Last Updated: Sep 16, 2014
Even if you’ve been successfully marketing a business for years, internet marketing is a whole different ballgame. Here are some reasons why you might need to hire an online marketing expert.
Small business owners have to embrace some new realities. First, marketing is now largely digital. It’s an outstanding way to reach the right people efficiently and the ROI of even a small investment can be impressive. But with the amount of platforms, options, and metrics, there’s a lot to learn. You have two choices: become an expert or hire one. If you don’t have time to become an expert, here are a few reasons to consider hiring somebody.
1. You have to know a lot about keywords
Keywords used to be the cornerstone of every digital marketing effort. With efforts increasingly relying on social media, keywords are less important than in the past but especially for search engine marketing, they’re still held in high regard.
What do you know about keywords? Do you know how to do keyword research? If you only use the free tools like Google’s keyword search tool, you’re at a disadvantage. Do you want to spend $100 per month or more on the pro level tools and will you know how to use them effectively? Which ones work as advertised and which aren’t worth your time or money?
You don’t have to time to know the answers to all of those questions. A digital marketing expert does.
2. Do you understand copywriting?
No, not copyrights, as in claiming the right to perform or distribute artistic works—the art of writing ad copy. The commercials you see, the ads you hear, and the digital marketing you see and read have somebody well versed in copywriting crafting the wording if a larger company produces the ad.
Just because you’re a great writer doesn’t make you a great copywriter. Copywriters know how to craft words in a way that makes readers want to act. The difference between good and bad ad copy could be the difference between a successful campaign or a complete failure.
Digital marketing experts are either master copywriters or know somebody who is.
3. What do you know about Google Analytics?
If you have a website, you should have Google Analytics installed. It’s the gold standard of digital marketers everywhere because of its robustness and depth. Anything you could think of tracking is possible with Analytics.
But it’s a platform for techno nerds. It’s not hard to find top-level data but the valuable pro-level information is buried deep in the platform. Digital marketing experts know how to unlock the most valuable data.
4. What do you know about digital marketing terminology?
Like any industry, the digital marketing world has a whole host of terms and acronyms that sound like a different language to those outside of the field. CPC, CPM, CPA, PPC, SEO—the list keeps going. These are digital marketing 101 terms that are essential knowledge for anybody looking to be part of the field. You can look them up but do you know how to apply them to your campaigns?
5. Do you know what you landing page should look like?
Sure, web design is subjective but measuring how many people take action when they reach your website is easily measurable. That all depends on having a website that leads them down the conversion funnel. Do you know how to create that funnel? It starts with your landing page. Possibly not one page but multiple pages depending on the ad they click on or the website they come from.
6. Are you up on current social media trends?
Did you read the newest industry statistics that probably came out this morning? Have you been to Facebook’s online newsroom today to check for policy changes? Social media is evolving so fast that industry experts have to read the latest reports nearly every day.
What was a best practice last week may have changed. Optimum image sizes, rules about what to place in a headline or include in an image file have changed multiple times in the recent past. A digital marketing expert is reading and learning every day.
7. How about social media ad platforms?
In the early days of digital marketing Google was all you needed to know. Today it’s Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and soon, Instagram and Pinterest will be key players in online advertisers if industry insiders are correct. Each platform has its own advertising engine that reports data differently. Constructing ads and understanding each platform’s algorithm is a monumental task.
Bottom Line
The problem isn’t that you can’t learn everything; it’s that you don’t have time. You have a business to run. Spending time trying to become an expert at everything that makes your business run is unrealistic.
Effective digital marketing requires a sizable budget. If you’re going to make a large investment into getting the word out, make sure an expert is helping you get the best ROI.
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