Everything Is "With" Not "Instead Of"

Want to know if the Digital Marketing agency you’re working with truly understands the "marketing" part of your business equation?

All you have to do is see how well that Digital Marketing agency integrates with everything you’re currently doing – from campaigns to other agencies. If all your Digital Marketing shop does is try to tell you that the "old ways" of Marketing and Communication simply don’t work anymore, and you need to be shifting all of your marketing dollars to the online world, please do show them the door.

Digital Marketing is not the silver bullet. Digital Marketing is not the only marketing a brand should be doing.

Branding works. Traditional mass media advertising words. Direct Marketing works. PR works. And every other niche of Marketing, Advertising and Communications still works too. It’s a matter of understanding the strategy of the brand, the marketplace of your consumer and then implementing a healthy strategy that will help you achieve your business goals and ROI. Yes, for some brands, that will mean a heavier focus on the Digital Marketing component, but it might also mean looking at your market from a different perspective. And yes, because of the growth of Internet usage and the multitude of new opportunities, Digital Marketing definitely deserves a seat at the adult table of a proper marketing mix.

Everything is "with" not "instead of."

Some of the brands understand this so well. I’ve been in meetings where a CMO has shown me how their 30-second spot drives sales (and when they stop the TV advertising, the sales plummet) and how their Social Media activity keeps the interest and loyalty in-between and during campaigns. It’s that healthy balance that we all too often forget about. Just the other day (March 24th, 2010, to be exact), eMarketer had a news item titled, Combining the Strengths of Social and E-Mail, which stated:

“‘Even though people are spending more time using social media, they are not abandoning e-mail,’ said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, Maximizing the E-Mail/Social Media Connection. ‘The two channels can help each other, offering the opportunity for marketers to create deeper connections.’ More than four in 10 business executives surveyed by StrongMail said integrating e-mail and social was one of their most important initiatives for 2010, just after improving e-mail performance and targeting and growing opt-in lists."

And you thought email was dead.

No marketing channel is dead. Some are tired. Some are not being used to their best of their ability. Some Marketers are very lazy. But, those who are really treating their Marketing like the art that it is are developing, nurturing and experiencing a masterpiece. Never before have Marketers had this many amazing, interesting and measurable tools to do our trade.

The trick is in not getting caught up in the latest shiny object, but in getting re-caught up with metrics, measurement, a healthy marketing mix and results.