As a B2B marketing agency, we manage a healthy pipeline of leads seeking professional martech solutions. And after 1,000+ prospecting calls over the past few years, the common rebuttals are more obvious than ever.
Digital marketing is essential for your business in the 2020s. However, a lot of different opinions exist, and oftentimes marketers misinterpret data or opinions, which leads to the creation of certain myths.
In today’s article, we’ll debunk some of the most common digital marketing myths, and explain why they’re not true.
Stay tuned.
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Debunking 9 Common Digital Marketing Myths
- The Quantity of Content Is More Important Than the Quality
- It’s Bad to Receive Negative Comments and Reviews
- Marketing Results Cannot Be Measured
- SEO Doesn’t Matter
- Huge Traffic Equals to Huge Sales
- Only Big Businesses Need Digital Marketing
- Results Should Come Immediately
- AI Will Fix Everything
- If Competitors Are Not Doing It, It’s Not Good for You
1. The Quantity of Content Is More Important Than the Quality
As far as our SEO plans are concerned, we utilize our in-house content team and work with subject matter experts to produce unique, expert-based pieces that rank. And ever since GPTs were popularized in 2023 and early 2024, prospects frequently ask whether we double down on AI and how much creative work is incorporated in our process.
Short answer – other than keyword and cluster ideas or pulling stats to streamline the writing process, everything else is 100% driven by real humans, from start to end.
Because the quality of your content is just as important, if not more, as its quantity. And while our engineering team incorporates programmatic SEO for some of our clients, generating thousands of similar articles at once for some directories, it’s not a common practices (and is followed by ongoing SEO retainers).
Let’s imagine your website has 200 articles – all of them written without too much craftsmanship and effort, you know, just to have something written on your blog.
Now compare that to a situation where you have only 20 articles on your website. However, all of them are written in the highest quality, expertise, and authority. A lot of research has obviously gone into writing them, and they are composed in an engaging way using storytelling, proper keywords and rich media like images, memes, and GIFs.
Which of the two scenarios do you think is more likely to rank better, bring more traffic, and leave the audience satisfied?
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2. It’s Bad to Receive Negative Comments and Reviews
One of the most common myths about digital marketing, that has been around for ages, is that getting bad comments on social media or bad reviews for your company is…bad.
Totally untrue. Getting a negative review is much better than having no reviews at all. As you’re probably aware, in today’s world, reviews are very much essential for users. They insist on checking businesses, reading what other people have to say, and so on. It helps them make a buying decision.
Since no one is perfect, it’s only natural that you will get the occasional bad review from an unhappy customer. When that happens, do not delete the review or proceed to make a huge fuss of it. Instead, think how to respond to the bad review. Ask yourself what caused the issue in the first place, and what you can do to make the customer happy.
Make it all public by responding right away. This way, other current and potential customers can see that you care about how people feel, and want to make things right.
Of course, if 90% or more of your reviews are negative, that should be a red flag that something is really off with your business and the promises during your sales process. But 5 out of 5 reviews everywhere are more likely to indicate paid reviews and an automated bot campaign than genuine human testimonials.
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3. Marketing Results Cannot Be Measured
Some digital marketing myths have lived a long life, and are quite deeply rooted in the minds of business owners. One such example is the belief that digital marketing results cannot be tracked or measured.
That’s completely false. Not only can you track results, you can measure almost anything.
For instance:
- Track organic and paid traffic – Google Analytics, Google Search Console.
- Measure backlinks, keyword position, and number of keywords – Semrush, Ahrefs, etc.
- Impressions, clicks, and CTR – Google Search Console.
- Website interaction, user sessions, heatmaps – Hotjar, Crazy Egg, etc.
We build comprehensive BigQuery-based Looker dashboards consolidating data from different sources – from FB and Google ad spend to GA4 data to 3rd party signals, pixels, crawlers, and other data pools providing business intelligence.
Basically, as you can see, almost every digital marketing metric can be tracked and measured using various tools. This is one of the myths about digital marketing, you can just forget about.
4. SEO Doesn’t Matter
No matter what type or size of business you’re running, search engine optimization should always be at the top of your list. SEO is great for small businesses, enterprises, SaaS companies, and so on – you name it.
Keep in mind that those who say SEO doesn’t matter, clearly have no clue what they’re talking about. Search engine optimization is the key towards organic traffic, increased authority, trustworthiness, and expertise within your field, all which bring more visitors to your site, ultimately.
