You’ve heard it before:

Your website is your biggest marketing tool

But do you as web designers know enough about basic marketing principles which can be the difference between success and failure of the website?

Making sense of where your website fits into the overall marketing strategy is the key here. Here are the key things on the agenda for a good marketer:

1. Your quality of relationships with your clients
2. Value for money
3. The ability to reach existing and potential customers with good news.

How will you apply marketing techniques to your website I hear you cry! Okay so here is a list of practical points which you can apply to your website:

Concept Based Design
Base your design around a concept and brand value rather than a trend. Remember as well your design should evoke emotion as well as being functional…this will take your brand to the next level.

Real Content
Make your tone of voice open and engaging and most importantly true. In online marketing others speak about your brand not just you, so you need to be true or get found out! Good marketers are good story tellers, so try and make your copy work in this way.

Utilise Social Media
The majority of your target audience will already be on the web and instead of them coming to you, you need to go to them! Your mass audience will reside in the worlds of Face book and Twitter and it is here where you need to have a presence.

Again be friendly and respectful with your approach here. There is no longer a place for interruption marketing; it is self negating. It’s the equivalent of asking every girl in the bar if you can buy her a drink until eventually one says yes! Not a great way to get a good rep! Permission Marketing (PM) is the way to go. PM is based around if you have a good vibe with the person you are interacting with then you talk some more…it’s similar to the process of making friends!

Your message is more important than your website
A key point I heard made recently by Paul Boag was that the key thing isn’t your website but more specifically the content it is delivering and the message that is giving. So it doesn’t matter if your message is delivered via, you tube, blip TV, twitter or a face book group. Obviously your website is still important but increasingly your message will be delivered through another website which can then refer to your website for the more detailed information. (I guess this works in a similar way to progressive disclosure!)

Your brand is bigger than your logo!
Remember your brand isn’t your logo. What defines your brand is the product or service you offer and the personality behind these. This is why making your logo bigger isn’t always the way. Obviously seeing your logo leads to brand recognition, but a good logo should be recognised at a small scale as well! (See key principles of a good logo)

Give something away
This defines the way the web works…you need to understand the concept that sharing is power. It is what builds relations and an interest around your product…a buzz. People are also more inclined to give back once given a freebie. .Have you ever had a present surprisingly given to you by a friend who you wouldn’t normally buy for?

This also refers us to buzz marketing which focuses on creating a buzz by speaking to a leader or a popular character of a group who will then talk about your product and ignite a flame which creates a buzz!!

Great marketers need to be master tacticians who are comfortable in constantly changing course.

And Web Designers need to do more than just design
Anyhow these are a few pointers to get you started. This article stemmed from the fact that that we now need to be more than web designers. Increasingly the web design role involves dealing with people, psychology and marketing. Essentially it’s not just about producing an amazing design…it’s about how you can justify and sell that design to your client and mass audience.

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