9 Digital Marketing Mistakes I Won't Make Next Year

We all know about New Year's resolutions. We make these decisions about what we'll do in the next year with good intentions, but we also know that usually, one by one, they go by the way side. So this year, for a change, I've started to make "un-resolutions" -- things I am determined not to do in 2010.


   1. I will not get seduced by any new digital marketing toy just because some industry pundit thinks it's the coolest thing to hit the street. Nor will I believe every promise made by every new marketing technology company.

   2. I will not abandon common sense in digital marketing and be blinded by digital agencies' promises that their "new" campaigns will go viral and get millions of people engaged. I will continue to listen to my gut and if it sounds too good to be true, that's a red flag warning I will heed.

   3. I will not abandon newspaper, magazines, radio and other forms of traditional media if it is the right vehicle. No matter how sexy digital media may seem because of the perceived lower cost, I will continue to create integrated programs that weave together the best of both the traditional and digital worlds.

   4. I will not give up my attachment to e-mail marketing. Sorry folks -- but e-mail marketing done well drives real business results. If your e-mail campaign did not work, either you had a bad list or an inadequate call-to-action or maybe your agency did not know what they were doing.

   5. I will not be fooled into thinking that the ad market is going to rebound in 2010. Nope. The ad market will continue to be buffeted by the tides of an evolving economic landscape and by consumers' ever fickle attraction to new tech toys like mobile devices. These trends will continue to dampen ad revenue for publishers for some time to come.

   6. I will not blindly follow Google as they chow down every tech industry from telecom to digital publishing in their relentless march toward digital dominance. In the process, they stifle competition and kill real innovation by companies who deserve to succeed.

   7. I will not diminish my slavish devotion to data-driven marketing no matter what new platforms come out that can behaviorally target any audience any way I wish. I know, I know -- the BT folks can slice and dice an audience so many ways that it makes a marketer salivate. But unless I can see, touch and feel the data, I will pass for now.

   8. I will not start following every Tom, Dick and Jane to gain more Twitter followers. OK, so I only have about 185 folks following me but at least I know they read what I tweet. Quality, not quantity, is what drives social media.

   9. And my final un-resolution: I will not try appear to be "30-something" (with a suitable amount of hair product) just because I love digital marketing. I know that the median age of people in digital marketing tends to be 27, but my depth in this space has yielded real-world, hard-won recognition. What you see (gray hair and all) is what you get.

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