Techtimidation: Another Disease of SEO and Social Media

Many marketers are not techies. And many techies are not marketing. Yet to succeed at Internet marketing - whether it's SEO, Social Media Marketing, or AdWords - you need three perspectives to work together:

• Marketing - you need the perspective of marketing, which tells you who your customer is, what they want, and positions what you offer in the way most likely to lead towards a sale.
• Web Design - you need a good-looking website, so when the potential customer lands there, he is "convinced" that your products or services are worthy buying, or at least pursuing.
• Web Programming - most websites need some technical functionality, such as a search engine, feedback form, or other technical aspects of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) like XML sitemaps, meta tags, or structured data.

To succeed, you need these three perspectives to work together. But, alas, they often do not. One of the marketing diseases I often run into is called TECHTIMIDATION.  

Techtimidation Explained

Techtimidation is when your "techie" attempts to intimidate you.  It can be blunt, as in "Do you know how to code HTML? Do you know what an XML sitemap is?" Or it can be more subtle, as when they just roll their eyes and refuse to let you manage the website in such a way that it not only functions on a technical level but it also functions on a marketing level.

The point, after all, of most websites is to SELL something.  It doesn't matter how beautiful it is to the Web designer, or how amazing it is to the technical Web programmer if it doesn't work as a marketing vehicle.

Yet in many meetings, you'll confront techies who talk down to you, who use technical mumbo-jumbo to intimidate you into silence.

Don't let them. If your website doesn't work as a marketing vehicle, it doesn't matter how beautiful it is (sorry, Web designers), and it doesn't matter how technically "cool" it is (sorry, Web programmers).  It has to ultimately lead towards sales leads or sales.

The goal of a website is to sell something.

So don't let the techies intimidate you. If your website isn't generating sales or sales leads, it is NOT working. Fix it, and either persuade or get rid of anyone who gets in your way. Don't be intimidated!