Would you hire a traditional printer to make marketing and advertising decisions for your company? So why hire a technology company for web marketing and advertising?
In defense of many companies, they hear the same words from both marketers and tech companies. Both companies use many terms that sound the same on the surface, such as “SEO,” “optimization,” and “paid search.” Therefore, companies that do not understand digital media do not know that there is a difference between these two types of companies.
Evolution of fields on the web
If you remember 20 years ago when you first created your website using HTML 0.0, you could make text bold, change colors, blink text, and use animated GIFs for mailboxes that open and close. I was able to At the time, it was all pretty exciting.
Since then, the field has evolved and matured to become:
- A technology company that knows how to manage servers and networks
- Technical specialists who understand databases, programming and website building
- A creative designer who knows how to make a website look good and lay it out
- Marketers who can help you find websites online, run advertising campaigns and increase brand awareness
Breaking it down into these areas may help you understand who is competent in which areas.
Put marketing processes and concepts into practice
Think of the marketing process as a cycle that begins with research, strategy, and planning. If you have a strategy, you also need a way to measure the success of this strategy. Measuring strategy is important to understanding the initial plan. This will let you know what tasks are required in the process and how to complete those tasks.
Execution and execution of marketing plans and advertising campaigns are task-oriented, but require discipline, knowledge, experience and expertise to ensure success. This is the middle ground of the marketing process, and it repeats until changes are made to improve results.
This middle ground tends to overlap between marketers and technology companies in terms of execution.
The final area comes down to collecting measurements, summarizing the measurements into reports, analyzing multiple data points, and finally interpreting the results. Interpretation is used to communicate and collaborate with clients through dialogues used to improve outcomes.
This dialogue not only presents marketing results, but also learns from the client how the results have impacted and what is happening in the business that needs to be incorporated into the marketing process. More importantly, meetings should not only consider what is working, but also what is not. This is usually the area that requires the most discussion and collaboration.
Finally, the action steps written in the minutes to improve the marketing process are executed and the cycle starts over.
An interesting side benefit of the marketing process is educating clients to better understand digital media. Similarly, marketing firms are given the opportunity to learn about their clients’ businesses and industries.
Where are the differences?
Cost is the biggest difference between a marketing company and a technology company, given the number of hours of work required to make the marketing process successful.
If your company can manage the strategy, understand the results, and hire a marketing firm to guide the plan with discipline, you can remove yourself from “doing the work.”
Conversely, if your company can only hire tech companies, you need to be willing to place orders yourself, get more involved in the work, and interpret the reports you receive. Meetings tend to be infrequent.
Three examples to consider
- One of the main situations I’ve encountered is with companies that try everything and nothing works. After hearing a few stories and asking a few questions, I learned that they work with tech companies and usually both sides are equally frustrated with the other.
- The following example concerns a report sent by a technology company to a client. These reports are usually computer generated and are most often very colorful with charts. The information in the reports is always accurate and most of the time there is no problem with the information. The question is not what the report contains, but what the report does not contain. Bounce rate is generally not differentiated between advertising and organic marketing. Traffic sources are not detailed enough. Advertising budgets are less discussed. Keyword Quality Scores are often ignored.
- With regards to meetings, if they do not exist, or if they do, discussions tend to be about reports that are missing information and are not coordinated with the strategic plan. I’ve seen you need to send and stay in touch.
The conclusion is
Businesses will find web marketing agencies to be supremely capable of leading their marketing strategies. Of course, you can’t lead without researching facts, interpreting them to find patterns, and using them to plan. Applying these tools to your business objectives requires marketing, advertising, and Internet discipline, expertise, and experience.
There is one thing web marketing agencies do or should do. It’s about taking responsibility if things go wrong. Rather than blaming yourself when you hire a tech company, wouldn’t it make more sense to hire someone you can blame yourself for when things go wrong?
Featured Image: Created by the Author
