Your typical digital marketing agency puts a ton of time and effort into reaching customers across every possible marketing channel. Unfortunately, even the best efforts may not be paying off as well as they used to. But why? There may be any number of factors, including digital marketing fatigue.
If you have never heard of digital marketing fatigue before, you can at least take comfort in the fact that you are not alone. It is a topic just now being discussed in the marketing world. Digital marketing fatigue is a very real phenomenon that’s making life harder on individual marketers and agencies. But there are ways to overcome it.
A Basic Definition
Digital marketing fatigue describes the mental exhaustion faced by consumers who are constantly being presented with digital marketing messages and content. Consumers can be overwhelmed to the point of being disengaged. Unfortunately, digital marketing fatigue is not limited only to B2C environments. It also applies to B2B marketing.
As the Forbes Agency Council put it in a recent post, “B2B customers, in particular, can quickly become overwhelmed and disengaged, tuning out generic ads that feature lazy attempts at personalization.”
The Root Causes
Overcoming digital marketing fatigue starts with understanding its root causes. Webtek, a digital marketing agency based in Salt Lake City, UT, says that five key factors can prove exhausting to B2B customers:
- Volume – We have been led to believe that volume is always better. It’s not. The sheer volume of digital marketing messages across email, social media, websites, and video platforms can be overwhelming – and often is.
- Generic Messaging – Cutting through the digital marketing noise relies heavily on personalization. Generic messaging is meaningless. Customers tune out and ignore it.
- Monotony – Digital marketing can become monotonous when content creators repeat the same old, tired, and unimaginative digital experiences. Nothing disengages more quickly than monotony.
- Screen Fatigue – Screen fatigue is another big issue. Unfortunately, it is one that digital marketing agencies can’t do much about.
- Technical Problems – A poor user experience made worse by technical problems is enough to turn any customer away. A customer already facing fatigue is pushed over the edge when technology doesn’t work like it’s supposed to.
The root causes of digital marketing fatigue are pretty clear. The real challenge is overcoming them in a comprehensive and meaningful way.
How to Address Digital Marketing Fatigue
Any digital marketing agency can overcome the fatigue if it is willing to change things up. That may mean doing away with the old and bringing in something new. A good place to start is putting a heavy emphasis on personalization. Tailor marketing messages to targeted groups while simultaneously keeping the messaging away from non-targeted groups. They don’t need a message that doesn’t pertain to them.
Webtek also recommends:
- Creating more interactive experiences.
- Diversifying content format (text, video, audio, etc.).
- Minimizing time commitments (optimizing for shorter attention spans).
- Avoiding saturating any one channel in a multi-channel strategy.
- Consider new technologies like AR and VR.
- Combining both digital and physical marketing to create new experiences.
My own experience in digital marketing leads me to add one more suggestion: focus less on quantity and more on quality. There is way too much generic content taking up digital space. Customers see right through it. They don’t want generic volume. They want usable, relevant quality.
A digital marketing agency struggling to achieve the design results might want to look at the possibility of digital marketing fatigue. It’s a very real phenomenon that’s causing customers to tune out and disengage. Overcoming it is the new digital marketing priority.
