Technorati Tags:
Marketing & SEOAs a developer, one of the things that bugs me most is the rigidness of the corporate culture today in general. Companies such as manufacturing, transportation, and government just to name a few and I have worked at a few companies like this before. What bugs me about many of these old-school type organizations is that they do not embrace change when it comes to the web. They do not care about the website enough to make sure it’s inviting, has useful tools, etc in many cases. Some say and give the excuse that they are too big to change or you “don’t need a savvy website”. That departments are so big and the process is so etched in stone that change cannot happen as quickly. That the legacy systems hold back this from happening as well as the old-timers or whatever other lame excuse I might say in my opinion. That’s just a plain dumb statement by management as far as I’m concerned.
Life is happening on the web. The fastest way to pull in customers for any type of business, even for a lousy manufactured part for your car, is by making an enticing website that has something that the customer can really experience. I will argue to the hilt that any business needs a decent site. And larger companies should invest highly in their public facing through the internet. Just because you do not sell through the internet is no excuse not to take just as much interest in a website or your existing website and grow it and make it a savvy place to sell your image to your customers. If you do not believe this then I have to say we are in 2008! You have to believe this. How many CIOs, CEOs, and managers get all excited about a product online because of savvy marketing?
The fact is, change can happen even when there is red tape. But you have to get talking about it. Get people excited about it so it drives and pushes people to change. It just happens in small quick steps for bigger organizations. But it should always happen consistently. I say small because it’s manageable. I say quick because there’s no excuse to say that because you’re a big company and there is a lot of red tape that quick cannot happen as opposed to trying to push very large changes which will usually backfire in a huge organization. You need to think small changes but not so small they are meaningless. I guess I’m looking at this more from a public website/product area. What I mean is, I’m sick and tired of seeing such lame websites out there because a lot of times they are like this because of managers who just either do not care about change, are so damn old-school that managers keep giving the lame excuse that “it’s not tested so we can’t use it yet”, or “that’s the only software we use here because we are this kind of shop and we cannot change this”. Those are all barriers to change, big barriers. Red tape, red tape, red tape. I am just sick of that excuse. Let your graphic designers and marketing explode and use their natural talent for once!
If a developer is not only smart but enthusiastic in terms of pure creativity, companies should take advantage of this. If a marketing manager who really knows savvy new concepts in marketing with a website, let them go nuts with it (obviously not too crazy but let them get funky). In other words, let your website become entertainment and a community to your customers, and bring them into your community. Don’t give them just lame .pdf links, forms that look like sh**, and just the standard website we have seen for the last 15 years. If you are still in this mode then it’s time to worry in my opinion.
How many times have you gone to a website like candystand.com which was originally launched by Nabisco which drew me constantly to their website while playing games that promoted their product in each and every game. Now that’s what you call smart. That is how you get customers hooked. I still remember that site and go there once in a while because it stuck with me. It was not just a site for products, it was fun, and I remember life savors since then all the time because it was all over this site for so many years while I kept visiting it over and over. This is just one example of a traditional manufacturing company who seems to do some things right and they did this a long time ago. I am not saying it has to be games but this is just one example of innovation at a brick and mortar company that CAN and has happened because most likely the higher-ups let their developers, their designers, and their project managers enjoy what they do and really improve the reach to their customers. That atmosphere needs to happen more in older larger companies who are not into tech savvy solutions. Today, you have to be somewhat savvy to keep customers coming and interested through the internet. And sometimes that means bringing out the “kid” in the adult when it comes to creation.
I was handed this by someone I know, and it has really started to become one of the best reads ever for me. One of the main themes is “community”. That your brand now becomes really an open brand. A community where your customers can provide input into your brand, your products, and you taking that as a crystal ball to act upon saving you a lot of time and money and ultimately pleasing them more than you could ever in the past. You provide tools to make your brand lifestyle rather than just a logo or plain slogan type of old-school marketing process. It opens up your brand to let consumers start to make decisions for you.
Look at Google. I remember when Picasa 2 came out, I had about 5 things on my wish list for improvements. They came back with Picasa 3 and included those and also blew me out of the water with plenty more. All of this came from input from their customers. They didn’t sit there and have to try to figure out what customers might like, they used the customers as their marketing team. That’s what this book is about and much more. I highly recommend it and hopefully you can apply some of these concepts or mention them to your marketing team or mention this book to them to start to maybe drive new ideas in your organization & make it an open product.
One more thing. For all you developers who do not care about image, cool looking websites, etc. I can understand. But I tend to embrace it while I code. Besides the day-to-day code I personally think it helps to make you a better developer while you code when you actively think about this. To me it’s exciting and I really enjoy coding a site but also coding one that looks good, has very cool and useful tools to the customer and cool new concepts, and a site where each and every thing you work on has a lot of thought for the future baked into it outside of just “the code”. I guess you can call me a “creative but hard-core developer” you can be both and isn’t it so much more fun when it is that way? I love OOP and I love graphics & trendy but effective new ideas. That makes me really enjoy what I do.
