Mediaboss Marketing

Would you hire your traditional printer to make marketing and advertising decisions for your company? Then why would you hire a technology company for web marketing or web advertising?

In the defense of many businesses, they do hear the same words coming from both the marketer and the technology company. Both companies use the words SEO, optimization, paid search, and many other terms, which on the surface sound the same. Thus, a business that doesnt understand the digital medium would not know there is a difference between these two types of companies.

If I think back 20 years ago when we first put a website together using HTML 0.0 we could bold text, change colors, make text flash and use an animated gif for a mailbox that opened and closed. It was all pretty exciting stuff, at the time.

Since then the disciplines have evolved and matured to the point where there are:

If we break the disciplines down to these areas, it might be easier to understand who has the competency in what areas.

Think of a marketing process like a cycle, which starts with research, strategy, and planning. If you have a strategy, then you must also have a way to measure the success of this strategy. Measuring the strategy is important to understanding the initial plan so we know what tasks are necessary in the process and how those tasks will be completed.

The execution and implementation of the marketing plan and the advertising campaign are task-oriented, however they do require discipline, knowledge, experience, and expertise to ensure success. This would be the middle area of the marketing process and is repeated until there are changes to improve results.

This middle area tends to be where there is an overlap between marketers and technology firms when it comes to the execution.

The last area falls into gathering the measurements, assembling the measurements into a report(s), analyzing multiple data points, and ultimately interpreting the results. The interpretation is then used to communicate and collaborate with the client through a dialogue, which will be used to improve the results.

This dialogue is not only to present the marketing results, but also to learn from the client how the results have impacted them and what is happening in their business that needs to be incorporated into the marketing process. More importantly, the meeting must look at not only what is working, but also what is not working. Usually this is the area that requires the most discussion and collaboration.

Read more:
Is Your SEO Company a Marketing or Technology Company? by @smartfinds