07.07.08

Why Developers should work with a Search Marketing Agency

Posted in Online Marketing at 11:20 am by Christine

Search Marketing Agencies are seemingly constantly fighting battles to prove the worth of their services. Why is this? Especially when it just makes logical sense? In a world predominantly driven by search engines and online activity why is it that so many agencies and companies are still resisting the medium?

Mandy de Waal’s recent Search Marketing Report delved a little deeper into the South African environment an hesitancies from Traditional Media Agencies. The international environment has already adopted the success and achievements of working together with Search agencies and have seen the value proven ten times over.

As Search Marketers we’ve been fighting the traditional marketing agency buy-in battle for a long time. At first they feared us for the potential risk of stealing away their clients to the medium. It has taken years to convince them that combining traditional strategies with online strategies is first prize. Only very recently have we seen the two sides of marketing working together to produce campaigns that feature just that.
And it works.

Perhaps now that the importance of search engine marketing is becoming more apparent in the local environment is precisely the reason for our next battle.
Development agencies.

I personally hoped that we, as Search Marketers, had overcome most issues when it comes to working with third party development agencies. After all, it’s a win-win situation?!

The battle seems for site updates… To perform well at Search Engine Optimisation one must continuously make edits to your website, adding content and ensuring that it is structurally sound.

To save clients and their developers’ time, it is not unheard that the SEM company would implement the changes themselves, however there are some developers that do not like sharing their clients’ access details…for fear of whatever reason…

It is to these development agencies that I say “Embrace the Search Marketer”.
We are not here to steal your clients, or to cut you out of the loop.
We are here to assist you and save you time to focus on larger updates and developments.

Yes, I have seen some Search marketing companies insist that their clients move ALL their updates (and in some instances even their hosting) to them and away from their current web development/maintenance providers. Being an idealist, I believe that we could all work together and always try my utmost not to insist that we update and implement from our side. Unless of course the site uses techniques that blocks search engines from indexing it. Then we’ll advise, but never insist changing providers. We choose to focus on what we’re good at.

We need commitment and buy-in from the development agencies first and foremost.

If you work together with a Search Marketing Agency:

1. Your company looks good. Your development, bespoke CMS and structure looks good, because the site succeeds in delivering traffic and conversions.
2. Get more work. You might be issued more work from the client because of this success.
3. Referrals. The Search marketing company might refer development clients to you, because you have a good relationship.
4. Word-of-Mouth. The client might refer potential contracts to you, because their site was a success.
5. Robust Bespoke CMS systems. The Search marketing company can advise you on global system capabilities such as Joomla, Drupal and WordPress etc and also help you to implement search and user-friendly methodologies in your bespoke systems.
6. Leader of industry. Displaying forward thinking in terms of website set-up. Your ‘out-the-box-system’ just became that much more valuable.

To see all 10 reasons, read the Top 10 reasons on Techleader.

I welcome the opportunity to speak to development companies that are skeptical about such a relationship. It is win-win concept. Experience it.

Permalink