Navigating The Digital Fog

Sharon Latour
Aug 9, 2017 · 2 min read

Small to medium sized businesses often struggle to obtain meaningful results with their digital marketing. The advancements in technology since the early 2000’s were supposed to make online marketing simpler but have they?

If you Google search “digital marketing” you will get close to 70 million hits. All comprised of the best way to market digitally and filled with people’s opinions or $39.00 e — books. The rapid speed at which innovation and change are occurring has led to a complex and overwhelming environment for someone with minimal knowledge in this area to navigate through. I call it the ‘digital marketing fog’.

The largest shift in the last 20 years has been the shift in control from businesses to consumer.

In the past, consumers used to have minimal information about the product other than what the seller would provide them with. Now, consumers have loads of information about the product such as, unbiased reviews, social media posts, price comparisons, all of which tie into their decision-making prior to purchasing. In simpler terms, the largest change in the past 20 years has been consumer behaviour. The better understanding businesses have about the modern-day consumer behaviour, the easier it will be for them to retain them.

The biggest mistake a lot of SMEs have is jumping head-first into their digital marketing initiatives without a clear understanding of context vs information. Your blog might be amazing but publishing an incomplete link on Twitter won’t cut it. While the “digital marketing fog” gets more and more complex with new platforms, that doesn’t mean you can ignore the whole thing and push it aside as a fad.

One good piece of advice I could give any SME is to start with the basics. Don’t get too ahead of yourself if you don’t fully understand the whole thing — do and reiterate. Take it slow and leverage one platform at a time if you go d-i-y. Make sure that you are educating yourself and your employees along the way — take some online courses, and learn some more. Don’t be afraid to ask questions.

But more importantly — start to do more, be a practitioner. The fog is tough to navigate through, but it is definitely possible and like with anything you need to practice more to master it.

This post was first published on sharonlatour.com

Sharon Latour

Written by

Mauritian born Australian entrepreneur. QB @ Marketing Bee.

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