4 ms·

I was recently doing some electrical work on my house. The past owner had really jacked things up. I couldn't figure out and had to call an electrician. I'd ima

I was recently doing some electrical work on my house. The past owner had really jacked things up. I couldn't figure out and had to call an electrician. I'd imagine the majority of their work is DIY'ers who've f'ed up and had to call a pro. To me that's what going to happen here - marketing will continually screw and tinker w/ shit till it's broke and then they'll call you to fix it. I also want to add this is a good example of why marketing should probably just be using tools like Insta, Twitter, FB etc to get their message out. Now if you actually have a good company blog w/ good resources than that's different but I think that's more the exception than the norm.

openknot 5y ago
>I also want to add this is a good example of why marketing should probably just be using tools like Insta, Twitter, FB etc to get their message out. Now if you actually have a good company blog w/ good resources than that's different but I think that's more the exception than the norm. Would you be willing to elaborate this position? I disagree that only being on social media is sufficient for marketing a service/product/organization. Social media channels can be used to link content to a website, where there is far more control over how the information is presented (e.g. with embedded documents, testimonials, contact forms, and more pictures that can't be added as easily to sical media). You also have more control over the content on your website, on the low but real chance that you lose control of your company's social media accounts due to an unexpected reason.
zrobotics 5y ago
Question-if marketing is solely restricted to social media, then what is the point of having a website at all? In the original article the author indicated they develop sites for medium-large industrial corps; and that most of these sites are brochure sites. So if the marketing team at acme co want to sell customers on their new line of coyote-seeking anvils, what is the point of having a website if they can't update the site with all the features of the new anvils? If they can only put the updated copy on Facebook and Instagram, then they will actively avoid linking to the site, since the copy there talks about the v2 anvils that don't have the new vision based coyote acquisition targeting system. I've worked in similar roles, and I don't like having to always be involved every time marketing needs to tweak the copy on a page. However, that led me to improve the site infra so they could make those changes themselves rather than wait for a developer to do it for them. And unsurprisingly, removing the forced delay and friction allowed them to vastly improve the page, sales noticed that they were getting more inbound leads. Turns out that having to reach out to another department was causing marketing to delay or cancel minor changes since "it didn't seem like a big enough difference to bother IT with". Telling marketing that they should only be using social platforms sounds like a good way for a developer to talk themselves out of a job, since then accounting will start thinking "why are we even paying this expensive salary if our customers aren't even visiting the site?" Sure I have the engineers typical disdain for marketing, but I do realize that it is a useful function and a necessary evil.
- lmm 5y ago
  I think it comes down to the basics of running a business: focus on your core competencies and USPs, outsource the rest. Vertically integrating something like your marketing website makes sense if it's part of your value proposition (e.g. if you want to show off your product in a way that you can only do by having development and marketing work closely together). But if you just need some commodity, off-the-shelf marketing, buy it from a specialist.

openknot 5y ago

>I also want to add this is a good example of why marketing should probably just be using tools like Insta, Twitter, FB etc to get their message out. Now if you actually have a good company blog w/ good resources than that's different but I think that's more the exception than the norm. Would you be willing to elaborate this position? I disagree that only being on social media is sufficient for marketing a service/product/organization. Social media channels can be used to link content to a website, where there is far more control over how the information is presented (e.g. with embedded documents, testimonials, contact forms, and more pictures that can't be added as easily to sical media). You also have more control over the content on your website, on the low but real chance that you lose control of your company's social media accounts due to an unexpected reason.

zrobotics 5y ago

Question-if marketing is solely restricted to social media, then what is the point of having a website at all? In the original article the author indicated they develop sites for medium-large industrial corps; and that most of these sites are brochure sites. So if the marketing team at acme co want to sell customers on their new line of coyote-seeking anvils, what is the point of having a website if they can't update the site with all the features of the new anvils? If they can only put the updated copy on Facebook and Instagram, then they will actively avoid linking to the site, since the copy there talks about the v2 anvils that don't have the new vision based coyote acquisition targeting system. I've worked in similar roles, and I don't like having to always be involved every time marketing needs to tweak the copy on a page. However, that led me to improve the site infra so they could make those changes themselves rather than wait for a developer to do it for them. And unsurprisingly, removing the forced delay and friction allowed them to vastly improve the page, sales noticed that they were getting more inbound leads. Turns out that having to reach out to another department was causing marketing to delay or cancel minor changes since "it didn't seem like a big enough difference to bother IT with". Telling marketing that they should only be using social platforms sounds like a good way for a developer to talk themselves out of a job, since then accounting will start thinking "why are we even paying this expensive salary if our customers aren't even visiting the site?" Sure I have the engineers typical disdain for marketing, but I do realize that it is a useful function and a necessary evil.

lmm 5y ago
I think it comes down to the basics of running a business: focus on your core competencies and USPs, outsource the rest. Vertically integrating something like your marketing website makes sense if it's part of your value proposition (e.g. if you want to show off your product in a way that you can only do by having development and marketing work closely together). But if you just need some commodity, off-the-shelf marketing, buy it from a specialist.