The newest and greatest technology is what everyone always wants to use. Spending too much time searching for the best technology wastes valuable time because the technology your using in your campaigns is not as important as you may think it is.
This likely is a shock to you but technology truly is very overrated in the online marketing world.
The process used in your advertising campaign is far more important than the technology that you are using. Technology can give you a boost but it cannot replace the importance of having a good process to run a successful campaign. A good process will beat a bad process with newer technology any day in an ad campaign.
For example, lets look at a common way that two advertising campaigns competing against each other will play out based on how they run their campaigns. One company running a campaign is called Red and the company competing with them who is also running an ad campaign is Blue.
Red spends the majority of their money on experienced campaign managers to help target their ads and reach as many potential customers as possible in their target market. Blue spends the majority of their money on the latest and greatest technology and does not worry as much about the order and structure of their actual campaign.
Red conducts a very successful campaign that reaches their target market and helps bring them more business than before. Blue collects lots of data from their campaign and displays the most high tech ads but their campaign is not as successful as Reds campaign. The reason Blue is not as successful is because they did not focus on the processes going into their campaign. No amount of technology can master the work that experienced advertisers have been doing for years.
Think of all of the new technology that is released into the online advertising world every year. Now think about how many advertisers there are on the internet and how many of them are actually using the newest technology to advertise. The best advertisers are the ones who have figured out the system and can reach the people that they need to reach in methods that they have been mastering for years.
The management systems that your company uses are more important than the technology your company is using. Going by definition, you can actually classify the systems that your company uses as technology. Your marketing teams and systems that are operating based on experience and technique will benefit you far more than a new ad tool on your computer will when running a campaign.
Each aspect of your campaign is very important and nothing should be skipped over. You never know how much a small detail in your campaign can mean to the success of your campaign because one minor thing may bring you the few extra, high quality customers that you need to be able to consider your campaign a success.
A contract management system should be established and used by every company running an advertising campaign. The system should ensure that all information and details of an internet campaign are entered correctly so that the campaign focuses, targets and reaches the appropriate audience for the company doing the advertising.
You may be thinking that all of these systems and methods that must be used to make your campaign perform as well as possible are a waste of time and not worth the effort. You would rather just find the latest and greatest technology to run your ad campaign for you and save you the hassle of having to perfect every little detail of your campaign. There are many companies that feel this way and run campaigns based on this belief. Some are successful at doing it but most are not. Even the ones that are successful are still wasting their money by running campaigns that are not performing as well as they could be.
If you still are not sure if it is worth spending more time on your processes than you do on your technology, you should make your decision based on personal experience. First, run a campaign and make your number one focus the type of technology that you use. Then run another campaign and focus on your processes instead of the technology that you are using. Compare and analyze the results of both campaigns. I can guarantee the technology based campaigns results will not compare with your process focused campaign.