Did a digital marketing expert just promise you clients with paid ads?

If yes, you have just joined the long list of brand owners who have been misled by the social media. The people who facilitate are the ever growing army of digital marketeers. So let us understand what this is all about and how it works on unsuspecting business owners.

Influencers and the race for likes

Social media is like a second life. You can be a different person out there. It is a platform where money can buy you happiness. Any account on Instagram can be bumped up to 12k or 20k followers by spending small amounts of money. Any poster, picture or video can be pushed to hundreds of people out there by spending as less as Rs 500. Social media analytics show those amazing outreach statistics of hope.

Once an active person on Instagram asked me as to why the reels were not getting enough views. They were always in the range of 1k to 3k. The content was never the problem but social networks have now started eyeing your money. With so many of us ready to pay, the rest have to fall in line. Even if you are working hard to create that captivating and unique content, they still control your reach.

We now have an army of influencers. They promote stuff on social media. Pushing their reach and likes with paid campaigns, they are the poster boys of social media success. With all these around can we ever hope to reach our prospective clients organically?

Digital marketing experts never train on organic approach

Right from the word go, any digital marketing course will only focus on paid promotion and ad campaigns. Across all training institutes there is the same syllabus. For eg there are so many WordPress websites created by Digital Marketing Agencies using the WPBakery Page Builder Plugin. That was the popular one at that time but that title was taken over by the Elementor plugin. Elementor made it so easy that most of the bloggers and small business owners switched over. So if you see a WordPress website with WPBakery plugin, that must be an old and un-updated one.

All this fast track training never leave time for the organic approach training. No one ever has time to think about what is organic approach and how it works.

Digital marketeers never create content or curate it

All that a digital marketing person does is to post and promote. If you ask for content, they have to ask you to hire another person for that. Looking for a digital marketing person to write a blog article. That will be almost next to impossible.

But with Canva coming in our lives in a big way, gone are the days when we had to create poster. Even if you are a small brand owner, it is a wise idea to invest in the pro version of Canva. You are good to go for all your poster needs.

You can spot a paid account easily

If you see a social media account with 22k followers but just a few likes on a post, that is one paid account. Such accounts cannot even manage 22 likes per post. So where have the 22k followers gone.

Truth is that all those followers were never there. Well they are physically there, the only thing is that they are not reachable. It was a one off contact, rest of your posts will now show up to those followers.

When should you approach a digital marketing agency

There will be situations where you will need the help of a marketing agency or a dedicated digital marketing team. Big companies and brands launch their product on social media with paid advertisements. They need that extended reach because that will drive their sales. The right content and the perfect advertising budget can drive spectacular sales on social media. That is the power of social media platforms. So if you have the advertising budget, a digital marketing approach is the right one for you.

But for small brand owners or single person entrepreneurs, organic approach is best suited.

So if next time a digital marketing professional approaches you or vice versa, you have to considering whether a paid promotion plan is part of your budget or not.