Best practices in marketing vary from customer to customer.
Whenever you hear or read the phrase, “marketing best practices” think of it as a series of tactics that have worked well for a collection of businesses at a recent point in time in a specific industry.
In my own industry, digital marketing, I’ve been seeing a saturation of self-marketing that looks dangerously similar among competing firms. It tends to focus on selling a defined process that includes Web Design, SEO, SEM, Social Media, Email and lead generation/sales funnels. The very same process tends to be applied to very different companies so effectiveness varies from one client to another.
I recently made the mistake of referring to my company’s approach to website development as a “best practice.” While we can be the best website services choice for many businesses, calling ours the “best practice” excludes too many other possibilities influenced by dynamic marketing factors such as vertical industries, culture, demographics, technologies, innovations and trends.
Coming full circle, this is why I love our own approach to website design, development and maintenance. It lets those who know their markets best (our clients) better control the messages and their targeted online distribution.
Best-for-Brand Practice
It would probably be better to call our web development methodology a “best-for-brand practice.” Your website should be designed and maintained around your brand – your audience preferences and their preferred business style. It’s all based on user experience (UX).
Does every business want their website to function as a lead generation machine or a sales funnel? Clearly, the answer is no, yet so many digital marketing agencies seem to push this model as THE best practice in online marketing.
Before you decide on the best-for-brand website development approach for your own company, ask some basic sales questions:
- Are you selective concerning the new customers your firm wants to attract?
- Do you want qualified leads to call your phone number so you can better guide them?
- Do customers require product demos with multi-phase sales cycles?
- Is your product or service easy to order online?
- Should prospects download your content and subscribe to news & events? Why?
- Are you looking for more Social Media interaction? How will that help you?
- Do you need a steady stream of inbound leads to keep an inside sales team busy and productive?
Each of these and other sales & service needs can benefit from a strategically compatible website design and maintenance plan that caters to audience preferences. Our advice is to carefully consider the nuances that make your brand and customer experience one-of-a-kind and design a customized User Experience around it.
If now or in the future, you are thinking about your company’s next move regarding its website, we invite you to our new Website Services Page to learn about a fresh air approach to managing your website and online marketing campaigns.
