A good digital marketing system should be a technology platform or platforms that allows the digital marketer to consistently and reliably communicate to their target audience across chosen marketing channels. It should then compile the data from those campaigns so that insights can be gained by analyzing the metrics.  While most trainers, consultants, and professional coaches agree conceptually, seamless execution is often deficient due to performance gaps.

Clients often hire us as a full digital marketing service and we run campaigns from start to finish.  However, we also commonly work with clients that have am internal marketing professional that we partner with because they have identified gaps in their digital marketing system and are struggling to fill that deficiency.

The internal digital marketing professional that we partner with is often a powerful jump start to working with a client because they have already identified performance gaps that they want to improve.  Sometimes assumptions need verified to confirm the gap but having an initial diagnosis of the flaw saves a lot of time in repairing the issue.

Gaps in digital marketing systems typically come in one of three versions:

• Time – This is the most commonly identified issue.  Internal digital marketers often have a lot of hats to wear and some tasks can become too time consuming to be practically addressed.  Extra resources not only take a particular task off the internal marketing professional’s plate, it frees up time to accurately complete tasks that they are proficient at.
• Technical – This gap arises when a digital marketing element requires more technical acumen than the internal marketer is comfortable taking on.  This is often a difficult gap to acknowledge because internal digital marketers sometimes feel like they aren’t fulfilling their job role if they can’t overcome the technical problem.  However, once a technical gap is identified, it can remove a lot of wasted time and energy in struggling to meet a challenging technical need.  Instead, the internal marketing professional can focus on more productive tasks.
• Manual – This gap is often a result of a manually replicated task.  These types of activities can take a lot of time and energy with little gain for it.  Replacing the manual process with an automated fix makes the process repeatable with fewer errors.

Identifying gaps in your digital marketing system doesn’t mean you have to hire external resources.  However, it does mean that more efficiency and effectiveness can be built into your process by implementing a proper solution to the identified deficiency.

There are only two things that will motivate someone in your marketing audience to take action on your calls to action, pain or pleasure.  Most digital marketers focus on pleasure motivators like features, benefits, or improvements.  However, overlooking the motivational elements of pain can be a costly mistake. 

As Theodore Levitt said, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.”  It’s hard to deny the wisdom in that statement but it’s still focusing on what someone gets from a drill, the feature of a set drill size and the benefit off the specific hole. What happens if they don’t have the drill and struggle to create that quarter-inch hole?  That’s a pain question that often spurs action.

Rather than focusing your marketing content on the benefits of your product or service, try focusing on the problems that the product or service resolves. It’s typically a simple way of re-thinking the message but often creates more substantial impact to your digital marketing communications.