Put yourself in the shoes of an independent contributor in marketing looking at the options in front of them:

1. Plug everything into a massive system of automation that does everything for you pretty well

2. Run everything through manual processes that can provide better results and data but requires you to monitor and update regularly

Is that potential for better results enough to motivate you to invest hundreds of hours of your time throughout the year? Does anyone know your channel well enough to even get into the details of those settings and check? Is the risk of doing worse worth the benefit of trying for better? Nobody seems to care about the data capture anyway so why not just plug it in the black box of platform automation? If it doesn’t perform as well as the goal you can blame the platform and automation so why work harder than you have to?

For much of the last two decades MarTech and AdTech have been advancing in automation and AI with promises of providing advertisers with a money printing machine. Put in $1 and you’ll get $4 back! Easy as that!

And for stretches of time that promise felt true enough. The economy was growing, the audience size online was expanding faster than demand, costs were favorable, ROI was great, and automation continued to make it easier.

Until that truth became a lie.

Audience size has stagnated or even decreased on major platforms. Saturation has caused advertiser demand to outpace the consumer supply. Cost of media has risen while returns stay flat or even dip. A favorable ROI gets harder every day. And the ability to tune and target your platforms diminishes with each new automated advancement we adopt.

The fact of the matter is that this is a market correction. It was never feasible to have Directors in Marketing who’s entire job was to manage an agency who does all the work. It was never realistic to plug every aspect of your media into a Google Black Box of Automation and expect to be able to refine and optimize as you need to when the market cools. It was never sustainable to believe we could continue to grow the audience size faster than the advertiser demand.

The reality is that digital marketers have to correct along with the market.

More than ever digital marketers need to be able to answer where every dollar is going. This need is the enemy of many practices that were adopted along the way.

• What are the line items within that monthly Agency Fee?

  • How much is going to tech?

  • How much is going to data?

  • How much is going to working media?

  • How much is being hidden in markups along the way?

• What is working in Search?

  • What queries are showing us insight to intent?

  • What ad types are resonating the best?

  • What is the incremental impact of the campaign?

  • How much of the budget is being spent on Exact Match Brand KWs?

• What is working in Social?

  • Am I optimizing to meaningful objectives?

  • Are the tests I’m running statistically sound?

  • Are we even testing on an appropriate matrix?

  • How much credit is going to View Thru Retargeting vs incremental users?

• Are we actually optimizing emerging channels?

  • How are our TikTok Campaigns impacting the bottom line?

  • What elements of CTV are working?

  • What is our affiliate and influencer strategy and can we measure it?

  • Are there Owned and Operated opportunities with video, podcast, and social?

The future of marketing is lean. We can no longer count on new massive waves of digital natives coming online. We can no longer rely on automation doing our job for us. And we can no longer hide behind a positive ROI when every dollar matters to the business more than it ever has before.

So take action and get help. A Lean Marketing Audit has only two possible outcomes:

• You made a small investment and got back a clean bill of health

• Your investment results in actionable feedback that generates greater return

Start your year with a Lean Marketing Audit. JMDS Consulting is offering free scoping calls, reach out today.