Digital marketing development (or Internet marketing, or online marketing) has become the norm when it comes to advertising products and services. It belongs to the tendencies of the so-called new technology that makes business easier and more efficient but also enables better customer relationships and greater investment in online presence.
Digital marketing development very often suffers from the problem of mistrust that unwraps in two directions: the mistrust of customers towards e-commerce and the mistrust of entrepreneurs that it’s something worth investing in. Both go hand in hand.
Misconceptions About Digital Marketing Development
Many of the websites created thanks to the initial euphoria are outdated, unoptimized for viewing on mobile phones, and often poorly formatted and visually unattractive, which naturally creates resistance among visitors. On the other hand, the resistance of visitors creates the impression that the market doesn’t exist and that it isn’t worth investing in, and everything goes around in an endless circle.
Those brave (some would say rare) who, however, decide to advertise on the Internet encounter another problem: ignorance of the matter. Terms such as cost-per-click (CPC), click-through rate (CTR), return on investment (ROI), impressions, conversions, etc. are still far from the language of ordinary people in much of the world.
The same goes for understanding of the importance of hosting for your brand’s website. Performing this step properly is of the same weight as choosing a quality digital agency. Choosing a reputable web hosting provider will attract more visitors to your website, provide them with a satisfactory experience, and, like Houston digital marketing agency, improve your website’s ranking on Google.
MySQL hosting belongs to a group of most appealing services in regard to this. There are only a few companies out there that offer lists of features for all types of websites. A good MySQL host will include all essential characteristics in the package, such as optimal website speed and loading times, unlimited bandwidth, and good security. This is exactly what you need, whether you’re starting your website from scratch or want to boost traffic to it.
The whole Internet marketing area hasn’t progressed so much (but, hand in hand, it’s progressing by giant steps) that it’s possible to compare the results of different types of campaigns globally and decide on the one that’s best for their own businesses, which is why website owners are often left to the recommendations of expert agencies and individuals who, of course, have their own motives.
Choose the Best for Your Business
The agency will generally recommend the service in which it’s the most professional or which brings it the highest profit for the time invested.
Whether it’s advertising on Google, Facebook, SEO optimization, or something else, the recommendation of the marketing expert will very much depend on the profile of the marketing expert you’re talking to. This, of course, has to do with the fact that everyone values their own area the most, but it shouldn’t be ruled out that the motives are of a different nature.
1. First, the comfort zone.
The more you work with a particular tool, the more likely you are to continue using it in the future, especially if it has worked. But the question here isn’t whether a certain service will give results or not; the question is which service will bring the client the best results for the money invested.
2. Secondly, and perhaps more important:
The agency may have selfish motives for recommending a particular service.
Selfishness may be too strong a word, but the influence that personal motives have on a professional recommendation, often unconsciously, shouldn’t be neglected. If the recommendation coincides with the most expensive service, you may need to seek a second opinion, if for no other reason, then at least as a precaution.
The Price Determines the Results of the Campaign
No one can guarantee you a predefined number of clicks, visits, or conversions. Every business is specific, and so is digital marketing development. In some areas, the competition is huge, while in others, no one even thinks about advertising. The price that all market participants will have to pay also depends on the competition and its readiness to pay for advertising. higher cost means fewer clicks within your budget.
Beware of promises of a fixed number of ad clicks, regardless of the area of business. An experienced expert is able to make a very good estimate based on market analysis and available budget, but the idea that “X“ dollars will buy you “Y“ clicks regardless of everything else is optimistic at best and very unprofessional at worst.
The Analysis of the Effect of the Campaign Is Crucial for Its Success
Advertising without a way to measure campaign results is a waste of money. An Internet marketing campaign that doesn’t measure its own results is unsuccessful. Period.
Online sales are easy and specific: a customer visits your website, orders a product, and you have a concrete result. It’s more complicated with services, and especially with services that require direct contact with clients.
No matter what you decide on—a special phone number just for the campaign, some procedure on the website (visiting the contact page, sending a message, etc.), you must have a way to:
- see if the campaign is working
- use these results to improve your campaign
How much the agency or individual you hired is willing to find a way to measure the results and quality of their own work will show you how much they care about the work they do and about you as their client.
Fast Results = Big Consequences
Anything that promises fast results can cause a penalty from Google. If the top results of an Internet marketing strategy were so easily achievable, everyone would use them, and it would no longer be effective.
Google has a strict policy regarding best practices for website optimization, and one of them is that any attempt to aggressively influence search results by building a large number of low-quality backlinks causes automatic penalties and downgrading of the website, and thus visits on it.
Google’s goal has always been to offer its users the best and most relevant search results. The number of backlinks from other websites is one of the most important factors in determining how high-quality and relevant a page is. But not any links—quality links from high-ranking websites.
Once penalized, a website has a long way to go to recover its previous traffic, so any decision to quickly and easily increase the number of visitors is a sure recipe for a long and stressful recovery.
The Campaign Alone Sometimes Isn’t Enough
For example, a Facebook campaign to increase the number of likes is justified only if you plan to offer regular and original content.
Social networks are a great way to promote your own business, and Facebook still stands out in front of everyone, although Instagram is slowly but surely moving towards the first place in terms of the positive effects of advertising on social networks. After all, who wouldn’t want to be at the fingertips of their target group at a time when they are dedicated to relaxation instead of serious work at the computer or smartphone?
