Why is implementing marketing ideas that involve the web often seen as such a big deal? Perhaps because too many digital marketers want to make it a big deal? In my experience, many digital marketers are techies first and marketers second – but isn’t this a bit like the tail wagging the dog? Effective marketing is the driver of business development and growth while digital tools are some of the options available for use in a marketing plan. The plan should dictate the method and not vice-versa! When a company makes a decision to use a particular (digital) tool to achieve their business development objectives, the requirements could be quite modest technically yet a techie-focussed ‘digital marketer’ may be keen to build the work into a ‘significant’ project. As I have said many times, marketing is a process, not an event. The dynamic nature of marketing drives a range of objectives which can be best delivered by different tools. Taking the approach described in the previous paragraph can all too quickly see costs spiralling. As a consequence, it becomes more difficult to achieve objectives cost-effectively or ideas are put on hold. In either case, satisfaction will take a hit!
So what is the answer?
Take a different perspective, let the marketing process be the lead and tap into digital tools only when appropriate, and as modestly as you like! Every bit of marketing doesn’t need to be a major project. By developing and implementing a marketing process focussed on business development, using digital tools as and when appropriate can allow a more fluid approach Examples of what we have done to support clients:
- Rescale a website to take advantage of modern monitor and device screen sizes
- Implement a web-based Customer Survey integrated into your website
- Add a poll to your website – a Twitter poll without Twitter
- A fully interactive, graphical ‘Where to buy’ facility to allow customers to search your website for their nearest supplier
- Fully tracked email to take advantage of a last-minute opportunity
- SEO for a particular product offer (Achieving Page 1 Google within 2 weeks).
- Add a completely new service range to your website
- A new ‘Downloads page’ with comprehensive content management
It doesn’t need to take long. Each of these took less than 24 hours to implement and some took less than an hour. Launching a marketing idea doesn’t need to cost the earth.
The advantage of a flexible system
Several years ago, after much investigation (and a few false starts!) we elected to focus on WordPress as our web development platform of choice. Since that decision, I am yet to be disappointed. WordPress continues to impress me. Bias! I hear someone shouting! Sure, WordPress isn’t perfect. There are numerous blog posts with titles in the vein of ’10 reasons why you shouldn’t use WordPress’ yet I would be happy to discuss these with anyone. I don’t believe any of these ‘reasons’ is valid for a regular SME business I’m not looking for the ultimate in technically beautiful web development (that costs a fortune to implement and maintain!), I want to offer a practical, effective and flexible solution that can address and meet real marketing objectives in the real world, quickly and cost-effectively. It is down to the flexibility and power of the WordPress platform that developments can be implemented so quickly and easily. If you want your digital marketing to be responsive and cost effective, make sure that the dog is wagging its tail!
