We knew it. There are lots of reasons Why Marketing Is So Hard, says Drew Williams of the Hubspot blog. Why? Well, it starts with the simple state of humanity. We are all very different people, and we all have different opinions. AND, we all have triggers that cause us to react strongly in one way or another. With that said, it seems practically impossible that marketers can come up with an idea that even a few people all like, never mind a few million.
The worst part about all of this is that a lot of people actually think marketing is easy! Williams laments that a number of technologies make it seem like there is a single simple solution to improving everyone’s online performance, and the truth is just not so. He says, “The buyer’s journey, which is most often defined as an orderly march down a funnel-shaped thing, is more often beset by a range of shiny objects, conflicting egos, power grabs, FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt), budget shifts, priority shifts, urgent and important fires to extinguish, as well as various other threats to goals and timelines that show up daily in our businesses. In short, stuff happens.”
Just as it’s impossible for everyone to agree on everything all the time, it would also be impossible to create one strategy to fit everyone’s marketing goals. Calgary website design by Emphasize incorporates a number of techniques and elements into each of our customized marketing packages, streamlining our services to fit your and your company’s unique needs. We know how to build formulas for success online.
The Difficulties of Online Marketing
In a previous Emphasize blog, Web Design in Calgary: Customer First, Site Second, we talked of the importance of ensuring the user gets what they want from your website. Although it is tempting to get flashy, what with all of the options available today for neat designs and cool additions, it’s imperative that your site be more about substance than show. That means consistently keeping the conversation open with those who use your site the most, and always listening to their suggestions.
So when building your website, avoid hours-long arguments with your colleagues about your logo and look and start with its basic utility. Let your creativity be based in what you know your customers want.
In online marketing, website design can get tricky. And then results and analytics can be even more so!
There are both positives and negatives to the fact that we can measure the effectiveness of virtually everything on a website. The following elements are just a sampling of the bits and pieces that can be tracked, scrutinized and reported.
- Menus and Navigation – are they in a good place, large enough, do they effectively split up content?
- Page Content – are services and offers all over the place? Is there a logical order to the menus and pages that people can follow?
- Titles and Metadata – do some pages have great info but aren’t titled properly? Are all opportunities for good SEO being used?
- CTAs – are people clicking on them?
- Landing Pages – are people filling them out?
- Email Campaigns – are recipients responding?
- Traffic – how are people finding you in the first place?
Assistance For the Marketers
After everything is measured, you need a math genius capable of building an algorithm akin to the big bad Google Penguin on staff to be able to collate and decipher it all.
Thankfully, a lot of smart people have built programs that do exactly that. Open source software like WordPress helps by making page optimization more simple, and supplementary software for marketing like HubSpot and Google Analytics are also immensely helpful. Both are capable of building graphs and visuals that make sense out of it all, and both also help marketers target their efforts more effectively.
True professionals in Calgary website design will ensure that your site is visible, easy to use and built to maximize potential for sales and exposure.