Description: If you’re in the digital marketing space, you must know the rapid at which agencies are opening these days. What is the one thing all digital marketing startups are missing today? We discuss.
What To Should Know Before Starting a Digital Marketing Firm
If you’re in the digital marketing industry, you must have a friend or colleague who has started a digital marketing agency. If someone hasn’t yet, someone must be planning to at the very least.
One unique aspect of digital marketing is how it instigates a sense of entrepreneurship amongst its practitioners. Almost anyone in the field has the giddy feeling of being capable of running a company.
And it’s not as if they’re wrong. Many do react to this feeling and end up building very successful companies.
There is one thing people miss though. Success is not always replicated by copying someone else.
I’m not saying copying a business model is wrong. One could argue that the entire world economy is run because people try to replicate the success of others for themselves. Think of any given field and you will find companies finding ways to replicate those who find success.
The same is true for digital marketing. You will be able to find digital marketing firms at every nook and corner of a major city like Delhi. Each is likely to offer the same bouquet of features to clients. The only way to differentiate one company from another, on paper, is looking at their track record.
In this article, we will try to understand one key part of running a startup most digital marketing firms are forgetting.
The Biggest Problem with Modern Digital Marketing Startups
A major problem plagues most top startups today. There is little imagination amongst digital marketing startups when it comes to offering clients truly innovative services. This lies at the heart of the problem of digital marketing startups. There is a serious lack of innovation.
Do check: Nine Digital Marketing Challenges Marketers Currently Face
Why Is There a Lack of Innovation?
Why indeed have new startups in the field stopped innovating?
The question is interesting. Existing behemoths in digital marketing continue to flourish. Even traditional ad agencies have successfully co-opted digital marketing into their setup and reaped the benefits of the digital revolution.
The reasons are many, each with nuances difficult to explain.
- Success of Existing Players
Necessity is the mother of invention. If this quote is true, there has not been a general need for marketers to innovate. Marketing firms have not changed radically in the past five or ten years. Even players who tried to do something new ended up returning to tried and tested ways.
This lack of change has seeped down to digital marketing startups as well. Digital marketing as a field has been able to stand tall on the basis of techniques mastered more than a decade back. While social media has brought some change, the mainstream digital marketing narrative has largely been the same.
- Success of Existing Methods
There have been techniques in digital marketing which have set in stone for more than a decade now. Techniques like SEO and AdWords have not changed drastically in the last decade. Furthermore, digital marketing techniques have delivered time and again for companies across the board.
The success of these methods has allowed new startups the luxury of not innovating and simply replicating the methods of old agencies.
- Lack of Knowledge about Digital Marketing
Clients who hire digital marketing agencies don’t know much about the field. This leads to no push for more innovative marketing practises from the firms’ side. Only when clients know about a field can they demand marketing agencies to change their ways and come up with something new. The only demand normally seen from a client is an innovative social media campaign. Innovation in other aspects of digital marketing are largely absent and have led to a lot of saturation.
- Large Market Unexposed to Digital Marketing
What motivates someone to establish a digital marketing startup? Most of all, the reason is money. There are many small companies that have no digital marketing setup. These companies are generally targetted by startups as such clients are ready to strike cut-price deals. With a large unexposed market already present, the incentive to innovate is absent.
Why Innovation is Important?
While the decision to follow existing trends of digital marketing may seem like a good bet now, the same cannot be said for companies thinking in the long-term.
If startups do not innovate, they will continue to remain in the same domain and not be able to scale. Ony rapid innovation can instigate exponential growth. If startups do not invest in new marketing fields like voice search and imbibe a more content-driven storytelling approach, the future looks bleak.
In Conclusion
In conclusion, this article covers things most digital marketing startups these days are missing and desperately need.
About the Author – Gaurav Heera is a digital marketing trainer and marketing expert with more than a decade of entrepreneurial experience. He currently heads development at DelhiCourses, an institute known for its digital marketing course in Delhi.
