14 Things to Love About Digital Marketing

By Carrie Cousins

Thank you to Valley Business FRONT for featuring our Vice President, Carrie Cousins, in their February 2026 issue.

In this month of all things love, here’s my little love letter to digital marketing (in list format, of course).

1. You can see what works, and what doesn’t. In the digital landscape, a strong digital marketing team sets measurable goals so you can see exactly what your efforts are doing well, and even those things that are underperforming.
2. Digital marketing comes with built in accountability. Numbers don’t lie. If you started a new campaign and are seeing no new traffic, no new leads, or no news sales, it’s a sign to look at that tactic.
3. You can start small and scale as you see results. Looking to sell more widgets? Start with a modest digital advertising spending; if revenue outpaces spending, consider increasing budget until you hit the point of diminishing returns.
4. Digital marketing is transparent across teams. With a good dashboard, sales, marketing, and leadership can all see the same picture of marketing efforts. This makes investment to performance to goals clearer and makes decisions a little bit easier.
5. There’s no waiting to see if things are working. Digital marketing works in real-time, so you can see your wins in real time, too.
6. Optimization never stops. Yes, if a strategy is working you should let it keep working, but you can continue to optimize to get better results.
7. Digital marketing aligns with business goals. Because it is measurable, you can connect leads, sales, customer value, and cost per acquisition directly to campaigns.
8. Only the best, most relevant digital marketing tactics survive. Online visitors confirm your approach with clicks and engagement. If you aren’t getting those, it is a sign to rethink the strategy.
9. Digital marketing is fluid and dynamic. You can change it up at any time – creative, copy, audience, goals. This is the beauty of online marketing.
10. There’s less overall risk with marketing when you can drive value with digital. Think of it as a growth engine. So many people start their journey online for your product or service before you even know they are there; being out front with digital marketing helps you attract some of that attention.
11. Digital is attributable in a way that some other marketing tactics are not. You can see exactly where leads and sales come from: paid versus organic search, social media versus email, mobile versus desktop. All of these things can help you develop marketing strategy for even greater success.
12. Prove value and build trust to stakeholders with true and credible reporting. There are generally multiple sources to back up digital marketing efforts – website analytics, advertising metrics, social media stats – and when you put it all together, they should tell the same story. Turn this into a clear dashboard with KPIs and it will supercharge your reporting with digital activity that connects directly to sales and revenue. (Return on investment made easy!)
13. Digital marketing can help level the playing field for small businesses. With smarter targeting and great messaging, you can compete with a modest budget.
14. Skill and strategy are the key ingredients to winning in the digital space. The tools are there and anyone can use them but really knowing the ins and out of the platforms makes a difference. Mix that with great marketing and creative strategy for the best results.

Carrie Cousins is the Vice President at LeadPoint Digital in Roanoke. For 15+ years, she has helped businesses tell their stories and get better results online with practical digital marketing strategies. She is also an active leader in AAF, serving on the local and district boards, and is an adjunct professor at Virginia Tech.