When was the last time you checked on your team’s marketing strategies and results? If you haven’t done so recently, it might be worthwhile to check and find out what you’ve reaped from your marketing efforts. Are you following the latest trends while ensuring visibility to your audience in all the right channels?

According to a recent marketing study in Australia, although Digital Marketing has been present in the country for over a decade, a majority of the Australian businesses-regardless of size, have yet to be able to go digital entirely. Many factors affect this current state. One is that only a few businesses are ready to transition digitally. They may not have the know-how in terms of technological advancements, or there is a lack of resources who can initiate and support the migration and transition. There are many other reasons circling the  “struggle to transition”. 

The silver lining is that some businesses have slowly transitioned to digital workflow while some have also fully acclimated to the greatness of digital marketing.

Here are some possible reasons why Australia’s businesses find it challenging to shift to the digital world.

First in will win

Some businesses believe in the power and convenience of going digital. However, some are just not ready to budge because of their lack of understanding and digital know-how. Perhaps, they haven’t had the time or resources to understand the benefits of digital marketing fully, so they stay where it’s comfortable and convenient.

Businesses that have been around for quite some time may have yet to consider joining the bandwagon of digital marketing because they feel the company is doing well. “Why fix it if it ain't broke?” 

Businesses that have not adapted to digital marketing are worried about getting out of their comfort zones and putting their brand out. These businesses may need to learn how much information and opportunities they miss. If a business is good in its current state of traditional marketing, then consider how much better it could be with an added sales and marketing channel.

Transitioning to digital marketing can be beneficial to a business in endless ways. Take, for example, a website built 5 or 10 years ago to more recently built websites, where much older websites will not have the look and feel today’s audiences look for. This is because websites were built and maintained differently before then they are now. 

In our other blogs and campaign, we have discussed how an entire digital marketing team can make a difference in building a website. In addition, websites nowadays are managed more efficiently because of security measures, updates and protection from potential online attacks.

Some 10 or 20 years ago, website plug-ins may have been non-existent. Business owners who have not even heard of such don’t feel the need to switch to digital marketing or hire professionals to maintain their websites efficiently.

Here are a few things that website plug-ins can do for you:

• Track the number of website visitors
• Track the buyer's journey
• Track where exactly the website visitors drop off
• Track how many leads are generated from the website

The benefits are endless!

The struggle to balance

Many marketers have a challenging time fully transitioning to digital marketing because they often find it hard to find the balance between crushing short-term and long-term goals.

Short-term goals could be considered band-aid fixes, temporary and out of immediate need. Some examples of short-term goals are as follows:

• Increase sales
• Targeted campaign
• Short-term campaigns
• Product and brand awareness

Although short-term goals are also helpful in marketing strategies, marketers sometimes get lost in translation because of the tendency to over-focus on the goals. Understandably, business owners and marketers need to execute short-term goals to increase cash flow and “Wow” the board. 

With the pressure on the digital marketing team to bring in quick wins or short-term wins, such as working on SEO to grow a specific part of the business, a marketing resource can easily over-focus on the present goal and day-to-day versus looking at delivering a more planned out strategy.

However, most business owners miss out on failing to look at marketing from a long-term standpoint, one that involves months and months of projecting plans, building the brand and proper marketing rollout. Business owners need to empower their marketing team to work on long-term and short-term goals to achieve harmony on the marketing side.

Perceived lack of local talent

Currently, 38% of recruiters need help finding talent in Australia at reasonable rates, resulting in recruiting offshore or interstate. For example, talent in the IT industry, such as coders, expect to earn six figures annually. To some, this wage is rather large and with the size or income their business is making, they couldn't afford to pay the rate, resulting in hiring offshore or sourcing talent elsewhere. 

Some business owners who choose to hire locally and consider a higher wage for their team may have considered these factors:

• Hiring someone locally is more convenient in terms of the following:
• Timezone
• The need for physical meetings
• Cultural differences
• Other convenience-related factors

Rather than single-handedly looking for talent for every single role, many business owners and recruiters have turned to marketing agencies for help. Working with a marketing team allows you to gain insight into your business’ front and back end, ensuring to deliver the project on time and within budget.

Moving to In-house services

There are several reasons why businesses want to have an in-house marketing team. The most common reason is cost, where the business thinks that getting an in-house team to work on different aspects could cost less than hiring an external agency. These are some of the most common functions that businesses want to have in-house:

• Content creation 51%
• Social Media Management 48%
• Caption writing
• Community engagement
• Scheduling
• Graphic Design
• Creatives 42%
• Data and analytics 28%
• Development 9%

Although this may be a common practice, the biggest question is, “Are they good at it?”

Are their in-house resources specialised? Do they have the expertise to work on the above functions? Nobody can tell, but although an in-house marketing team could be effective and efficient, it has its caveats, mostly about expertise and efficiency.

Let’s take the example of an in-house content writer in the construction industry. The business might feel that just because the resource is adept in the construction industry, they are the best persons to write content because of all the jargon they can bring in. They don’t know that throwing in all the construction jargon in a piece of content can be a put-off for most of its audience. This practice might be perceived as “impressive”, but the flipside is the content need not be full of jargon but only worded well to be engaging and create that connection with the audience.

We have seen many businesses feel that social media is not an essential part of the business. To some, it could be accurate, but for a business to be fully digital, it has to have a social media presence to maintain a digital presence and audience engagement. In this case, business entrusts their social media to someone they know and may have done social media in the past. So, the effort is inconsistent, and the activity is sporadic.

Another function that is usually brought in-house is the creatives or graphic designers. An in-house graphic designer could work well, primarily if specialised in their fields. This could also be advantageous because any in-house resource is assumed to understand your branding essentials, tone and voice clearly. Therefore, given this condition, a certain amount of consistency is expected.

Contrary to expectations, having in-house resources could also have its disadvantages. Sometimes, in-house resources are not experts or specialised at what they do.

A lot of them are possibly jack of all trades and self-taught. But unfortunately, although nothing is wrong with being self-taught, sometimes, self-taught knowledge stops when the essential skill is learned and no further studies for improvement are made. This is when it becomes stagnant, and results start declining.

Lack of training and empowerment

Training and empowerment are something that many business owners fail to give their employees. Upskilling your internal team is crucial. When employees feel valued and empowered and feel like they are not siloed in their roles, they perform better and give outrageous results.

Your marketing team is one of the most crucial functions of your business. You need to empower your ally to work to your advantage constantly. Ensure that you allocate enough budget for your team’s training and development. Their training could help ensure your business is at par with the market's current trends.

Consider campaigns that have broad offerings that include upskilling your team. For example, you could have a smashing website made by a top designer and developer. With online attacks and hackers increasingly becoming rampant these days, it would be valuable for your website team to be upskilled in cyber security, risk management, etc.

Make the transition! Allow your business to go digital fully.

Reach out to Ucidity, and let’s talk about how we could help your transition

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Credits to Michael Page and Arktic Fox for the Marketing State of Play 2022 as inspiration and main source of John Hill's commentary video above.