What I Wish You Knew About Marketing

I frequently run across clients who think that I can just snap my fingers and amazing marketing “stuff” happens.

While that can appear to be the case on the surface, if you look closer, you’ll see that we’re much more like swans- serene on the surface, and paddling like crazy under the water to go anywhere.

When we build a website, even a simple one, there are a LOT of things to consider, and while it CAN be done quickly, usually it really isn’t. We are paying attention to layout, photo sizing, resizing photos, editing things that don’t fit, changing colors, updating fonts, and the list goes on. We have to hand-connect every single link, which means we need to know what the website is supposed to do before we even start, and almost build it backwards.

It literally takes dozens of hours, for even a relatively “simple” website. Things like mobile optimization have to be hand-done, as well as all SEO. It’s not something that we just snap our fingers on, and it happens.

And that’s when we are visibly in action. The reality is that a lot of what we do is sit there and stare at it before we even get started. Because we have to think about what exactly we are doing. What energy are we trying to convey? What emotions? What feelings? What is the best design?

If we are engaging with e-commerce, it can take even longer as we try to map out how the products go together, so that we limit the number of times someone has to click to get products into their cart.

If I’m going to drive ads to a page on a site- then I need to make sure that it is fully self- sufficient. Does the page have enough information on its own to convert?

Does the page have SEO? Am I working on the right meta tags, and the right information? Am I doing the right things to make sure that the content can be found?

That’s just a small part of the marketing. The landing page is just one part. We need to understand the audience that will be looking at it, what their pain points are, and what drove them there in the first place.

Which is all going to say- it’s not necessarily the fastest thing in the world. I can look like I’m not actually doing anything, or I might be trying to tie themes together, and…