DIY – the BEST online marketing tip

Do it yourself (DIY) is often associated with work in or around the house, reparations, or quick fixes. However, not many people would associate DIY with online campaigns.

This is actually a surprise. Why? Because a lot of people are putting their hand on social media ads and search ads as well.

The obvious motivator is “saving costs” and one important statement we hear a lot is “it can’t be that hard, especially when talking about social ads”.

In the last couple of years, we came across a lot of small/medium enterprises (SMEs) where a family member, friend, or secretary is putting their hands on running online campaign.

There are two interesting aspects in play here: first, the responsibility of the company who is asking for assistance from someone who has little or basic knowledge about marketing in general and online marketing in particular.

Secondly, the underestimation of the complexity of proper online marketing! We’ll pick up on these two important factors later.

Now, how would we know about these activities? Either the person engaged in this activity would reach out to us and ask for advice or during a meeting this topic comes up and we are told about it.

Please don’t get us wrong, we are all about saving money and allowing employees to expand their knowledge base. But to ask an employee or family member, “The business needs leads” or “We need more sale, generate some”, is the same as going to the butcher and ask; “Hey, you are good with knives, why aren’t you a surgeon, it’s the same!”

This comparison should show you how ill advised the request for a family member, friend, or a none educated marketing employee is to run any type of online campaign.

To review the 2 motivating factors.

1. Saving money

Yes, the SME would save money by not engaging a professional and experienced digital media agency. But they are losing more money because the funds invested in ads do show little, wrong or no results at all. There are no measurements in place to judge ROI or to review how successful a campaign was.

2. How difficult can it be?

Well, in this day and age it is difficult to run online campaigns with active competition, limited budgets, and show results like leads or sales. You need a marketing expert’s understanding of the industry, engaging with the right tools, managing the campaign properly, providing the best ROI, selecting the right target audience, directing campaigns towards this audience, etc, etc.

Just reading these two points should show you that a DIY online campaign cannot be in the best interest of the company.

Hence, our best online tip: do not butcher your online campaign. Go to an expert!