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7 Reasons For Digital Marketing Failure In Startups – in Economic Times by Pradeep Chopra

7 reasons for digital marketing failure

When I heard about Digital Marketing, I was excited to use it to fulfill my dream of a billion-dollar business.

Case studies of an ever-increasing number of startups using the power of Social Media, Search Engines, Email, and Mobile marketing to acquire millions of visitors and users were so inspiring.

The most crucial challenge of acquiring customers for our venture seemed to have been solved.

Reasons for digital marketing failure

I jumped onto digital media without wasting time and started investing time in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google.

But when I saw no significant results, I started spending money to advertise on Facebook and Google.

I was waiting to see new customers buying our product. Surprisingly, these channels only made my purse lighter without adding new customers.

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I then realized that we don’t have the required skills to use these channels.

Thus, we got a digital marketing agency on board within a few days. We eagerly looked forward to adding new customers, but we were wrong again.

I thought we probably didn’t spend sufficient time identifying the right agency.

And after wasting a significant budget, I hired an in-house digital marketing expert.

The immediate challenge we faced was a lack of benchmarks and experience to hire suitable candidates. Every professional we interviewed seemed to be an expert in digital marketing.

7 Reasons For Digital Marketing Failure In Startups

Does this sound familiar?

Are you also struggling to produce results using digital marketing?

You are not alone.

In fact, over the last 15 years, we have made many mistakes and learned from them.

You must have committed one or more of the 7 mistakes mentioned below while using digital marketing for business-

1. Don’t measure the Cost Per Acquisition:

It is a known fact that measurability is one of the key advantages of online marketing.

But still, a large percentage of business owners fail to define key metrics.

They don’t put relevant structure and don’t use using relevant tools to measure the progress of their digital marketing campaigns.

Moreover, measurability focuses on increasing reach in terms of views and visitors.

While each is necessary, it’s not sufficient.

Imagine that your website receives more than double the traffic of your competition. But your website’s conversions are less than half of your competition.

In this case, you would still have lower returns than your competition.

Therefore, in addition to increasing your website reach, paying attention to the entire customer funnel to meet your ultimate objectives is the key to success in leveraging digital media.

2. Believe that it belongs to the Technology Department:

Many startup founders treat online marketing as a technology piece, not a marketing function.

While digital marketing leverages technology for reasons such as measurability or scaling up, it’s still a marketing function.

Expecting the technical team to create success in digital marketing is an obvious recipe for failure.

This problem is not limited to startups; large corporations are also the victims of such treatment of digital marketing.

3. Think that outsourcing is the solution:

While digital marketing agencies have an essential role, thinking that they will take care of end-to-end execution is one of the mistakes. In reality, it is one of the primary reasons for the high failure rate of agency-client relationships.

Interestingly, it’s even a bigger problem in the case of large corporations, which are used to outsourcing.

We’ve run a digital marketing agency in the past and have had the opportunity to work with various businesses, ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies.

At Digital Vidya, one or more companies approach us weekly for their digital marketing requirements.

A good percentage of them would have failed to create success with their agency partner in the past.

Our discussion with them reveals that either-

  • They didn’t have the right agency in place.
  • They didn’t play the role they should have,
  • They expected the agency to be solely responsible for the success of their digital marketing initiative.

This helped them restructure their thinking and processes related to digital marketing.

4. Hired a Digital Marketing professional on your ignorance:

Hiring one or more digital marketing professionals without having clarity is one of the biggest mistakes a business makes.

One of the most valuable takeaways from our digital marketing program for business owners and senior marketing professionals from large brands is that

they realize that they have an essential role to play in creating a digital marketing strategy, whether they want to work with an external agency or build an

in-house team.

5. Doing Social Media because everyone else is doing:

Like in other business functions, our decisions around where to begin and what to focus on in online marketing are primarily influenced by what others are doing or what’s currently popular.

