Does Social Media marketing make you sick?
I've been a traditional marketer. I've enjoyed working in advertising, handling Outdoor Displays and print ads. But even I have to admit that the business world is going digital and so are the marketing roles. Rebelling against new media is, at this point, futile. I may be a traditionalist at heart (I still try to buy a print copy of a newspaper when I can) but marketing departments are moving rapidly towards Digital Marketing and Analytics.
And this has led me to the path I am in today - I've worked on Digital Marketing in my career but I've never committed to it. I've built web pages with CMS tools, I've led digital ad campaigns, and I've flirted with the idea of moving into Social media marketing but something always holds me back.
I think reading some of the posts in the Reddit Marketing community reflect my angst. At this point in my career the questions I have are:
A. Is it important to be Digital Marketing savvy?
B. Do I have to like it?
My sense with the first question is that, I think, businesses are over inflating the importance of Digital Marketing. Some companies even hire Digital Marketing managers who do not have an understanding of Marketing and/or have Business Acumen. While I think a web presence is important so are your traditional marketing channels, depending on your business. Sure you can (and you should) skew more towards digital and assign more campaign $ to it, but I cannot think of a large business in this world completely surviving without a traditional marketing team; even Google and Facebook advertises through Outdoor display ads. To answer the question, it is important to be Digital Marketing savvy without losing your Marketing mojo. You need to know enough to survive when the pool of opportunity for traditional media is dry.
The second question adds more confusion. I hate various aspects of digital marketing - Social media marketing, digital advertising including ad words, etc. The digital marketing community along with the technology community have turned what could've been an amazing time and place in human history to a cess pool of click bait and viral videos.
From a marketing perspective we are where Ad and PR agencies were when a decision had to be made about providing Advertising and PR services to tobacco companies. Apparently, Ogilvy, in the 1960's refused to accept cigarette accounts but that was reversed after David Ogilvy's retirement. PR agencies on the other hand were pretty clear on where they stood in this debate, and on hindsight it probably wasn't the right one.
We are at a similar inflection point - do we need to misuse digital marketing for our profits? Buying followers on channels, misuse of customer data, making private data public without consent, gaming the system for more clicks, paying people to give a negative review about your competitor, etc.
And this has led me to the path I am in today - I've worked on Digital Marketing in my career but I've never committed to it. I've built web pages with CMS tools, I've led digital ad campaigns, and I've flirted with the idea of moving into Social media marketing but something always holds me back.
I think reading some of the posts in the Reddit Marketing community reflect my angst. At this point in my career the questions I have are:
A. Is it important to be Digital Marketing savvy?
B. Do I have to like it?
My sense with the first question is that, I think, businesses are over inflating the importance of Digital Marketing. Some companies even hire Digital Marketing managers who do not have an understanding of Marketing and/or have Business Acumen. While I think a web presence is important so are your traditional marketing channels, depending on your business. Sure you can (and you should) skew more towards digital and assign more campaign $ to it, but I cannot think of a large business in this world completely surviving without a traditional marketing team; even Google and Facebook advertises through Outdoor display ads. To answer the question, it is important to be Digital Marketing savvy without losing your Marketing mojo. You need to know enough to survive when the pool of opportunity for traditional media is dry.
The second question adds more confusion. I hate various aspects of digital marketing - Social media marketing, digital advertising including ad words, etc. The digital marketing community along with the technology community have turned what could've been an amazing time and place in human history to a cess pool of click bait and viral videos.
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| source: pinterest |
We are at a similar inflection point - do we need to misuse digital marketing for our profits? Buying followers on channels, misuse of customer data, making private data public without consent, gaming the system for more clicks, paying people to give a negative review about your competitor, etc.
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