The 10 Myths of Digital Marketing In Australia

If you own a business in Australia listen up. The rules have changed. Previously, you can safely ignore online advertising. Before the launch of the iphone in 2007, many local businesses did fine without spending a significant amount of money on monthly online marketing campaigns. Those days are over.

Since most consumers usually check with their mobile devices before they make any kind of purchasing decision, it has become imperative for local brick and mortar businesses such as yours to have a strong brand presence on the internet.

Now this is not a simple matter of being visible on search engines. While that is an important component, it's just one piece of the puzzle. You have to be visible on social media. Your brand also has to have a strong content profile so people can converse with your online brand message regardless of how they find you on the internet. This requires a comprehensive web marketing strategy.

Unfortunately, there are 10 myths for misconceptions that guarantee failure for your Australian business' online promotions campaigns. You need to be aware of these misconceptions otherwise you might find yourself in the sad situation of spending good money after bad only to end up with very little to show for all your time, effort and resources you spent.

Myth #1 Local Australian Businesses Have To Mount Expensive Online Marketing Campaigns To Gain Traction

A lot of Sydney local businesses shy away from internet marketing because of the common misconception that advertising online has to be expensive. Nothing could be further from the truth. What if I told you that for as little as a dollar a day, you can promote on Facebook? As long as you know what you're doing, your local business can gain quite a bit of traction and brand awareness on Facebook for as little as a dollar a day.

Many small companies such as yours have been able to pull this off. This obviously doesn't mean spending an arm and a leg. There are also other similar low cost online marketing alternatives out there. You don't have to necessarily spend big bucks to get big results with your internet marketing campaigns.

Myth #2 Local SEO is a simple matter of directory submission

If you're like the typical small business owner, you probably have been searching online for marketing tips so you can save money on outsourcing your web marketing. You probably have come across several articles that teach you a thing or two about local SEO. You might even be under the impression that you can do it yourself. While you can successfully pull off a certain amount of online marketing activities, please disabuse yourself of the misconception that you only need to do one thing for your website to achieve maximum online visibility. That is simply not going to happen.

If you're like the typical small business owner, you probably have been searching online for marketing tips so you can save money on outsourcing your web marketing. You probably have come across several articles that teach you a thing or two about local SEO. You might even be under the impression that you can do it yourself. While you can successfully pull off a certain amount of online marketing activities, please disabuse yourself of the misconception that you only need to do one thing for your website to achieve maximum online visibility. That is simply not going to happen. The most common example of this is the idea that local search visibility is just a matter of submitting to as many different directories as you can. Many local business owners are under the impression that as long as they submit their business name, address and phone number to as many different online directories that they will rank well. This used to be true, but not anymore. You have to look at the complete SEO picture instead of just one component otherwise you're not going to achieve maximum visibility.

Myth #3 Online marketing is so easy anyone can do it

We really can't blame you for doing some advance research on online marketing. There are lots of blogs and free ebooks as well as video courses out there that make it look easy. What if I told you that that is an illusion? They make it look easy so you would keep going back and reading their content and signing up for their courses, but the moment you try to do things on your own, things get complicated really quickly.

Take the case of SEO. If you were to build links using inappropriate sources, instead of getting a boost in search engine rankings, your website might even get banned. That's how bad things can be. Unfortunately, thinking that online marketing is so easy that anyone can do it actually creates more problems that it solves. You have to view everything holistically. You have to view web marketing in context as far as skill sets are concerned.

Myth #4 Social media marketing is separate from SEO and other forms of internet marketing

Given how exciting and refreshing social media messaging can be, it's easy to see why a lot of local business owners think that social media marketing operates on a different track from SEO. Please understand that if you want to achieve maximum visibility for your local Sydney based business, you have to adopt a comprehensive online marketing strategy.

