Digital marketing success: Do you have the one thing?

Here at Search Engine Guide, we talk a lot about search engine marketing (no, really!) but we don't have our heads in the sand. Search marketing only matters in the context of succeeding in your overall digital marketing. So we spend lots of time discussing social media, conversions, and lots of other things related to search marketing. And all of those topics were on my mind yesterday when I taught a class yesterday at Rutgers University as part of the Mini-MBA in digital marketing. I have taught this class several times and I always enjoy it because of the interesting students I meet. Because my class is the introductory one in the course, it covers all of digital marketing, which makes me focus the students on "the one thing," which was Curly's law from the movie City Slickers.

It probably doesn't have the same impact when I say it as when Jack Palance said it. I am not as tough as Jack Palance. (And that is taking into account that he has been dead for five years.) But Curly's advice matters. He said to do one thing. Just one thing. Which elicited the question from Mitch (Billy Crystal's character) as to what the one thing was. In the movie, Mitch had to figure out what the one thing was for him. For digital marketing success, I'll make it easier for you. I'll tell you.

Image by cogdogblog via Flickr

Persistence. Just flat-out stubborn stick-to-itiveness. Don't give up. Ever.

That might sound like odd advice. I mean, after all, don't you need smarts and skills and experience and lots of other qualities? I admit that they all help, but none of them are the one thing.

The one thing is to keep at it.

The thing about all digital marketing is that it is direct marketing, done right. So the most important thing is to try again. You'll never have it perfect. It might never even feel acceptable to you. You might always feel like others are doing it better. You might sometimes think you'll never succeed.

Don't stop. Try anyway.

You need to take that attitude with digital marketing. You can't get out. You can't stop. You have to somehow make the best of it. Are there some people that just should not be digital marketers? Probably. But I think that many more people who could succeed give up when they just need to dig a little deeper.

If you never give up, you'll pick up everything else you need. You'll learn what you need to learn. You'll make decisions based on results. You'll adjust what you are doing all the time. Whatever you need to understand or get done will somehow happen, all because you are not giving yourself any alternative.

Try it for a week and see if it feels different. Instead of working on it for a while and then stopping out of frustration because nothing is improving, you can't stop. You have to keep going. If you don't give up, you will figure out a way.