Facebook campaigns yield results. They are still quite affordable as an Internet marketing tool, provide excellent segmentation by demographics and interests, and, unlike some other ads, aren’t too intrusive and are nicely integrated into the Facebook interface.
On the other hand, Facebook has been working for years to reduce the usefulness of official pages as a promotional tool by trying to force them to pay for advertising, which it ultimately succeeds in doing. In order for the page to remain visible to users, it’s necessary to have a high level of interaction with them, and even that doesn’t guarantee an absolute result.
For that reason, if you don’t plan to regularly publish interesting and original content on your business page, interact with “fans,“ and invest a lot of time, then the campaign to increase the number of likes is a failed investment. You’ll achieve better results with a classic advertising campaign for the direct sale of products and services intended for your target group.
Quality Internet Marketing Costs a Lot
As with everything else, with digital marketing development, you get as much as you’re willing to pay. If you ever think for some offer is too good to be true, you’re probably right.
There are two types of savings: one is saving money, and the other is saving quality. You can save by paying less, or you can save by getting much better results for a higher price. And while saving money is direct and obvious, saving quality is usually more profitable.
Saving money often carries hidden costs, and the price of unprofessional campaign management is paid exclusively by the client. After all, that’s fine because it’s the client who has the final choice regarding the agency or the people he/she trusts.
Think about this both when choosing the agency you pay for services and when choosing the service package of a particular agency. It’s far from true that Internet marketing experts don’t take care of their clients but, as in everything, their priorities are based, at least in part, on financial motives.
There’s No Magic Wand for Results
No one can promise you a specific position on Google. It depends on about 200 factors. Some of them are very important—the ranking of the website and specific pages, the number of backlinks and their quality, etc.—while others are a little less important, such as, say, the number of shares on social networks.
These factors alone are enough to complicate the whole situation around the ranking of results. Now, add to that the competitors who don’t sit still while you do the optimization and Google, who’s waiting for someone to make a mistake in order to impose a penalty.
Despite all this, it’s possible to achieve great, visible, and significant results, but any form of guarantee of a certain position in the search results is usually an indicator of complete naivety, if not incompetence. As mentioned earlier, an experienced expert is able to make a pretty good assumption of the scope of website optimization, but the promised result in advance is something that experienced experts will never allow themselves.
No Result Lasts Forever
The position acquired in the search results may be lost. SEO optimization, like any other digital marketing development tool, is constantly evolving and depends on changes in the Google algorithm. Some of these changes are slow and give website owners and professionals time to adjust, but some happen overnight and can have huge consequences for traffic and position in search results.
This is especially true for some techniques that are on the border of Google’s best practices but can easily be found on the wrong side with the next change. Top-quality content with plenty of backlinks and high page and website rankings will always be a strong signal to Google that the page is relevant and deserves a high position in search results.
This, of course, doesn’t mean that your competitors will rest and that they won’t try to gain a significant position for the same search terms with their online marketing strategy.
The Achieved Traffic Isn’t Crucial
The number of visits to the website through the Google Ads campaign isn’t a valid measure of success; Google guarantees the visit by way of payment.
Google Ads charges per click (PPC). This means that each advertising campaign will have a certain, practically guaranteed number of clicks in the search results, depending on the budget and the price of the click, and regardless of its success. Two campaigns with the same budget and number of clicks can have completely different results, depending on other criteria.
The number of ad impressions in search results alone isn’t a measure of success. At first glance, it may seem that more views within the same budget is more desirable because more people will see the ad, but remember: users don’t come to Google to watch ads, but to hire a company that offers the services they need. A click-free preview only means that the click ended in another, competing ad.
Although both of these criteria alone don’t show the success of the campaign, they do so together. CTR is the percentage of clicks and ad impressions and the higher this percentage, the more successful the campaign.
A high CTR indicates that your ad meets the needs of your customers and is often clicked on. Whether it will convert after that depends on other factors, but a high CTR directly raises the ad’s quality score and thus indirectly lowers its average CPC and improves its position relative to the competition.
Everyone prays for their own services.
If you want to hire an Internet marketing agency, see how professionally it has done the job—for itself.
Internet marketing is probably one of the most competitive areas in search results, if for no other reason than because it’s the job of the competition to be highly ranked in the same results. Any search for terms such as “digital marketing,” “SEO optimization,” or “advertising on Google“ is direct and the best advertisement for agencies and individuals who are on the first page of Google search results.
Of course, you shouldn’t ignore the price if you have a limited budget, but isn’t it logical that a company that offers digital marketing development itself has a superbly designed website that opens quickly, is easy to navigate, has original content, and offers a unique user experience? Shouldn’t the same be true for companies that offer Google advertising services and whose ads are far from attractive?
Conclusion
Top results require the understanding of professionals and clients in order for the business to be done in the best possible way and for satisfied clients to create new demand for digital marketing development services that obviously yield results.
The better the clients understand the benefits, but also the disadvantages, of individual Internet marketing strategies for their own businesses, the more informed they will be, and they will decide on the one that suits them best and will feel a greater degree of satisfaction with the use of professional services.
Unfortunately, there will always be those who’ll offer quick results and guaranteed success, and there’s hope that these promises will be a measure of their self-confidence and expertise, not an opportunity to offer promises they won’t be able to deliver later and perhaps do more damage than their intention was.
