Why “set it and forget it” doesn’t work in digital marketing

If your digital marketing strategy runs on autopilot, it’s not a strategy. It’s a slow leak. One that’s quietly draining your budget and sabotaging your results.  

The “set it and forget it” mindset might sound efficient, but it’s actually the fastest way to waste money and miss your mark in today’s attention-starved, algorithm-tangled digital landscape. 

Why marketers fall for the hands-free fallacy 

We understand why a hands-off approach is alluring for marketers. Automation tools are smarter than ever. Platform dashboards are sleek and full of reassuring charts. You launch a campaign, set your targeting, pick your creative, schedule your budget — and boom, it’s out in the world. Time to move on, right? 

Hold your horses. 

Digital marketing isn't static — it's wildly, relentlessly dynamic. While you're sleeping, platforms are changing their algorithms. While you're in meetings, your competitors are tweaking their targeting. While you're pitching new clients, your audiences are developing ad fatigue. Without constant monitoring and adaptation, your campaign doesn't maintain — it deteriorates. What worked yesterday falters today and fails tomorrow. 

Without constant monitoring and adaptation, your campaign doesn't maintain.It deteriorates. 

The platform is not your partner 

"But wait," you might say, "I have a dedicated rep at Google/Meta/LinkedIn who helps manage my campaigns!" 

Look, we love platform reps. Some of our best friends (“work friends”, but still) are platform reps. But make no mistake: platform representatives work for their platforms, not for your business. Their success metrics aren't tied to your ROI — they're measured by how well they drive adoption of new features, increase platform spend, and test emerging tools. 

When a Google rep pushes you toward Performance Max or a Meta specialist insists you should try their newest ad format, they're not making a strategic recommendation based on your business goals. They're fulfilling quotas and serving their employer's interests. 

Since we’re being (brutally) honest: these reps never look beyond their own platform's data. Your Meta rep doesn’t know or care that your TikTok campaign is driving more qualified traffic than your Instagram efforts.  

Why not? Because they don’t work for TikTok (you knew that).  

And they also don’t work for you (you needed to hear that). 

“Platform agnostic”: What an expert digital ad manager can do for your business 

Digital marketing isn't about impressions, clicks — or even conversions, in isolation. These are just stepping stones toward what actually matters: your business outcomes. 

Top-tier campaign management starts with understanding your business’s specific objectives. Are you driving revenue? Building brand awareness? Establishing thought leadership? Generating qualified leads? The metrics that matter flow from these goals, not the other way around. 

From there, professional digital campaign management brings three critical elements that automated systems can't replicate: 

Contextual intelligence: Understanding how audiences behave on different platforms, and how ad placements on those different platforms compare with each other. 

Adaptive tactics: The ability to recognize patterns in real-time data and make immediate adjustments – not just to bids and budgets, but to creative approaches, audience targeting, and even platform selection. 

Business alignment: Connecting campaign performance to your business goals and desired results, not vanity metrics that look impressive in dashboards but do nothing for your bottom line. 

When you work with experts who actively manage your campaigns, you're not getting button-pushers. You're partnering with strategists who understand the digital ecosystem holistically and can navigate its complexities to advance your specific business goals. 

The Show and Tell difference 

At Show and Tell, we reject the platform-first mentality that dominates digital marketing. Instead, we begin with a simple question: "What change are you trying to create?" 

Take Lakehead University. They engaged Show and Tell to improve their online student recruitment – not, mind you, to collect ad impressions or homepage hits.  

We did demographic research to determine what media audiences were consuming and what platforms they were frequenting. We planned a multi-channel digital campaign on Meta, TikTok, YouTube and a variety of apps that were popular with the target audience. We worked in conjunction with student ambassadors to develop a suite of agency- and student-made creative.  

The results: student applications increased 3.6%, enrolment confirmations shot up by 8.9%, they received 36% more traffic to their website's Admissions page and 22% more visits to their Apply page. All of these were online indicators of intent to enrol – aligned with their objective. You can read more about the campaign here.  

8.9%increase in enrolment confirmations

3.6%increase in student applications

36%more traffic to ‘Admissions’ page

Our point: this success is the outcome of platform agnostic research, placement, and creative development in action. No single platform rep is helping you with all of that, and no platform is optimizing your campaign on its own.  

For us, it’s another day at the office. 

Our team lives and breathes these platforms. We track every algorithmic shift, every competitive movement, every audience trend. We test constantly, adjust frequently, and optimize relentlessly. We don't just read about updates — we adapt with them firsthand across dozens of accounts and thousands of campaigns. 

Most importantly, we recognize that digital marketing is neither magic nor math. It's a hands-on job that requires creativity and precision, intuition and analysis, broad vision and meticulous attention to detail.  

And above all, hard work. 

The hard truth about hard work 

Here's what digital marketers need to understand: there is no easy button. There's no shortcut to increasing sales, changing behaviours, or building meaningful awareness. These outcomes require genuine expertise, sustained attention, and strategic intelligence.  

If you're serious about achieving meaningful outcomes through digital marketing, you need partners who are equally serious about the ongoing work required to deliver those outcomes. Partners who understand that launching a campaign is just the first step in a journey that demands (and deserves) constant attention, adjustment, and refinement. 

So, if you’ve been told to set it and forget it, here’s your permission to reject that advice. Your digital marketing deserves better than autopilot. It deserves strategy, insight, and real stewardship. 

And that’s what Show and Tell delivers. Connect with us now for a free discovery call.