Digital Marketing Biases

Mark Twain said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Trainers, consultants, and professional coaches should take that quote to heart when analyzing their digital marketing campaigns. Our biases about digital marketing are often what prevent us from objectively considering new marketing channels or techniques that would produce superior results.

The most common biases on a particular subject often have a counter-bias with a polar opposite viewpoint of the same topic. The most productive outlook tends to fall somewhere in the middle. While a list of biases can go on and on, we’ll focus on 5 high level biases that we encounter fairly regularly:

• “A website is no longer necessary.” or “A website does everything a social media page can do.”
• “Email Marketing is obsolete.” or “Email marketing is the only thing that really works.”
• “Social media is a waste of time.” or “Social media is the only thing that matters.”
• “Digital marketing tools should always be free.” or “Free tools are ineffective.”
• “My gut feel is the same as metrics.” or “Don’t make judgment calls, just follow the metrics.”

Watch for our coming posts that deal with each of these biases and how a balanced outlook between the two biases can result in gathering the benefits and eliminating the downside of either extreme viewpoint.