Marketers Versus Designers, Developers & Social Kiddies
The number of distressed business owners who get in touch with me because their website has dropped out of Google’s search results pages and no longer brings them the business they need is increasing all the time.
The reason why – they give digital marketing work to web designers, web developers or newbie marketers who rely on social platforms.
Don’t get me wrong, I love web designers and developers – I am one, and have been for over 15 years. I even tweet when I have something to say or share…
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Graphic designers have tight trousers and draw nice pictures
The reason why your business’s success shouldn’t be placed on the shoulders of designers is that, well just that – they like drawing pictures. They are great at making static images that convey a message, and not at creating a dynamic marketing machine that works to increase sales from visitors around the world on a whole host of different devices.
For that you need the skill-set of a web developer and a digital marketer.
Designing great images sure is difficult in its own right but those who do it well are usually not used to resolving problems in multiple fields, such as software development, Google rankings, advertising campaigning, or marketing management for example.
In a nutshell graphic designers are not experienced, or interested in ensuring your business goes into profit and then constantly grows. And why would they? – they like drawing pictures – a world where you are judged on how something looks and not how it behaves. In a single dimensional world, once a graphics job is completed, it never needs to be fixed or refined when technology changes or when it all goes wrong. When a graphics guy is at the helm and things do go wrong, the outcome can often make you laugh – or more likely, cry.
Web designers have beards and import pre-designed themes
So, neither graphics designers or web designers care about your actual business, your traffic stats, your sales conversions or your bottom line. Again, why should they? Their biggest priorities are to get paid, to get more sites on their portfolio and to get you to switch to a content management system that is easy for them to implement a pre-built theme.
Oh, keep in mind they (we) don’t “design” sites anymore. Rather, web designers just select a pre-designed theme, import it to your site and populate it with your existing content and images. Tweak it until you say thanks, invoice you, then stop. Job done. Face value means everything, just don’t look under the hood.
Designers, are artists right? Well, I can guarantee that 9 out of 10 sites “designed” by web designers are not designed at all. As mentioned, designers just select a theme from outlets such as Theme Forest and overlay it on your content, after replacing the place-holder stock images with the photos that you provided and sticking your logo in the designated slot.
The other main jobs relate to a couple of hours cleaning up css to get your site colours match your existing brand, paste your text in, link to your social media sites and the finish-line is in sight.
Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of work involved with creating or migrating an existing website and although most of the technical functionality is easy to implement via free plugins, designers often work hard to get you to agree that a bland, white background theme and generic layout is just what you need – stripping our all of your brand’s personality and memorability with it. Yes, designers are on a winner if they convince you to go with a “clean” WordPress theme.
Web developers have spectacles and make digital machines
Ok, after a few sites under their belts many of those guys who called themselves web designers change their job title to web developer because some sites they made required specific plugins to be configured and contact forms to be amended so that leads are sent to your inbox but a basic site can be created in a single day – as long as you have your images and text ready.
As soon as a designer gets their hands dirty with a bit of php coding that changes the functionality of some plugins or requires template files to be amended, they are called web developers. Although not as skilled as software programmers, web developers have the responsibility of making things work, not just look good. However as stated, most sites don’t require any coding skills as the themes used by content management systems such as Wix, SquareSpace and WordPress have been created so that anyone can “design” and publish a website – in just a few hours. But then what…?
Digital marketers have all 3 and generate you more business
So you paid an agency to “design” you a website (import an existing WordPress theme) and they oohhhd, and ahhhd while they charged you extra to make some amends in order to make the site show your list of products or developed a slideshow you were convinced you needed – and you are now online…. and ready to take on the world! Wait a week and you’ll notice that the “make it and they will come” myth is just that, a myth.
Sure if you rent a shop on a busy street, people will stroll in and some will buy stuff. But the web is not like that. Put a website online and it isn’t even on a back street. With no other sites linking to yours, with no Google search results pulling visitors and with no adverts directing targeted traffic to your homepage or landing pages, nothing will happen. Seeing your site in Google won’t do anything for you if it was your own brand name and town that you searched for – nobody has heard of you yet! And they won’t until you or someone starts marketing your business.
That means you need someone who has experience and good results with optimising websites to appear high up in the search results (an SEO guy), or someone who knows all the ins-and-outs of Google Adwords advertising platform (a PPC expert) or indeed an email marketing consultant – but wait, don’t hire a social media marketer to bring business your way, those guys will sell their services by saying they will help more visitors “engage” with your brand, and no matter what you do, those who “like” or “follow” you are not likely to convert into sales.
See, if you want to move house, you Google for removals services and you decide from the search results which ones to request a quote from. If you want legal advice or representation, you Google for a lawyer and get in touch with those you see in the search results.
Nobody ever looks on Facebook or Twitter for a lawyer, or any service for that matter, and despite the usual spiel coming from social media “gurus” posting heaps of tweets will never make you decide to move house, or to need a lawyer.
They go to Google, remember that – and do your duty by reminding social media “kiddies” (as they get called in the marketing trade) of that fact.
So now we know what designers and developers do, and that it is marketers who bring business your way, it’s time to check one of your own roles as a business owner or manager – that of a damage limitation officer – and why you should never trust a graphics guy, a web designer, a techy developer or a social kiddie with your business, your livelihood and indeed, your sanity.
Business managers wear suits and work to avoid disasters
As the person responsible for the growth and indeed the success of the business you are running, the number of jobs you are expected to handle is understated, to say the least. From ensuring your staff have everything they need to get on with their jobs, to creating new jobs. From instigating new projects and lines of products to dealing with unexpected show-stoppers. Then there is the legal side of things, ensuring everyone is paid and importantly that the business is running in the right direction. But wait, what is on the horizon?
Without doubt one of the most difficult and important tasks that are likely to be thrown on your desk or into your email inbox are those tasks are not planned and do not get allotted the time that is required to resolve them. From unexpected issues with staff or suppliers, or customers or even business partners, the unenviable role of business is one of the most important roles you need to master. Sure some issues are easy to handle and some can be dealt with when time allows. But the ones that are likely to turn the business in the wrong direction and run it into the ground are the problems that stop the sales coming in.
When the customers stop strolling through the door as often or when website traffic figures decline so much that sales are down month on month, businesses become aware that there is a time limit . With that clock ticking down in the background you need to act fast in order to generate the sales required just to keep you a float. It is with this in mind that the next post in this blog will focus on the most common ways unwitting web designers destroy businesses.
Hopefully with the right designers, developers and marketers doing their jobs effectively you won’t need the advice that will help halt the decline of your website and your business. But if all else fails, remember that it is those people who went in to the less glamorous world of marketing that will be the ones who help you generate the customers and sales that will help you back out of the hole could find yourself in. Oh, and be sure to get contact lenses and shave regularly.
