The marketing industry changes frequently, which makes it full of misinformation and myths. Things that were once accurate and true are now completely false. Some of these myths are easy to spot, while others stick around and can lead you down the wrong path. The three marketing myths you’ll find in this post are some of the biggest out there – so it’s time to stop believing them!

1. SEO Is A One-Time Thing

SEO is one of the most effective marketing techniques to grow your business – but it’s not a one-time thing! Business owners get sucked into the idea that improving search engine optimization is a one-and-done process. Once you’ve achieved an optimal search presence, you must constantly update and tweak your site to ensure it remains in good positions and keeps driving people to your site while raising brand awareness. If you get your site to the top of the rankings and immediately forget about it, it won’t be long before it drops back down. Stay consistent, and always keep an eye on your SEO.

2. Email Marketing Is Outdated And Ineffective

People believe that email marketing is outdated and doesn’t have an effect on consumers anymore. The stats don’t back this up! It’s actually one of the best-performing channels, with a whopping 3600% ROI.

Email marketing is massively effective as you can directly reach your target market. People get notifications from emails too, so a good subject and headline hook them in and can generate sales through one message alone. It’s the best form of outbound marketing, for sure. Many small businesses neglect it because the focus is fully on inbound marketing, but some outbound strategies via email have proven to be successful.

3. Web Traffic Is The Most Beneficial Statistic

Be honest; you think this statement is true. Web traffic is the main statistic everyone looks at when running digital marketing campaigns. You focus on SEO or use social media to try and drive traffic to your website. You’re under the belief that high-traffic figures are all that matter – if loads of people are on your site, then you’re winning…right?

Nope. Having impressive traffic figures means nothing if the traffic isn’t doing anything. Rather than focusing on the traffic stats alone, you need to improve your conversion rate. The more visitors you convert, the more successful your marketing strategy will be. It directly impacts your ROI as you’re converting them to do something that benefits your business. Put it this way: 100,000 people visit your site, but only 0.1% convert into paying customers. That’s 100 people total. By contrast, 10,000 people visit another website, and 2% of them convert. That’s 200 people, two times as many as the site with loads of traffic.

Getting caught up in these myths will lead you down long paths with no success in the end. Keep these things in mind whenever you start a new marketing strategy: SEO requires constant involvement over time, email marketing is one of the best channels for ROI, and web traffic is meaningless if you’re not hitting high conversions.