So, when someone tells you that SEO is dead, tell them that it’s not. In fact, it’s very much:
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5. Huge Traffic = Huge Sales
Another common digital marketing myth is that massive amounts of traffic to your website automatically means your sales volume will skyrocket.
That sounds too good to be true, and well, it is. Here’s the deal.
What matters most for businesses and their revenue is their conversion rate. Simply put, when people find and visit your website, that’s called traffic. Then, once people have become your customers and actually bought from you, you consider that as conversions.
As you might have guessed, it’s not possible to convert 100% of your visitors to clients, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Truth be told, the average conversion rate is typically below 5%, although that strongly depends on your industry and business model. For example, the average conversion rate for eCommerce sites in 2022 was 3.65%, while freemium products like Slack and Spotify have a much higher conversion of 30% and 27% respectively. But onboarding free products isn’t money in the bank.
So solely building top of the funnel content, informational or viral pieces just to generate eyeballs, is counterproductive. You need the right mix of informational and educational pieces on top, case studies and review pages further, and highly converting bottom of the funnel pages at the end.
Nevertheless, driving traffic to your site, is important. Although you should also consider multiple factors like analyzing user behavior, researching demographics and doing A/B tests, in order to convert that traffic into clients.
6. Only Big Businesses Need Digital Marketing
Where do we start on this one? It’s basically accepting the statement that social media, SEO, email marketing, PPC, and content marketing are all just meant for big businesses, like corporations.
So, how do you think those companies got where they are? Pure coincidence? A newspaper ad? Word of mouth across the globe?
Hell no, they all found clever and effective ways to use digital marketing and grow, grow, grow.
Every business starts as a small business, but if you believe this marketing misconception, you’ll never be able to use the power of digital marketing, and you’ll be missing out on a lot.
7. Results Should Come Immediately
A lot of us marketers have been in the situation where business owners or managers, who don’t really understand the basics of marketing, say they want to see results from your work quickly.
To personally address such people: Hello, this is marketing myths debunked, and digital marketing requires time and effort for things to happen.
SEO takes time to start giving results, social media marketing requires time to kick-in, even ads don’t provide great results from day one.
8. AI Will Fix Everything
One of the newer digital marketing myths, but equally absurd as the “older” ones. Artificial intelligence might help you automate tedious tasks or make your work easier in general, but it is not the definitive solution to everything (digital marketing-related or not).
So, unless you’re living in the year 2160, AI does not do all the work for your business, and you can’t just rely on it to make your business profitable.
A lot of marketers are guilty of overhyping recent artificial intelligent advancements like ChatGPT or Jasper. To be honest, those are great tools for lazy marketers, but are not a marketing cure all.
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9. If Competitors Are Not Doing It, It’s Not Good for You
It’s always good to conduct competitor analysis, know what your competitors are doing, and implement their best practices. Still, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t leave room for any innovation.
A common myth about digital marketing is that if the competition is not doing something, then it’s no point in you doing it. In that case, you might as well rename yourself to the name of your competitor, and offer the same products/services they do.
This also applies to statements, like “My competitors aren’t doing digital marketing, so why should I?”. Such a mindset is counterproductive, and can only lead to bad things for your business.
Wrapping Up
Digital marketing is the essence of today’s online business. Always keep your mind open and don’t fall for digital marketing myths. Trust your instincts, and research everything before you make any final decisions.
After all, there are so many myths that we take for facts such as you will get cramps if you swim right after you eat, dogs only see in black and white, lightning doesn’t strike twice, and, yeah, the Earth is flat.
Common sense and digital marketing go hand by hand, never forget that. And more importantly, don’t be quick to believe everything you read on the Internet.
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Team DevriX
This article is crafted by DevriX's seasoned marketing team, boasting over four decades of collective expertise in crafting sophisticated marketing funnels, devising comprehensive content frameworks and pillars, implementing engaging email campaigns, and creating impactful social media content designed for scalability.
Our marketing experts specialize in the complete spectrum of inbound marketing strategies. As an accredited HubSpot Agency Partner and a Semrush Partner, we engage in meticulous research, blending our extensive experience with the unique insights of our highly skilled team.
We set benchmarks in content creation by incorporating cutting-edge marketing trends, leveraging in-depth industry research, and utilizing state-of-the-art AI tools for data segmentation and captivating content hooks. Our proficiency extends across a diverse range of sectors, including working with SMEs, Fortune 1000 companies, global B2B brands, major publishing entities, WooCommerce platforms, business directories, and affiliate networks.
