You can expect many things to come out of your digital advertising campaigns, but one thing you can never expect is quick and easy success. 

The Testing Period

All digital advertising campaigns should always begin with a period of testing. Testing is an essential part of figuring out what will work and what will not, but it's not a time where you should be expecting massive results. 

Many brands exploring the benefits of digital advertising for the first time follow the myth that you can test for a month and at the end, you will have a definitive idea of where to go and how to scale right away. In reality, the testing period often raises more questions than answers. And this is what you want! 

Your testing period is a time for you and your marketing partners to raise new hypotheses about your marketing strategy then work to prove or disprove them. Either way is beneficial because you're working towards a result and you're learning. 

Testing establishes a starting point for your marketing campaigns but not an established path to follow forever. Testing can tell you some things you may not have expected about your products that will require you to pivot your direction. 

You might discover that customers in different countries or age ranges than you expected are interested in your products, or your landing page isn't generating any click-throughs, or maybe one of your social media platforms isn't performing well. These are valuable things to discover because you can take this information and optimise your assets and target new audiences in your main campaigns. 

You need to be looking at these lessons and trying to figure out the "why" behind everything you didn't expect. You need to grow from these experiences because you've invested time and money into testing, and that's why—so you can learn and tweak and grow. 

Your testing period will never reveal a straight path to success; it will never reveal the secret path straight to making millions because that path doesn't exist. 

We find ourselves busting this myth quite often. After a period of testing, we would love to be able to tell our clients, "this is the right way forward," but it's not possible in reality. Testing will reveal areas of the marketing strategy that work immediately, but it will reveal more areas that need to be adjusted. Nothing will ever be perfectly optimised for success, you will always need to make changes to your campaigns even far after the testing period has finished.

Do All Digital Marketing Agencies Get the Same Results?

As a brand looking to grow, it's essential that you're working with a digital marketing agency that blends with your business, is transparent with their methods, and communicates clearly and often. The right marketing partner for your brand will be able to approach you with things that are not working at any stage of your campaigns with brute honesty and openness. They shouldn't work to feed your ego, exaggerate successes, or minimise losses to make either your business or themselves look better. You need to be grounded in reality for digital advertising to work. 

Your digital marketing partner should also tell you what's not working WHEN it's not working. Timing is massively important in the marketing world, so you need to be proactive at every stage. If you're doing something that is isolating part of your target audience, you want to know as soon as possible so you can pivot before losing that audience completely. You don't want to keep funding strategies that are simply not working or potentially hurting your business. 

Being able to review the data you collect throughout the campaign and make sense of what's happened up to that point is essential. Taking that data and applying it to your advertising will determine what direction your path to success will take.

The Dangers of Optimism

One of the most dangerous mindsets you can have as a business owner is expecting to become rich immediately after signing up for digital advertising. Don't start looking for a new home in the Bahamas right after signing with an agency. 

Digital advertising in itself is only one part of the whole marketing sphere your brand should be engaging within. If you're using digital advertising alone, you will get results if it's effective advertising. But if you want to take your business to the next level, you will also have to incorporate other strategies into your brand's marketing sphere. 

Your brand's overall marketing strategy should include a content strategy, search engine optimisation, public relations, applying for and winning awards, getting customer reviews, and having your products or services featured on industry-recognised platforms. You want to be set up in a way that encourages organic sales to complement your paid media. When digital advertising is used in conjunction with these other marketing pieces, you will have a completed strategy with every detail working symbiotically together towards your overall marketing goals. 

If you're an entrepreneur, digital advertising will 100% help you achieve the success you're looking for— you can travel the world, you can buy yourself that Barbados home, you can retire early and make a handsome income working for yourself— but only if you have great products and services and a successful marketing sphere that includes more than digital advertising. 

Most importantly, you need to have good partners around you who are honest and hard-working, and you need to have a realistic mindset, timeline, and goals. 

You need to be prepared to work hard, and you can't be disheartened when you don't achieve your idea of success overnight.