Marketing is complex, in much the same way as building a house. A general contractor brings in the right talent for the right job so that you don’t have a plumber installing electrical wiring or an HVAC company pouring the foundation.
While those examples sound silly, you might be surprised at how often companies make the same mistake in their marketing execution! It happens because people understand the differences between plumbing and electricity, but don’t appreciate the same magnitudes of difference between various marketing specialties.
Common examples:
- Having a print designer design a new website. Print and web design are both important marketing functions, but are quite different in terms of best practices and techniques.
- Having a generalist web designer manage SEO functionality for a new site. SEO is a very complex and ever-changing marketing discipline. Unless a web designer is spending a lot of time keeping up with the latest trends, he or she will not be able to set up your new site to be a solid platform for an SEO campaign. We see this issue crop up almost on a daily basis — that is, companies that want to do SEO but are hamstrung with a poorly constructed website.
- Having a marketing jack-of-all-trades set up a PPC or SEO campaign. The first and perhaps most significant problem with this is keyword research. Selecting the right target keywords is the difference between success and failure, and a lot of factors play into the equation. Without experienced, expert keyword research, a company runs the risk of pouring significant funds into a campaign that will never succeed regardless of how well it is executed.
- Having a generalist write online content. Writing B2B copy requires much different techniques than B2C. Writing technical content is different from writing advertising copy. When companies rely on copywriting generalists to write online content, they risk publishing content that reduces — rather than enhances — brand image and lead generation. In addition, poorly written (and edited) content can also undermine an SEO campaign.
With Straight North, your campaign manager or web design project manager functions as the “general contractor,” bringing in on-staff specialists for the specific tasks at hand.
If you feel like your marketing execution has round pegs in square holes, let’s talk.