Websites Should Be Free!
It is possible to find inspiration nearly anywhere. I was watching Mad Men on TV. It’s a show about an advertising agency in 1960 when advertising was first starting to dramatically shape the landscape of American culture on a large scale. The show’s website describes it as “…the sexual exploits and social mores of this most innovative yet ruthless profession…” Sounds intriguing, eh? What intrigued me was seeing how the ad agencies on Mad Men operate and then extrapolating those methods to use in online marketing today. After all, the “mad men” did wield considerable power over how products were presented, and whether or not consumers saw fit to buy products on a mass scale.
The main thing that jumped out at me on Mad Men was this: the ad agencies give away the “creative” part of the ad process. It is thrown in with the cost of the whole campaign and just assumed by all involved to be part of the total package. The creative part is essentially free, all other factors considered.
As I was watching TV, it occurred to me that this should apply in today’s world of online marketing. Essentially, website design is the “creative” in this situation. If you are to have any kind of success marketing a business online, you need to have a website to base things from, where people can go for more information and where you have complete control over how your product is presented. Unfortunately, online marketing campaigns usually have to factor in the cost of setting up a creative website to serve as the base of operations.
This is not how it should be. If you are buying online marketing, you should get a free website. Online marketing companies that do not demand a free website are probably less successful than their counterparts, and definitely less successful than they could be. It is important to prioritize the website’s real importance as far as generating income.
When setting up a website, the fee you pay to display your wares is not the most important money coming in to the website’s owner. The money-making occurs because people are coming to the website. Per-click income is what really drives the website money machine. It’s similar to how newspapers operate: it does not really matter what you pay for each issue on the street because the real revenue is in the ads. Successfully running a profitable business is all about knowing how to attract people who will generate income. This is the real importance of a website. Providing the space for the website to do business benefits everyone involved.
Ultimately, it is not about the website, it’s about the traffic coming to the site. That’s where the money and the value is for the website owner as well as the company selling it to them. Just like on Mad Men, it behooves one to give away the creative, or rather, the website and depend on the consumer response to generate the real revenue.
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2 Responses to “Websites Should Be Free!”
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May 19th, 2008 at 6:36 am
First off, nothing is free. The creative wasn’t free, it was absorbed in the huge fees the agencies charged.
I think a good question to ask companies is “What is your core business?” Companies often keep things in house that should be outsourced, and they also outsource things that should be kept in house.
If you’re an online marketer, isn’t the content and promotion part of your core business? I’ve seen plenty of web businesses where the owners think that their business is maintaining inventory and putting products in boxes to ship out, and think that the web promotion should be done by someone else. They’re failing because they don’t realize what business they’re in.
If you’re an advertising firm, is maintaining the data center to run the websites really part of your core competency? So why would I want to use an ad agency to run my servers? Frankly, I’d rather that was done by someone that’s in that business.
In most businesses, the staff that aren’t devoted to the core are “2nd class citizens.” IT staff at a law firm, ad agency, or hospital don’t have a route to the executive office or big pay. Subsequently, those businesses tend not to have IT functions that perform as well as companies that are actually in the IT business.
If your ad agency provides your server space, you’re either going to get an intern/fresher doing your server maintenance, or they’re going to outsource that to another company as a cost of business. Either way, you’re in trouble when something happens and you need it fixed right away.
So back to the original question. If you’re an internet marketer, then content and promotion is what you do. Outsourcing that would be a mistake. Keeping the servers running isn’t necessarily core, but it’s vital enough that you don’t want to be more than 1 step away from whoever is doing it for you. And you want them to be the best, because every minute you’re down is lost revenue.
BTW, I can’t wait for next season.
August 1st, 2008 at 6:55 am
Hi just visiting here, and yes nothing in this world is free nice website here