Transforming a web developer into a digital marketing consultant

The company has been developing web for ten years. It went from a team of 30 to close to 100 in 18 months without a proper structure. Transformation is all possible but first you gotta have a plan. Hiring blindly and going for the cheap labor is definitely not the way to go.

Web marketing is delicate and requires in-depth knowledge and expertise. Just because you got years of experience in developing websites does not make you a web marketer - not today anyways. We all know that today people no longer come to your website and take things as you said. It's about how convincing and how well you are able to engage your users. To be able to do that, you need to know your audience - inside out.

I was shocked to see most of the clients had limited audience profiles; at best there were basic demographics. I spent weeks in developing personas and customer journeys for the main clients. Once those are done everything becomes much easier: from site journeys to developing engaging content and planning for campaign and targeted media buy, all deriving from targeted profiling.

So your site is ready for launch, campaign all planned out and media set to go - do you have analytics in place to measure how well you will do? Do you have room for optimization so whatever doesn't work will get optimized?

Many companies are adopting the new process in pain - this applies to quite a few I have worked with or talked to here in Asia. Media buyers are still buying from experience and instinct; production team are used to delivery then close job. But we all know the web has become a continuous engagement process and using data to optimize is the only way to boost your business.

Have you had similar experiences? I will be interested to know!