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3 Reasons Why You Hate Digital Marketing

by Meghan Kelly

Apr 30, 2025

Posted in Industry

The Formada team discusses solutions to the reasons you hate digital marketing.

Digital Marketing Giving You Frustration? You’re Not Alone!

We know a lot of business owners that view marketing as a necessary evil. While “evil” might be a bit strong, in my opinion, I sympathize with their characterization. Because these hurdles make them hate digital marketing.

Marketing is a big investment for most businesses. And, honestly, it should be a big investment for most businesses. 

However, marketing can be incredibly mysterious, and not in a cool, sexy way — it can be mysterious in a “We spent a bunch of money, so why aren’t we getting any new customers?!?” sort of way. 

This can be especially true when your marketing is being managed by poor communicators. 

You know that you’re making big investments. You know that “campaigns are running,” but you don’t really know what they’re doing. It’s no wonder that some business owners hate digital marketing. 

So, if this describes your trepidation about digital marketing, I’m here to validate your feelings, but I’m also here to help you overcome those feelings of ill will with solutions that will help you make better decisions, wiser investments, and ultimately, help you increase the return on your digital marketing investments. 

Frustration #1: Digital Marketing Is Too Complex!

That’s the thing about digital marketing: it typically takes more than one tactic to benefit your business. It’s usually a bunch of different ones — different platforms and different tools. They all influence each other, but operate independently. 

You’re dealing with companies that have odd names who use terminology that requires special training to understand. The pathway of how your customers find you is completely non-linear. It’s a 1,000 piece puzzle with no box, and you’re supposed to just “trust the process.” 

There are too many vendors to deal with. It’s nearly impossible to measure your ROI. No wonder folks hate digital marketing sometimes.

Formada’s Solution

Our goal is to make working with us as simple as possible, and that includes how we communicate with you about your strategy, your campaigns, and their performance. 

Every industry has its lingo. That’s a given. But in our view, it’s unfair to expect you to interpret a language that you weren’t trained to understand. It’s our responsibility as your agency to speak in your language so that you have a clear understanding of your strategy and what precisely your marketing dollars are doing to grow your business. 

This means we show up to your initial discovery call ready to listen, not with an off-the-shelf designed to sell you services you don’t need. 

This means we customize your digital marketing strategy with as many or as few of the critical tactics you need to earn more customers and grow your business. 

It also means that we deliver monthly reporting that tells you precisely what your marketing dollars are doing, and how we recommend we can improve performance over time. 

Formada is designed to plug into your business so that we feel like an extension of your team, not another difficult to manage vendor relationship. 

We treat your marketing dollars as if they were our own, and are entirely transparent about each and every dollar spent. 

Our services are designed to support each other, which improves the performance of your campaign and gives you fewer points of contact to manage. 

I’d go so far as to say you’ll enjoy working with us as much as you’ll enjoy your results. 

Frustration #2: Customer Expectations Are Too High!

We live in a world of immediacy. Or, we’ve been trained to expect as much. A website takes more than a few seconds to load? Off to the next one. We don’t want to wait. And if anything is less than what we’ve expected, then it’s off to Yelp or Google Reviews to express our disdain. 

As a consumer, this can feel empowering. Endless choice! I can choose the best quality, value, price, and convenience based on someone else’s real-life experience. From now on, everything will always be perfect, and I’ll never accept anything less. 

Of course, we all know that’s not realistic. No matter how much research we do, and no matter what inside scoop we might think we have, nothing will live up to the expectations of being perfect every time. 

And as business owners, meeting these expectations can be incredibly difficult. Bad reviews. Contentious social media comments. What are you supposed to do?

Formada’s Solution

First things first: We are right there with you. We’re a business, too, and we want everyone who interacts with our brand to feel like they’re getting the best experience possible. 

Unfortunately, sometimes the “best experience possible” isn’t the best experience possible. We’re human. We’re fallible. We’ll make mistakes from time to time. 

And as much as I don’t like that, the truth is that you’ve got to own it. 

When it comes to things like negative online reviews, our best recommendation is to face them head-on. Not only should you be encouraging your customers to review your business, but you should also be responding to them, offering a thank you to those who loved working with you, and offering an appropriately measured response to those who did not. 

Because sometimes an apology is warranted, and other times, it’s clear that you’re not going to make someone feel satisfied no matter what you do. But, in our opinion, saying nothing is not an option. People read reviews. You probably read reviews, right? And it always feels different when you see someone respond appropriately to negativity. 

Here’s another way that working with Formada can help you deal with high customer expectations: We’re very, very process oriented. We’ll never suggest, launch, or manage a campaign without first understanding your operations and without making sure that our respective parties know exactly who is responsible for what. 

But we will help you choose the right rod and reel. And we’ll bait the hook. It’s your responsibility to reel them in. And we’ll hold each other accountable to that. 

Frustration #3: Digital Marketing Is Too Time Consuming! 

One big reason why people often hate digital marketing is that it is incredibly time consuming. It just is. That’s why there are entire roles and departments and agencies devoted solely to digital marketing. 

It’s funny that the “We’ll just have our intern run our social media campaigns” cliche hasn’t yet been fully put to bed. That’s an entire job. It can be incredibly complex. And, depending on your business, can be a tactic that can pull in an immense amount of new customers. 

Yes, “AI this” and “automation that” — we get it. No matter what tools you’re using, you need a person who understands your business, your goals, and brand and can turn that into results. (Where results = $$$.)

Good marketing isn’t just launching a campaign. It’s about interacting with customers. It’s about analyzing data. Creating. Publishing. Follow-through and follow-up. Knowing where to go next. 

Most business owners (as they should be) are focused on the bigger picture. If you don’t have a full-blown marketing department, then you’re either outsourcing that work or the marketing resources you do have are probably overwhelmed by all of the responsibilities they have. 

Too many hats, not enough heads. 

Formada’s Solution

I don’t know if we’ll wear any of those extra hats, but what we will do is take some responsibilities off of your shoulders, help you build authority online, and give you the space to focus your time and energy on the business instead of on marketing. 

Digital marketing is time consuming. Doing keyword research, creating a content calendar, writing 1,000-plus-word blogs, publishing, and posting consistently takes skill, effort, and time. 

And even if you have the best of intentions, these are activities that are going to fall by the wayside. Writing blogs, making website updates, tweaking ad copy — these things will probably never feel like your top priorities. 

But that’s what Formada does really, really well. 

We create custom, secure websites that are designed to grow your sales. 

Our copywriting team creates original content that grows brand authority with search engines and people. 

And our paid media team puts your message in the right place at the right time for the right audience. 

We’re pretty confident that once you’ve worked with us, you’re probably not gonna hate digital marketing any longer. Or at the very least, you just might love us!

Wanna learn more about how we can help you grow your business? Contact me today!

Get in touch with the Formada Team