Five Misconceptions about Digital Advertising

Helix House started as a digital marketing company back in 2008, so we have a few years under our belt and have heard a few misconceptions about digital advertising. Today, we’d like to address a few of the more common ones we hear. Contrary to belief, digital advertising works!

Misconception 1: Digital Advertising is Not a Significant Part of a Business Strategy

Digital advertising is a necessity in today’s digital age. It’s not something that should be treated as a “that would be nice to have” thing. It directly impacts your business strategy and should be fully integrated into it. Without it, you’re basically shutting the door on potential growth. Your website is your ‘digital shop window’ and should be treated just like you would your brick and mortar store. Draw attention to it through advertising by integrating it into your marketing plan. We understand that it’s hard to know where to start, or hard to understand what isn’t working/didn’t work in the past if you’ve tried digital advertising before. Every company can start opening their marketing plan with one simple step: look to (or build) your website. A more engaging website with an easy-to-follow customer experience — see the product, learn about it, and easy to find where to purchase it — will lend itself to digital advertising better than a website with no information and no easily accessible shop page. Therefore, that should be your first step in the process. Enhancing your website, or creating a landing page, for your digital ads to point to. This will increase customer engagement and sales almost every single time. This will, in turn, increase your brand’s presence online. Don’t forget about your social media accounts too! Customers are way more likely to judge your business off of your social media account and your interaction (or lack thereof), than anywhere else.

Misconception 2: Digital Marketing Isn’t For Everyone

Digital advertising is literally made for everyone. So many online marketing sites, like Facebook and Google, let you choose your audience. Say you have a really niche product and don’t think it will sell well to the masses. Take away the masses and market it just to your audience!It’s amazing for all businesses, large and small too. Sure, large businesses have an already established online presence, but small businesses can take over that presence with enough time and quality interactions and engagements. The key is that traffic doesn’t always matter, sales do. For many industries, size doesn’t matter when it comes to digital marketing. It’s a quality over quantity game. So the goal is to get as many sales as possible by filtering out as many unqualified/uninterested customers as possible before they get to your website. It all goes back to who your ads are targeting! Target the right people and sales will follow. Target everyone, and you’ll likely get a lot of traffic, but not a lot of sales, spending thousands of marketing dollars only to get zilch. The right digital marketing strategy finds you a middle ground — an audience that targets people looking for you without being too limiting. It works for everyone!

Misconception 3: Any Content Will Make My Website Good

Got content? Is it optimized?If the answer is either “what does that mean,” or “no,” then we have a whole slew of blogs on keywords, SEO, and writing social ads to help you out. Long story short: not all content is good content. Google and other search engines use the content on your website to figure out what your business is. Optimizing that content will help ensure that Google knows exactly where to put you. There are a ton of other benefits too, such as:

• More qualified leads
• Better traffic
• A spot on Google’s front page
• Lower CPC for paid search ads
• More brand credibility

...and so much more!

Misconception 4: Digital Marketing is Difficult to Track

Tracking digital advertising can be a learning curve, but there are tools that help make it easier. For example, if you post on Twitter or Facebook you can check your website analytics to see if there has been a spike in the number of unique visitors to your site. Google Analytics is also readily available to show you everything you need to know! This is super important because it shows you the value of every campaign, every initiative, and every sale you make. Bottom line: tracking digital advertising tells you what is working, and what needs to be changed. Thankfully, you don’t have to learn all that if you partner with someone who knows the ins and outs digital advertising. Here at Helix House, we’ll be happy to help you. We’ll even walk through every bit of data so you understand exactly what is going on in your digital advertising campaign. Transparency is the name of our game, after all. Give us a call today!

Misconception 5: Digital Advertising Does Not Work

The quick answer to this is: digital advertising works when it’s done right. It may not work immediately — the right strategy takes some time to really hone in on what works — but it will give you results if you can be patient with it. You may need to adjust the targeting, adjust the keywords, adjust the budgets, or change up your website, but it does work if you give it a little time. We understand where this myth comes from — everyone wants to go viral online. While we want that too, it’s very unrealistic that your first set of ads will produce the results you want. That’s why testing and tracking the data is so important. It lets you refine the campaign so you can hit your goals faster. Do it right, give it a little time, and you will start seeing the results you want. And if you need a little help along the way, Helix House is there for you.