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It’s crucial for every business to have a strong web presence in order to attract new customers and remain competitive. But, who should be responsible for managing the company’s web presence? Should the marketing department be in charge or should this task fall on the IT team? IT may be involved with some aspects of building or maintaining a company’s online presence, but the bulk of the work should be left to the marketing team. Here’s why:
There’s more to web presence than website coding
Don’t make the mistake of assuming that your company’s web presence can be built with coding alone. Coding plays an important role in building websites, but it is not enough to build an entire web presence. The code lays the foundation for the website, but it is the marketers who must decide how to structure the website and what to put on it.
Also, IT professionals don’t know the basics of SEO or keyword research, so although they may be able to build a website, they may not know how to ensure that customers can find it. It is up to the marketers to research keywords, incorporate keywords into URLs, headers, and content, build internal links, and implement other effective SEO strategies on the site. Therefore, the marketing department should be responsible for overseeing the IT’s work when creating new websites.
Coding skills will also not help with other areas of a brand’s web presence such as social media. To build a strong presence on social media, brands must be able to write persuasive copy, engage with their followers, create eye-catching graphics, and post valuable information. These are all skills that good marketers possess, so don’t leave this task to the IT team.
IT lacks knowledge of the target audience
While building your brand’s web presence, it’s important to keep your target audience in mind. What do they want to see? What are they searching for? What will convince them to visit your website? These questions must be addressed, but you must know a great deal about the target audience in order to answer them.
The IT department probably has a general idea of who your customers are, but they don’t know the target audience as well as marketers do. Whereas IT professionals may know the demographics of a target audience, marketers know their likes and dislikes, purchase behaviors, and expectations.
For example, let’s say you are trying to design a website that will appeal to Millennials. Marketers know that Millennials have short attention spans, so if they can’t find the information they are looking for quickly, they will go somewhere else to find it. Marketers also know that Millennials prefer clean and simple websites with fast load times that are easy to navigate. Using this information, marketers can create the perfect website for Millennials. But, if the IT department was in charge, they wouldn’t be able to tap into this knowledge of the target audience.
Marketers can keep branding consistent
Consistency is the key to branding. Every time customers interact with your brand, they should see the same brand messaging. This means the customers who see your brand’s advertisements in a magazine should be exposed to the same branding message as customers who interact with your brand online.
To keep branding consistent across all marketing channels, marketers should be in control of your brand’s web presence. If the IT department is responsible for your online presence, it’s possible the brand’s message will get lost in translation. For example, IT professionals are not trained to write copy using a specific type of voice. If an IT professional is responsible for writing the copy on your website and social media pages, the voice may be drastically different than the voice used in other marketing efforts.
Make sure there is no confusion as to who you are as a company or what you stand for by letting your marketing department control your company’s online presence. With a consistent message, marketers can increase brand awareness and build a stronger customer base.
The purpose of a brand’s online presence is to generate sales, which is something marketers know how to do well and IT professionals do not. Therefore, the best way to grow your business is to let the marketing professionals within your organization take charge of your brand’s web presence.