29 January 2018

Does your business have sufficient in-house digital marketing expertise or do you work with a fantastic external agency? Online is now critical when it comes to business growth and one of the biggest issues around is whether to bring in an in-house professional to run digital marketing or if an agency should be used. Whichever route is taken, or indeed if it’s a combination of both, this is a decision that needs careful thought.

However, it is also unpalatable that digital marketing is poised to eat up a lot more of the marketing budget and may well need extra funding on top – not the reality anyone wants to hear about in the current climate.

But this is not an area for the uninitiated and it is irrefutable that digital marketing has distinct skills, requiring a huge amount of know-how, ranging from analytics and targeting, to seo skills, to making videos, to being an expert web-oriented copywriter and blogger, to name but a few.

This is an area where change happens fast and professional input on strategy is essential. Facebook, for example has recently moved the goalposts, announcing it will be introducing major changes to how its News Feed works. It will now put greater priority on content from friends and family and reduce the presence of businesses –  unless of course, they spend more.

So, should other digital avenues to be sought? Facebook is not the only fish in the digital sea, but it remains a core part of the social media mix and deciding what will work for your business, reaching the right audiences and building a powerful online brand is as important as having signage outside the dealership.

It was interesting to hear billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros is no fan of Facebook. He has described it as a menace to society and he believes its days are numbered, when speaking recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He said social media companies influence “how people think and behave without them even being aware of it. This has far-reaching adverse consequences on the functioning of democracy, particularly on the integrity of elections.”

That mention of influencing how people think also means it encourages them to buy. So, whether or not Facebook is doomed, it does not detract from the fact that whoever makes the overall digital decisions now, needs to get this right for the sake of their short and longer-term business performance.

Rachel Gordon

Editor

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Tags: Digital marketing, facebook, marketing