"The most important thing for any ad is to know your audience," - says George Thomas McCormick

George Thomas McCormick is the founder of SOAR: a full-funnel Facebook & Instagram marketing agency. SOAR's main offering is creating and running profitable Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns for its clients. In an interview with George a couple of weeks ago, he shared some of his thoughts on recent issues going on in the world and how they are affecting the digital marketing sphere; Here's the conversation: What's your view on how the current pandemic is affecting digital marketing? The current pandemic is understandably making digital marketing difficult right now. With the rise and fall of many different companies during this time, consumer confidence is at an extremely low level. What this means for advertisers is that there are fewer people willing to spend money right now, especially on expensive products. Due to this, advertisers need to drastically change their marketing strategy to be a lot more empathetic of their audience. For other businesses, it’s their first time trying digital marketing as they are usually completely offline businesses. We’ve had a lot of these types of clients come to us with setting up their online presence for the very first time, or they risk going out of business completely. Where do you see digital marketing going in the next 10 years? I see influencer marketing becoming a lot more prominent in the next 10 years. Consumers are starting to trust big brands and corporations less and less these days. What this means is that influencers are becoming much better at building trust with their audience and selling products based on recommendations. I see this becoming far more popular in the next few years as people’s trust in corporations is likely to continue to fall. What advice do you have for anyone running ads right now? My best advice for anyone running ads right now is no different than I have ever advised before to clients. The most important thing for any ad is to know your audience. If you don’t know what their feelings are, their pain points, and their struggles, you will never be able to build an extremely profitable ad. Due to the coronavirus, the emotions of your audience have undoubtedly changed, so the best thing you can do before you run any ads is to talk to as many people that fit your target audience as possible, to understand how they’re feeling. Do you see any major change coming to the digital marketing sphere in the next few years? In the next couple of years, I see digital marketing becoming very competitive, especially in terms of ads. Covid-19 has forced companies to shift online, but once the pandemic is over, these companies are likely to continue marketing online as they would have established their online presence. This is definitely going to increase competition with ad bidding so it’s likely we may see a rise in CPCs in the short term. How do you plan on transforming the digital marketing sector? My agency is really focused on a business model where clients only pay when they get an actual return on their investment. This forces us to work extremely hard to make sure we deliver real tangible value for every client we work with, otherwise, we don’t get paid. I’d like to transform the industry by encouraging other agencies to use this model and increase transparency in the industry as a whole. I don’t want to see any clients being ripped off by sub-par agencies that can’t deliver results. So eventually, I see the business model becoming a lot more popular and this will allow people to regain trust in digital marketing and agencies.