The Lie of Digital Marketing—and How Advisors Can Find the Truth
Professionals from every industry (especially finance) have been fooled into believing that digital is everything. The reach is greater, the cost is lower, the effort is far less—who wouldn't take that deal?
The problem is that the numbers don't back it up. OK, they do, actually. But also they don't.
Is that clear enough?
Digital marketing relies on metrics to prove its worth. Using tools from Google, Adobe, Hubspot, Salesforce, etc., you can find out everything from number of views to number of visitors to engagement time and beyond.
But the dirty secret about most digital marketing metrics is that they’re inaccurate at best and intentionally misleading at worst.
The companies that produce these metrics have a vested interest in digital marketing being effective. Just look at Google: A whopping 74% of their revenue last year came from ads alone. Keeping people invested in digital marketing is a lucrative game.
These aren’t just conspiracy theories either. Here are a few examples:
Google got in trouble last year for juicing their video ad view numbers
There is documented evidence that Google will record “phantom traffic” that never actually happened
Facebook has been caught on multiple occasions reporting fake numbers
There’s an entire industry dedicated to ad fraud where people create fake websites, allow ads on their sites, and then send hundreds of thousands of bots to their site to click their ads.
Don’t get me wrong—digital can be incredibly effective. I’ve seen the right digital content strategy help advisors increase subscribers, new clients, and client engagement in amazing ways.
But it’s not the silver bullet we’ve all been promised. And frankly, it’s wild that so many people still act like it is this late in the game. Sure, there’s money to be made in it, but you can only sell so many magical sets of clothes before the emperors realize they’re actually naked.
How to Find the Truth: Focus on Firsthand Metrics You Can Prove—and Take Others with a Grain of Salt
If you’ve ever looked at Google Analytics and compared them with analytics from another provider like Hubspot or Facebook and thought, “What is going on here?” you’re not alone. The truth is somewhere out there, but you’ll never know for sure—you just have to take these analytics tools’ word for it.
The answer? Firsthand metrics.
Firsthand metrics—meaning metrics you can prove yourself rather than counting on a third-party’s measurements—will always tell you the truth.
Here are a few examples of firsthand metrics you can prove, i.e., firsthand metrics:
Number of subscribers
Email reply rate
Contact form submissions
Leads from in-person events
There is still truth to be found in other metrics, but you probably shouldn’t use those as your primary metrics. Instead, use them to supplement your primary measurements. For instance, if you are measuring number of subscribers, you can set up tracking in Google Analytics to try to get a better idea of where your subscribers are coming from.
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