Quite honestly, many of these folks build terrific looking Websites. But are they really saving you money? Or are they costing you “hidden”  money by lost opportunities you will never see? Chance are, with no marketing expertise in their skill set, it may be the latter.

The top five reasons a Web designer may cost you money:

1. Great Web design. No business context.
2. Cool design. Needs analytics and optimization.
3. Too many clicks for customers
4. Differs from all your other stuff
5. No call to action

Great Web design. No business context.
If your site looks terrific, but lacks  context to your business ,  chances are it will not sell for you. A productive site will clearly communicate what you do, and show value to your customers.  Does your designer understand what business you are in, and what will appeal to your customers? If not, consider moving on – even if the initial layout costs more, it will at least work for you.

Cool design. Needs analytics and optimization.
Behind the design are dozens of support codes that make your site visible to search engines and get data on how visitors interact with your site. Does your designer do these things? Are they optimizing your content, images, and PDFs to be visible to search engines? Can you look at traffic patterns to see what pages visitors look at, how long they stay and if they forward anything to others? Building the site is the first step, but the real results come from active management of the site over time.

Too many clicks for customers.
Information is why people look at sites. What are your visitors looking for? What do  they want to know? This should dictate what goes first on your site. If the information requires hunting around and looking for what they need through click after click, most visitors simply bail to another site. Don’t you? : )

Differs from all your other stuff.
If your site looks like an Apple iPhone® site, it looks very cool indeed. It also looks like someone else’s product line, which confuses people. You want people to be very clear about who you are and what you offer, so it is critical that everything you do looks similar – like it goes together. Does your site look like it belongs to the same company as your store, sales brochure and packaging? Boring maybe. Effective, definitely.

No call to action.
Down to business: you want people to do something when they visit your site. What is it? Sign up for a newsletter? As for a quote?  Call you or email you? This is your call to action. Make it easy for your visitors to take that action. Put it right up there on every single page. On the top of the page.

Even the best Web designer may not know your full market strategy. A bang-up Web site that does not tie in with your companies message, or have the right context for your customer will cost you much more money in the long run. By including a marketing professional in the process, who sees the bigger business and sales picture,  you will have a much more effective set of tools to bring customers in.

How many times have people said that when they ask what I do, and I respond “Marketing.”

The truth is, many people, including some clients, view marketing as advertising. In their defense, it is a tangible part of marketing that they can see. But advertising is a small slice of marketing – one way to get the message out.

Marketing, on the other hand, encompasses everything from creating a new product or service, to the price points and distribution channels to PR/advertising/promotions and events. It encompasses a lot of behind-the-scenes-get-your-hands-dirty work and a great deal of strategy. For advertising to work, a strong marketing plan comes first.

Advertising is one tool in the toolkit, and considered part of a larger category called “promotion”. Other activities in promotion include publicity (PR), events, sweepstakes, coupons and many others. If a marketing firm sells itself as advertising only – beware.

Why the post on job seeking?

Simple: looking for a job is pure marketing. Research the market, distill what your area of brilliance is (core competency) and refine your “one liner” about what your offer to the market.

Once you’ve done this, its time to “go to market”.

Center on your customer

Smart marketing centers on the customer, always. Laser in on where your customer lives. In this case, recruiters, HR managers and business owners seeking qualified candidates to interview. Where do they go first? The Web.

I know an excellent HR consultant who  engaged in multiple hiring searches recently. Over lunch, she described to another colleague and I how she used LInkedIn, Facebook and other Web gathering places as her first stops to find candidates.  At the other end of a recruiting search,  most companies do a background check before extending offers.  And these days, that includes a Google search, Facebook scan and other on-line checking.

You may want to visit the “best practices for recruiters” guidelines on LinkedIn for an insight into how recruiters look for candidates.

The lesson? Go to where your target market goes. In this case – online. Social networking sites may not replace your current efforts – nor should they – but certainly can complement them, and increase your options for finding a great next job.

Focus on opportunity, not doom

A client of mine recently said: “Now is not the time to retreat into a cave with no candles.” Customers need to know you are still here. This means having the confidence to invest in marketing your company. However, it may also mean marketing differently than before.

Now is a good time to step back and re-evaluate your plans. What looked good a few months ago may not be as effective today. The critical question is: are your dollars in the best place? Or: would a shift in your marketing mix make sense? The most likely answer to this is: yes.

Questions to consider for your company

1. The most important questions are: what is your core customer facing as a result of the changes in our economy? What matters most to them now? Is your company answering these needs? The answers should be the central driving force for your marketing mix.
2. Are your dollars directly producing ROI? Can you measure this?
3. Can your plans be changed quickly is the expected ROI is not occurring? Weigh heavily any decisions for long-term commitments with no escape – you may need to adjust quickly in this economy.
4. Can you test a small investment before committing to a large program?
5. Are your dollars heavily weighted to image advertising? If so, could you use them more effectively? A well-crafted promotion can support image and produce sales.
6. Are all the “arrows in alignment”? In other words, are all of your marketing dollars moving in the same direction, or are they allocated in a fragmented hodge-podge of promotions?
7. Does your message still make sense? Consider this: Oprah changed the tone of her “Favorite things for the holidays” episode to “Oprah’s favorite things for a thrifty holiday” this year, shifting the focus to less extravagant fare. To her great credit, she explained that it “was not appropriate” to focus on high-ticket items given the current economic scenario.

(see my related article on investing in marketing throughout tough times.)