How much should Web designers and developers know about marketing?

Hey Josh,

Adding marketing skills to your background can only increase your value to potential clients. Treehouse offers a project called "How to Market Your Business" by Dan Gorgone. You can find it here:

http://teamtreehouse.com/library/how-to-market-your-business

Good luck on your project!

I wanted to add one thing... Be sure to add a responsive design for mobile devices and tablets. This will increase the usability and exposure for your client's website. Hope this helped :).

Check out How to market a business tutorial on treehouse. Should give you some more information.

From wikipedia: "Marketing is the process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers, for the purpose of influencing buyer behavior and/or precipitate behavioral change."

Its a pretty complicated subject but I don't think you need to study it for years or have a business degree to be able to market your product/service effectively. If you're a 'one-man band' then I think it is important for you to know how to market a website. If you work as part of a team or large organisation, this side of things may be handled by someone else while you do the coding.

Some areas of internet marketing include: SEO, social media, affiliate sites, email marketing campaigns etc.

First and foremost I think its important to know who your customer is (i'm talking about your clients customer). If your client has been in business for a while they should already have an idea who their target-audience is. You should try appeal to that target audience. Think about demographics and building a demographic profile of your customers by asking questions like: How old is the average customer? What country are they based in? Are they male or female? etc. Everyone of your customers is unique and will not necessarily fit this profile, but you are trying to generalise and get information about the group/types of people that use your product/service.

Advertising is an important component of marketing, google adwords is an invaluable tool for reaching potential customers. If you haven't heard of this before I suggest you check it out. You can use search tools to find what phrases or keywords your customer's are entering into google and use Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques, such an organic and paid search results, to target these customers. An interesting quote to bear in mind, I forget who said it: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don't know which half."

Google Analytics is another tool that is useful for building a profile of your customers and tracking their behaviour on your website.

I'd recommend you read up on both adwords and analytics and make them a part of your marketing strategy. As well as internet marketing in general.

There is no 1 solution for marketing a product/service it is all dependant on what you are trying to sell and who you are trying to sell it to.

Just my 2 cents, hope that points you in the right direction.

Well marketing is an entire field, so just like someone can't give you resources to learn to code in one post, the same goes for marketing.

In terms of SEO, here are a few resources to get you started:

• Small business owners guide to "speaking SEO"
• SEO In 10 Minutes: Search Engine Optimization Tips For Beginners
• The basics of search engine friendly development

Hey Josh, my first question would be: what are your client's expectations from you? Or - why did he hire you? Is "more business" what he is expecting from the site, or does he have specific needs/wants?

In general... Great SEO will help, but that will only be accomplished by ensuring great content is added to the site on a regular basis. As the designer/developer, you must also ensure the site is build in a way that gives search engines the best chance to succeed when indexing the site, such as a logical structure, valid code, ample text on each page, best use of title, meta, and H1 tags... and there's plenty more you can do.

Your client also has to be willing to put in effort after the site is built, as well. They have to continue to publish content on the site on a regular basis - doesn't have to be every day, but more is better than none. And using social media and the client's other marketing channels to promote the site will help as well.

So it's not just about you need to learn about marketing, it's also what your client needs to learn - and is willing to do.

Thanks. It sounds like eveyone has a different level of marketing involvement. I guess I will learn as much as I can and go from there. I feel like marketing is more of an icing on the cake kind of service for web designers.

My client owns a Carpentry business. He is not very tech savvy at all. He is also weary about using social media, because he wants full control over what people are saying about his work. I told him that using social media and adding good content is key. I even talked about setting up a MailChimp account for him. However, I'm afraid that he won't manage it after it's created or that he won't update his content, and he won't put the time in on his side to make sure that he's getting the most of his website. So I don't want to be blamed for not increasing his business, but I don't want to setup dead-end solutions either....

Thanks! And it just so happens to be my first "real" client also.

Did you outline a detailed proposal first? I highly suggest doing so; therefore, you will not have to redo a project because you explicitly stated what you were doing. Make sure you include a contract, project timeline, goals of project, fees, and then get a signed paper from the client saying the project is complete once it is so they cannot try to get more work without additional cost.

Yes, I did do that. He hasn't really gotten back to me about it either. I'm assuming that was because my proposal was so explicit about the additional charges for work after the project completion. Thanks for the help though.