Your Digital Marketing Is Bologna

Why do I say Your Digital Marketing Is Bologna?

Especially because I actually sell online digital marketing solutions along with the more traditional radio advertising solutions?

Because it hit me the other day, that those people who only sell digital marketing are often selling the same line of bull, excuse me, bologna that Yellow Pages people used to sell to prove they were a good advertising investment.

Laura from Bain and Company was quoted in an article from Google:

We need to move away from last-click attribution models to something that better reflects a consumer journey, which is nonlinear and has gaps in the data.

In order to tell you why this is important, we’re going to take a minute and explain the old phone book advertising sales technique.  I learned this years ago from a co-worker who used to sell yellow pages advertising before he made the conversion to radio advertising sales.

The phone book advertising sales people would tell the businesses that advertise to track their advertising by asking some variation of this simple question:

How did you get our (business) phone number?

More than half the time, sometimes as much as 90% of the time, the customer on the other end of the phone would say:

I got your number from the phone book.

Which was probably true.  I mean, they had no reason to lie, and yes they really did get your number from the phone book.

But that’s not the right question to ask to track your advertising.

Depending on the other advertising and marketing that the business was doing, along with their word of mouth reputation, the really successful businesses already were being considered by the customer and the phone book was simply a tool to get the phone number to call the business.

The phone book does absolutely nothing to brand a business, it’s just the way we get the phone number.   That’s what I used to say all the time until Google changed the internet and Facebook changed our social communication.

Since the advent of the internet and the demise of the paper-published-phone-book-yellow-pages-directory, the phone books are a lot skinnier.

Only old people have a phone book anymore.  And by old, I’m saying 85 year olds.

Those last couple of statements are broad generalizations.  Yes, there are some 70 year olds who still have a phone book in their junk drawer in their kitchen and a few other people too.

Digital marketers for the last several years have adopted the tactic that the old yellow page advertising sales people used to use to claim credit for making your business phone ring, or any of the other ways your future customers can contact you.

C. T. R. which stands for Click Thru Rate which is the digital equivalent of asking where do you get our phone number.

Both only measure the last action taken and totally disregard all the previous marketing and advertising efforts that led to that last action or conversion.

We are not robots, we are humans.  That’s why I look at all this marketing and advertising from a human relationship standpoint that takes all of the influencing factors into consideration.

I mentioned at the beginning of this piece that I sell both radio and online advertising solutions with WOWO radio and Federated Media Digital Solutions and often use a combination of these to drive more business to my advertising partners.

While it is possible to look at Click Thru Rates and other tracking with your online and digital efforts, if I were to tell you that was the only way to determine your success, it would be a lie.  That’s why I say Your Digital Marketing Is Bologna.  There is really nothing wrong with it, just the way you are being sold and I’m sure you prefer an honest approach right?

Talk to me if you want to… talk.