Let’s say that a web designer is working with a client to launch a new site for a new company. And everything is going great. At some point, the question comes up: what about online marketing?
Why Marketing Isn’t Always Considered for a New Website
There is a remarkable amount of pain in the ecosystem that makes this a surprisingly difficult question and conversation. A few possibilities:
- The web designer doesn’t have anyone they can trust enough to recommend. This forces to client to do their own research and take a leap of faith. This causes uncertainty, which is anathema to any business owner.
- The question may not come up until well into the web design process or even after launch, which may compromise the ability of the marketing agency to contribute valuable insight that is frequently outside the purview of the designer. Taxonomy SEO and Local SEO are two good examples of strategies that require foresight in development.
- Bringing up marketing early on may complicate negotiations on the web design front, so it doesn’t get brought up. This creates a project with blinders – neither the client nor the web developer is choosing to see the entire picture.
- Marketing packages may be stale. Plenty of designers see the value in offering SEO and Digital Advertising services. However, it takes a LOT of time to stay on top of the latest marketing technologies, practices and trends, just like it takes a LOT of time for a developer to stay on top of code changes, programming languages, theme implementation and the like. So a two year old web marketing package on a designer’s website may be selling the client short, because it simply hasn’t kept pace with the evolution of the web – on the marketing side.
- The client may ask their designer marketing questions they can’t easily answer. This goes back to domain knowledge – designers know design and marketers know marketing. The result is friction – designers are forced to spend time on researching questions they may not know the answer to, and they may reply with an answer that comes from a blog post, and not from on-the-ground and in-the-weeds knowledge. That’s a disservice to both client and designer.
Solving the Marketing Question for Web Designers
So how does this pain get solved? Relationships. When good designers can trust and recommend good marketers, and good marketers can trust and recommend good designers, then everyone wins, especially the client!
The client with the new website has the right people addressing the right priorities with the right skill set and core competencies.
The web designer can focus on design, while working with a marketer that can drive future design work based on rational outcomes for that design work.
The marketer has a partner to discuss different ways to implement recommendations, and what’s in scope or not. This allows for a transparent conversation with the client on possible next steps, and not an adversarial relationship where one might say “tell your designer to do this.”
A good designer, a good marketing agency and a willing client are all needed for a successful web project. Creating an environment of trust, based on setting and meeting expectations with quality work and integrity is essential to making these relationships work. This is a hugely important step in addressing the pain of resolving the marketing question for a new company with a new website.