You’re spending thousands on digital marketing, but something’s off. Clicks aren’t converting. Engagement is low. The problem? You’re probably following digital marketing best practices that are actually myths — outdated advice that’s quietly draining your budget and handing customers to your competitors. 

With nine out of 10 incremental ad dollars in 2025 going to digital platforms¹, getting your digital marketing right matters more than ever. Your customers are streaming, scrolling, constantly connected — and they’re making purchase decisions across all of it. They research on Google during their lunch break, compare options on Instagram that evening, and finalize the purchase days later on their laptop. If your business fails to show up at the right moment, they’ll keep scrolling.

So let’s dismantle these myths and help you reach your customers across every stage of their digital marketing journey.

You spend weeks building a beautiful website and when it launches… crickets. A website, social media profiles, and a Google Business Profile are all necessary pieces of the digital marketing puzzle, but they require strategy, optimization and consistent promotion to bring in new customers. 

The fix? Make sure customers can actually find you. Follow SEO best practices to drive organic traffic and invest in Paid Search to claim the top spot in search results. Remember, upper funnel digital media strategies are the tools you need to tell customers you’re there. 

When we think of awareness campaigns, Super Bowl-sized budgets come to mind. But with digital marketing, you don’t need a massive budget to see results. Today’s digital ecosystem levels the playing field. Even modest budgets can punch above their weight when you spend smarter, not bigger by targeting the right audience at the right time.

With digital marketing, you can:

Local TV still works — for the portion of your audience who watches it. But what about everyone else? You’re missing up to 60% of your audience who have cut the cord, barely watch traditional TV, or simply prefer streaming everything they love. 

To reach those who don’t watch TV, incorporate digital video into your media mix. 

Streaming video now accounts for more than half of all TV viewing due to cord-cutting and fragmentation. Using modern media planning tools, it’s possible to increase monthly reach 10–40% without spending more and without reducing the impact of TV. The future isn’t either/or — it’s smart, blended reach across screens.

It can be tempting to set each digital marketing channel on autopilot, but a hands-off approach almost guarantees underperformance of your campaigns. Each digital marketing channel requires its own expertise, optimization, and strategy. An algorithm can bid on keywords, but it can’t tell you why your competitor suddenly outranks you, or how to adjust your messaging when customer sentiment shifts.

Smart digital marketing requires human strategy. You need an expert who can carefully monitor your campaigns, interpret data, and make adjustments that align with your business and resonate with your customers. These are all aspects of digital marketing that require a human touch rather than an automated, set-it-and-forget-it system.

Digital marketing metrics can feel overwhelming. Each channel, whether it’s SEM, Display Advertising, or OTT, has its own metrics to measure the effectiveness of a campaign, making it challenging to see the overall ROI. 

Digital can feel hard to measure, and even harder to connect back to real business outcomes. 

To clearly track ROI, consider implementing the following:

Ready to ditch the myths? Download The Digital Marketing Playbook for a step-by-step guide to growing your business with digital marketing.