Does digital marketing have a guaranteed return?

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There are always advertisements, courses on digital marketing, traffic management training, tools, which imply that being a traffic manager is a guarantee of success or if you use traffic management, you will attract many customers and increase results.

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In this article, I want to provide some reflections based on personal experiences as an entrepreneur and those of my clients, whose digital marketing and its “arms” do not always give the expected result.

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I begin with a situation that I experienced as an entrepreneur and another of a client when seeking my services as a Geomarketing consultant.

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In my case, my first investments in digital marketing were in the famous Impelling automatic Instagram and later, the same boost with small audience and location segmentations.

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The results were not satisfactory at all.

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In addition to little or almost no conversion into sales for my product, normally the area with the largest audience and the age group was very concentrated, with no homogeneous distribution between the number of regions and ages.

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After that phase, I continued, but I hired a traffic manager for a month, using Facebook Business.

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The result was also not much different from the previous experience.

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With few resources, a common case for those who are starting out, I decided not to act with boosters and paid advertisements anymore.

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Some time later, this client that I mentioned earlier came to me, wanting to understand what Geomarketing is and how it could expand its brand.

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He had already done other consultancies with market research and digital marketing, but was unsuccessful.

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In this exercise of seeking to understand why digital marketing or paid traffic do not always give expected results, I listed some points that may help to understand the reason for this.

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One of the first mistakes, and perhaps the most committed, especially by beginning entrepreneurs
In digital, it is the use of automatic ad boosting.

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For those who are not knowledgeable about boosting, this is the easiest method.

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However, the problem lies in the fact that the algorithm distributes ads randomly or based on the lowest CPC
(cost per click).

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That way, ad deliveries don't always reach the desired audience.

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In a way, this problem lies in the fact that the entrepreneur often has not well defined their target audience or their persona (stressing that they are different concepts).

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Without knowing the characteristics, habits, and tastes of the customer or potential customer, if you use an automatic boost (using this as an example), there are great chances that the delivery will not be for the public that is interested in that product or service.

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Still in this line, another problem that can occur is when the entrepreneur begins to take his steps in audience segmentation or contracts a traffic management service and even with this segmentation, the results are not always satisfactory.

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This, in my opinion, can happen due to the choice of the ad cost metric or the scale.
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When the option for the lowest cost of the click is triggered, even when segmenting the audience, the algorithm will seek, depending on the budget and frequency of displaying the ads, the lowest possible cost.

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This does not always in fact meet the size of the audience and the characteristics of the audience that we want to reach.
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Scale, in my experience, we always tend to choose segmentation by state or city, but have you ever stopped to think about how this delivery occurs at the most detailed scales (neighborhood, sectors, etc.)?

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Are they distributed equally?

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Precisely this point I want to draw attention to, because, especially for those who work in local segments (neighborhood stores, bakeries, franchises, among others), scale is an important factor in the use of digital marketing.
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Imagine that the target audience is the environment or a certain range of reach that most frequents the establishment or (in the case of seeking new customers) that you want to reach in that particular neighborhood or the people who circulate there, and do not necessarily live there.

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Does investing solely in online ads, with segmentation, reach that audience on that scale?
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Two concepts that are essential in this entire relationship (entrepreneur, marketing and clients) and that weigh a lot, depending on the type of business, are:

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The square and the concept of place (from the point of view of geography)

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If the square (place of sale or distribution) already exists or if I want to install it, is the location of that square attractive enough (in the real world) for my audience?

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There's no use investing in ads or any other digital marketing solution if my business square doesn't attract an audience to that location.

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And where does the concept of place fit into all this?

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This is one of the basic concepts considered in Geography, with YI Fu Tuan as its greatest exponent.

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In short, the place is more than a piece of land or a spatial indentation, it is the space of experience, of the relationships we maintain with other people and with landscapes.

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Thus, the place is one where there is great meaning for us, since it is the stage of our daily lives, where the distances between people and objects are minimal.

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But how can this fit into marketing or the use of strategies to expand a business?

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Certain places are successful based on criteria related to the emotional attachment that people have with a particular place in a city or neighborhood.

An example is the famous Lapa in Rio de Janeiro, where, from a purely location point of view, depending on the type of business, it may not be as attractive, but with its bohemian atmosphere, with many bars in that place, this “emotional” factor can be explored and algorithms cannot necessarily achieve.

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Keeping these concepts in mind should be part of the strategy for business growth.

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Obviously, entrepreneurs are not always required to know these concepts, but what we need to keep in mind is that, even in this digital age, other strategies focusing on the place, the square, and even the combination with analog or 'traditional' means of dissemination (such as pamphlets, for example) can be as effective or more effective than the pure use of digital marketing.
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Don't put all your eggs in one basket

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Although digital marketing is the present and will continue to be strategic in the coming years, its exclusive use for the promotion of services, products and customer acquisition is no guarantee of success, especially if we do not consider the peculiarities that were set out above.

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In this context, Geomarketing, although it has grown a lot in Brazil in recent years, still has a wide field to explore with entrepreneurs who do not know how geographical factors, behaviors, public habits, where they are, etc., can bring light and direct efficient strategies for business growth.

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Geomarketing, although it uses technology to provide subsidies to the entrepreneur, has as one of its pillars the language accessible to its client and to show a set of marketing strategies, both digital and analog and on a scale appropriate to the type of business.
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completions

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Digital marketing is, in fact, a set of tools that brought clients and entrepreneurs closer together.

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However, in no way should it be considered as the only tool for business leverage, since several geographical, economic, flow, and emotional factors need to be taken into account.

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Without this awareness and this basis, investing resources (often scarce) in digital marketing can result in losses and frustrations.

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It is in this context that Geomarketing presents itself as a possible solution to analyze what scenario an enterprise or future venture is in and to subsidize with strategic information, indicating the paths to be followed towards the growth and consolidation of the business, including integrating digital marketing in this direction.

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Note about the author:

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O Leandro Gregorio It's a certified specialist by Mapfry and writes as a guest on the Blog.

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The content expresses the views and opinion of the author.

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