Using this model, your efforts on one platform, like social media, can translate to gains in another platform, like search engines. They can complete, supplement and enhance each other. That's the kind of comprehensive game plan you should have. Trying to run your marketing campaigns on different and separate tracks can lead to costly mistakes and uneven results.

Myth #5 Local branding and internet marketing are separate from each other

Make no mistake about it. If you want to succeed with internet marketing, you have to focus on branding. Branding should be your primary focus and everything else should flow from it. That's right. Search engine rankings, social media visibility, content marketing effectiveness, all of these must be manifestations of your efforts at branding, not the other way around.

A lot of local businesses completely flip this. They think that branding is what happens later. Not surprisingly, a lot of them suffer from reputation damage because they focus first on visibility instead of shaping the brand perception of their customers.

Myth #6 Web marketing is just like branding when it comes to success metrics

A lot of local business owners have pretty much resigned themselves to thinking that when they spend money on online marketing, they can forget about measuring success. They think that online visibility and marketing is really no different from spending money on a billboard ad. They think of it as just some sunk cost to get the word out somehow someway.

If this is your attitude, then don't be surprised if you don't get much results at all. Web marketing should actually excite you because for the first time in the history of modern advertising, you can get finely defined results. That's how powerful targeting and results monitoring can be using online tools. Use them to your advantage. Don't adopt the attitude that you're just spending money to somehow someway get visible. You can insist on a certain level of results. You can plan where this visibility takes place. That's how robust online advertising technologies can be.

Myth #7 Local businesses have no use for online influence leaders

Another common mistake local business owners make is their suspicion on influence leaders. These are people on Instagram that have a huge following. These are channels on YouTube with lots of views. According to many business owners, these influence leaders are national or international in appeal. Whatever influence they may have is not regionally targeted enough.

You might want to reconsider because even if the influence leader does have a national or global appeal, this can still make its way back to your neck of the woods thanks to their ability to attract backlinks and attention from national and local media. A lot of local business owners are completely fuzzy about this connection and that's why they miss out on this golden opportunity.

Myth #8 Content marketing is a waste of time for local business SEO

If your idea of content marketing means just submitting to article directories, you would be absolutely correct for believing this myth. Thankfully, modern content marketing is done very differently. It involves reaching out to purely local link sources that have an influence in your local area. You can bet that the links you get from such content outreach can go a longer way in increasing your local search visibility.

Myth #9 Web marketing campaigns requires several quarters to produce results

This myth's accuracy depends largely on how competitive your local niche is. If you are promoting a service or a store that is in a very competitive field in your local area, this myth would be absolutely correct. It can take ages for your local business to rise through the ranks because you just have so many competitors.

Now if the SEO company handling your business positions your niche slightly differently so as to appeal to the same eyeballs while targeting different competitors, the field might open up to you. There might not be that much competitors. What do you think will happen? That's right. You can get results fairly quickly. In fact, using this tactic, many local SEO providers in Sydney and other regional markets were able to rank their customers in as little as a couple of weeks. Talk about fast results!

Myth #10 Online promotions are separate from local physical promotions

This is the number 1 mistake that hobbles too many local businesses. They fail to understand that their local following is actually the “starter base” they need to get a lot of online visibility. How? By incentivizing people who are really showing up to their business to engage with their brand online and spread their links as well as brand visibility far and wide, they boost their web marketing results while paying cents on the dollar.

You'd be surprised as to how inexpensive online incentives can be when spreading your brand through a tried and proven user base that had the opportunity to try out your products or services. These people already know what you're about. They really don't need that much of a push to spread the word about your business. You still have to offer them some sort of incentive, but you don't have to go overboard.

Be clear on the 10 myths outlined above. Make sure you don't believe any of them. If you hang on to these myths or any of their variations, don't be surprised if your digital marketing campaigns fall flat. In fact, don't be too shocked if you find yourself too scared and too intimidated to even try digital marketing to increase your monthly customer base. If you would like real results at a fraction of adverting spend on other mediums then feel free to contact us today.