won't we?

The answer is not necessarily so - and the reason is because no two businesses and their target markets are the same.

All businesses differ in the way they operate. Their costs differ, their personnel differ, the way they communicate with existing clients and prospects differ - the list is endless. Not only that, the market segments they're targeting will no doubt have different buying behaviours, disposable incomes and decision making processes too.

Take a moment to view the chart below which I've copied from one of my own client's Adwords campaigns.

If you look closely you can see an unusually high number of tablet users (marked by the red bars) and that's because my client's main target market is women 65 and over.

These visitors tend to use tablets as their preferred technology (confirmed by the dark blue square on the Demographics graphic).

You could generally expect these users to spend more time researching before they purchase because they are generally more discretionary in their buying habits, have more free time and use technology and online social networks less efficiently. Moreover, they will often use the phone to finalise a purchase - something that can be difficult to measure.

Keeping that in mind, think about the key differences with the Gen X'ers shown below who are time poor, work full time and will happily buy online. This group is taken from one of my clients who has a more technical product on offer.

You can see for yourself in the Gen X'ers graphic - there's hardly a tablet to be seen and there's a high rate of conversions (desired outcomes such as sales or leads) on PC. 

The outcomes we can expect to see from these two clients are vastly different and there is no single mode of marketing or metrics that could accommodate these huge variations in consumer behaviours. 

It doesn't take much insight to see why it would be a really bad idea for me to provide these two different businesses with the same set of marketing tools and metrics and yet that is exactly what most digital marketing agencies do.

One size does not fit all!

This is why many small businesses can become disillusioned with digital marketing. They're being told that website traffic, Instagram "likes" and Facebook engagement are measures of business success and the truth of the matter is they are not.

Real business success is measured by an increase in sales, leads, profitability, orders and new clients, and those are the things your marketer should be working towards. If they're telling you otherwise and can't think outside the Adwords box then it might be time for a change.

After all, we're all in business to make money right?