Just because Social Media is the talk of the town is not a sufficient reason for a startup to invest in it.

Your decision to choose a medium should not be based on the popularity of a medium. Instead, it should be based on business objectives and target audience.

Social Media may be useful for brand promotion for a large organization.

While Search Engine Marketing may be more appropriate for a startup if lead generation is the primary objective.

6. Expect Overnight Success:

Fascinated by mind-blowing statistics associated with digital media platforms and by an ever-growing number of online businesses, every organization that embarks upon the digital marketing journey believes that it’s a magic wand that will solve their sales & marketing objectives overnight.

While digital media is a powerful weapon to accelerate business growth, sustainable success in digital marketing usually takes a few months, if not more.

Also, this journey to success would involve a few failures.

Digital Marketing avenues such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) require a couple of months before a business can see any substantial results.

Expecting quick results typically leads to giving up on the not-so-visible but actual progress campaigns, which would have produced desired objectives if given the time required.

7. Underestimate the importance of Content:

Most digital marketing campaigns rely on a regular flow of high-quality and relevant content.

A large percentage of small businesses highly underestimate this.

When faced with a scarcity of content, either these businesses end up – compromising on the quality of the content or giving up their digital marketing campaigns.

Do you agree that one or more of the above reasons prevent the success of Digital Marketing in startups?

Is there any other reason you would like to list here?

Share your experiences in the comments below.

Feel free to reach me on Twitter at @pradeepchopra.

The author is a serial entrepreneur. He’s the CEO of Digital Vidya, one of Asia’s leading digital marketing training companies.

If you want to learn Digital Marketing, you can find more about their programs at https://www.digitalvidya.com/blog.

As published in Economic Times.

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FAQ’s

1. Do startups require digital marketing?

Digital marketing allows startups to reach a wider audience and compete with the big corporations present today.

Since digital strategies require little investment, it is easier for startups to step into digital marketing and try to improve brand awareness, online visibility, and revenue successfully.

2. What are the advantages of digital marketing for a business?

Digital marketing has many advantages. It helps reach globally at a lower cost than traditional marketing techniques.

It also helps target customers effectively and create personalized relations with them. Through online marketing, a business can increase its sales and revenue.

3. How can I promote my startup through digital marketing?

You can use various digital marketing tactics to promote your startup.

For example, SEO is an excellent strategy for getting organic traffic to your website. Social media can help spread awareness about your business. If you have the budget, advertising can help you generate immediate leads.

4. What are the most important marketing goals for a startup?

These are the most essential marketing goals for a startup in order-

  • Acquire new customers
  • Retain the old customers
  • Increase customer value
  • Build trust and loyalty
5. What should be a startup’s average cost of digital marketing?

According to a survey, marketing for startups (1-5 years old) should account for 12-20 percent of their gross income.

6. What are the best digital marketing strategies?

SEO, content marketing, SEM, email marketing, and social media marketing are some of the most popular digital marketing strategies.

Each has its advantages and disadvantages, so the best marketing strategy can differ for every business.

Avatar of jasleen kaur
Jasleen Kaur
[Sr. Associate - Content Marketing] A content passionate, Jasleen handles content writing & marketing activities. Also, she leads Digital Marketing Internship Program. She is in the content writing and marketing fraternity for 10+ years now & is proficient in writing content for blogs, articles, books, brochures and social media. She embraces practical knowledge of WordPress CMS.

3 thoughts on “7 Reasons For Digital Marketing Failure In Startups – in Economic Times by Pradeep Chopra”

  1. One of the main reason for failure of starters are that institutes here only show dream to starters but don’t teach appropriate technique and tools for starters.

  2. I agree completely with the above article… businesses need to focus on the conversions of the likes and content is of course the King in helping create that.

  3. Businesses don’t understand that SMM can make or break the brand ,getting on SM platforms for branding without doing survey and understanding your product and target audience can lead to disasters.

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