10 Things That HAVEN'T Changed in My 10 Years in Digital Marketing

Ten years ago, I made a drastic career pivot. I left a direct mail marketing role at a large print magazine company and joined a small digital agency, making a bet that digital had some staying power. While that’s proven true, it’s the digital marketing landscape that has pivoted drastically and incessantly since then. We’re constantly inundated with new tools, regulations, tactics, fads, platforms, and ways to measure it all. But if you take a step back, perhaps things aren’t as different as it seems. 

Part thought starter, part coping mechanism, here are ten things that haven’t changed in my eventful ten years in digital marketing. 

1. Everything starts with understanding your audience 

What should be the first question asked when putting together a marketing plan – “who are we trying to reach?” is all too often a secondary consideration, if it’s asked at all. It’s easy to be excited and want to lead with your product’s features, or the problem your service solves. But the foundational piece to effective marketing remains knowing your audience intimately – their needs, wants, pain points, quirks, fears, motivations – and building your marketing strategy around that knowledge.

2. There’s no such thing as a perfect analytics solution

It feels like griping about Google Analytics and measurement challenges is a more recent fad, as cookie depreciation and the tragically flawed release of GA4 has mostly been a post-2020 headache. But I’m proud to report I’ve been decrying missed conversions and flawed attribution for a decade strong.  

There will always be discrepancies between the back end of your site and your analytics tool of choice. Certain platforms will get too much or too little credit in driving conversions. The sooner you embrace that measurement in the digital realm is an imperfect science, the less hair you’ll pull out. 

3. Email Marketing remains a highly effective way to drive engagement and revenue

Written off more than once in my 10 years in digital marketing, email continues to be a precious line of communication between your business and the folks kind enough to let you in their inbox – from potential customers to your most loyal evangelists.  

In 2025, it’s hard to make a case against using this communication channel. Afraid you don’t have anything to say? How about aiming for one email per quarter? Sure, aim for a mind-blowing, hyper-personalized creative with an offer they can’t refuse. But never underestimate how simply reminding people that you exist can drum up business. 

4. People will leave if you don’t offer a seamless experience

You can have the best food in town, but if your waitstaff is rude, menu is illegible, and dining room is 50 degrees…will anyone come back? Experience matters, in restaurants and digital experiences. And if yours is subpar, people will leave long before you can win them over with whatever you’re trying to sell.  

What has changed in this area is users’ expectations – those are perpetually on the rise, thanks to the many highly accessible, world-class digital experiences we interact with every day (shopping on Amazon, watching Netflix, scrolling Instagram). But what was true in 2015 remains true in 2025 – if the path from user to customer is fraught with friction and confusion, your business will suffer. 

5. Failure is still allowed, highly likely, and quite valuable 

I try not to take for granted that I work in a field that has an inspiring take on failure – it’s quite valuable, quite likely, and quite alright. We’re not flying airplanes or performing heart surgery. We’re trying to educate and influence the general public, and we’re not always going to get it right.  

Fear of failing should never be the reason a new idea isn’t tested. Worst case, we gain information about what turns our customers off or what lowers conversion rate. Most failures help inform a smarter approach down the road. 

6. Figure out your differentiator or die trying 

Having no competitors only exists in dreams and in monopolies destined to be broken up by the Department of Justice (there’s a Google joke somewhere here, but I want this post to rank well!)

The reality is there are dozens of places your prospects and customers could turn to get what they’re looking for. It’s worth spending real time at the outset of developing your marketing strategy figuring out what sets you apart and putting those differentiators at the core of your marketing.

7. The smartest companies listen to their customers 

This one will be true a decade from now, and a decade after that. No matter how well you think you’re doing, I promise you there is a customer somewhere (read: thousands of customers everywhere) that can give you concrete ways to improve.  

If you’re daunted by the notion of pulling focus groups together or hosting events dedicated to customer feedback, reach for some lower hanging fruit – reading reviews of your business or even monitoring social feeds for comments and mentions can inspire you to get better.

8. Our hunches will inevitably be wrong sometimes 

Ostensibly we’ve gotten smarter as marketers over the last 10 years – we have more data and collective experience than ever before. But I find myself falling into the same trap I did at the start of my career, and I suspect I’m not alone. I make assumptions about my audience, and I often don’t challenge those hunches with enough skepticism or testing. 

9. Sales & marketing teams MUST be in lock step with one another 

I’ve worked with plenty of examples of both – sales and marketing teams that thrive on communication, collaboration, and mutual feedback; and ones that operated independently, unaware of or unconvinced just how much they can help one another.  

I’m here to emphatically recommend the former. Sales teams need to know what message the marketing team is putting out in the world (and should help inform that message), and the marketing team needs a constant pulse on the quality of leads they’re delivering. And nuggets picked up in 1:1 sales conversations are hugely valuable in refining marketing strategy.

10. Most marketing blogs you’ve read the last 10 years have been some flavor of “everything has changed”, “it’s a whole new world”, and “tactic XYZ” is dead

Frankly, it’s exhausting! While change and evolution is indeed everywhere in marketing (much of it for the good, to be clear), sometimes it can help your marketing efforts and your sanity to step back and realize how much of what we collectively believed and practiced a decade ago remains true. See how I cheated and used the last one to close this blog, guide you seamlessly into our CTA, and get you on your way? I learned that trick in 2015, too. :) 

To put Lightburn’s collective decades of experience to work for you, drop us a line.