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When we think of digital marketers, we picture bespectacled millennials in their mid-20s sitting behind MacBook Pros straining their eyes to see all the delicate code and numbers that are driving a marketing campaign.
You won’t be wrong to think that. But that’s only half the job.
Perhaps the most overlooked skill of the digital marketer is their ability to build strategies and combine offline marketing knowledge with the online behaviors of marketing audiences.
This skill is what makes them decide where to focus a businesses’ marketing spend. A marketer who doesn’t know the difference between what’s “nice to have” and what’s “core to the business’s survival” will spend lots of money on an appearance of success but nothing to show in tangible return on investment.
The situation that paints a clear picture of a case like this is when social likes become the benchmark of success for digital marketing campaigns.
Throw a stone into a room full of digital marketers and 8 times out of 10, you’ll hit one who believes social media following is most-essential to the survival of a business. You’ll often hear them say:
“Grow your social media accounts. It’s the best way to reach your audience.”
All the while, marketers also know that social follows become less and less valuable every day. On Facebook, only about 3% of your followers see your posts organically. To reach the rest, you need to boost your post.
On Twitter and most other platforms, combined with the limited reach to your own audience, the shelf life of your posts is too small to give people enough to truly consider your product. We get it wrong when follows and comments is the only goal.
Yet, the conventional wisdom still focuses on likes and shares.
Why?
That’s because social has its place in the digital marketing mix. In the marketing funnel, it’s at the top of the funnel where the prospects get introduced to the brand. It’s like when you meet a new acquaintance, a social media follow is your handshake.
What we tend to forget is that social media follows and likes is only the beginning of a larger game. They are to be expertly combined with other tactics in order to get any valuable return on investment. Nobody makes friends out of a mere handshake. What matters is the content of your character.
Nobody wants to be sold to.
To get any real value out of social media follows and comments, focus on getting a small but loyal audience.
It’s not about the numbers, it’s about the engagement.
And to get engagement, you need to give value. Start conversations that appeal specifically to your audience. To speak to everyone is to speak to no one. Focus on your audience and speak their language.
Then do this over and over and over and over again. Every once in a while, throw in a direct-response copy like a promotion or giveaway. They’ll keep coming back.
When the time comes when they need a product or service like yours, guess who they’ll come to?
You. You who have provided value and engaged them in the way they desired.
It will take time and patience. But that’s how you will keep the light on.
