You say “marketing”, but you mean “advertising”…let’s call the whole thing off?

Sam Liban
Sam Liban
Aug 8, 2017 · 2 min read
Image found on Wikipedia; Author: webtwigs; licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Yes, this is a rant. It will probably not change anything nor help anyone in any way — yet — its time for it. I need it.

Something really weird has taken hold of first the internet, then the real world and now we have a situation best described by the acronym “SNAFU” (search it, but if you are a US citizen, please note there are offending words included in it — be warned!).

Online or digital marketing.

Almost in 90%, the term refers to pure advertising in the different digital channels — from SEM (again the term marketing is included, here as well…for unbelievably 2 different systems of advertising/positioning a website/-content in a search engine), display (oh, just don’t get me started about banners…what a waste of budgets) and certainly not least the wonderful world of Social Media (you know, like the blue selfie platform with advertising that is sooo social for 30/40somethings like us)…enough ranting:

Yet there is the great opportunity to actually do digital marketing.

IMHO digital marketing is also about Product, Price, Place and Promotion — maybe we could discuss if “Promotion” is better replaced by “People” as it could be, that the “word-of-mouth”, better “word-of-personal-broadcasting”, has reached completely new levels and “classical digital advertising” such as my beloved (NOT) display ads are only producing results shaming the ad media industry…well, the many good people in it, at least.

The really hard part of “digital marketing”

The real hard truth about digital marketing is this: It is fragmented like hell.
It therefore takes efforts unbelievable in comparison to the good old “10–45sec spot in the fitting placement”.

So dealing with these fragmentation in target groups, channels and content format is a nightmare — yet, as few prove — given the right dose of courage, a “lean advertising” approach (“build, measure, learn”, remember? — for each and every client/product!) and the right mixture of people working together and not separated into “strategy, creation, development” or such silos, you can create real digital marketing.

Maybe we should not call the whole thing off?

Sam Liban

Written by

Sam Liban

Blockchain consultant, ScrumMaster & PO, former digital marketing & advertising expert. 1st startup 1999. Servant leader & lean biz developer.

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