In this monologue, Shaun Whynacht challenges the common misconception that digital marketing should be treated as a separate, isolated function. He explains that digital marketing is simply marketing executed through digital channels—such as Facebook, YouTube, podcasts, and websites—just as traditional marketing once used newspapers, radio, or TV. Whynacht warns against abandoning non‑digital efforts and instead advocates for integrating digital tactics into the overall marketing strategy. He advises businesses that are new to digital to start with a single platform, become comfortable, and learn what content resonates before expanding to additional channels. By mastering one channel, businesses can apply those insights to other platforms, avoiding the failure that comes from trying to adopt many digital tools at once. The core message is to view oneself as a marketer who leverages digital tools, not as a “digital marketer” operating in a silo.
Chapters
One of the things that I hear all too often, and it really just confuses me as to why people just do this, is the fact that they look at digital marketing as something siloed, something, you know, unique upon itself, that it has to like live and breathe over here, and then, you know, their advertising and their marketing is over here, right? It's not the way it should be. When you break it down, digital marketing is just doing marketing using digital means. You've got your Facebook page, your YouTube channel, you know, you're doing a podcast, you've got your website, right? They're digital methods. You know, just like it would've been years ago when you were doing newspaper ads, except now, maybe you're probably doing Facebook ads, or you were on the radio and, you know, or doing TV commercials. Now you've got podcasts, you've got YouTube. It's essentially the exact same thing with the twist of it using a digital method. So don't fall victim to looking at this as, hey, I need to go do digital marketing now. You need to be marketing as a whole, and that's the important part. Don't drop everything else that you do and focus like fully on digital marketing. Incorporate that into your business and what you do. And by that, if you're not doing anything digitally right now, pick one method to try it out and become comfortable comfortable with it before you take on something else. A lot of times businesses will start to take on digital methods and then they take on all that they can at once. And really you're just setting yourself up for failure because you don't know those platforms. You don't know what's going to resonate. You don't know what's going to work. And now you've got Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, you know, Pinterest. So who knows how many that you're signing up for because you think more is better. And in reality, It's not. I would much rather you be able to figure out one platform and take what you've learned, the content, how it resonates with people, how they engage with you, you know, what gets them to come to your website, what gets them to come to your place of business, what makes your phone ring when you post, let's say on Facebook. Now you can take those learnings and launch Instagram and then, you know, get to know that better. And then maybe you want to get into doing YouTube videos. Again, take what's resonating on those, those other platforms that have worked quite well for you and now implement that into YouTube video and content. So just to recap here, digital marketing is not a solo isolated object. It needs to be part of your business as a whole. Keep telling yourself, I am marketing, not I am digital marketing. We've just leveraged a digital channel into our marketing efforts.
