Get Sh*t Done: Why Marketing Should Own Your Website

In high school, I had a coworker, Peter, who would send us on our way at the end of a shift with the (joking) advice to “drive fast and take chances.” Man, the bar for humor was so low at that age.

Nevertheless, it’s some of the best advice I’ve ever received. Not as it applies to safety, but to marketing.

Case-in-point to you marketers: your website. It’s (arguably) your biggest marketing asset. So marketing should own it. In previous roles leading the marketing team, owning the website helped us level-up our marketing and get sh*t done.

When we found a no-code CMS that gave us ownership, it gave us a huge edge to create more content, more efficiently, on more channels.

We could go from creating a blog post or a new page in the morning to publishing in the afternoon. No more bottlenecks. And that annoying typo we caught on our homepage? Fixed in 60 seconds. We were 10x more nimble, creative, and efficient.

If you’re a young company, time = money. And creativity = a competitive advantage. So marketing should own your website. Full stop.

With so many quality no-code tools out there, it’s time to make a switch (if you haven’t already).

Here are a few reasons why.

Get the freedom to experiment and be creative

Great marketing is often about taking chances (thanks, Peter). In an attention economy, creativity is a huge competitive advantage.

“Disciplined creativity is often the last remaining legal means you have to gain an unfair advantage over the competition."

– Ed McCabe

If you’re launching a new product, promoting an event, or announcing your rebrand, it’s important to ensure your owned channels are all integrated.

The messaging often happens on social, email, or in search, but the conversions happen on your website. It’s the place you capture all of the value you create from your marketing.

Need to build a landing page to capture emails? Marketing should do that.

Need to build a campaign-specific page for a company update? Marketing should do that.

Need to promote an event? Marketing should do that.

How many times has an idea been squashed not because of a lack of budget but because of a lack of time or what’s perceived as too much friction relative to ROI?

When marketing can experiment, your brand is better positioned to grow.

Use engineers for product vs. marketing support

Is you’re a tech company, why are your software engineers or developers spending even 5 minutes working on your company website? They should be heads down on product improvements. Those improvements are foundational to the success of the business.

And if you’re committing to product-led growth (PLG), that’s even more critical. Your product needs to delight and your engineers should be working to rollout new features that customers actually want.

As a marketer, when you need to update a line of copy on the website, you shouldn’t have to work with a developer. That’s ridiculous. And it’s a waste of their time and yours.

Marketing generates revenue through great content and messaging.

Engineers and developers generate revenue by building a great product.

That should be priority #1.

Keep marketing in-house vs. outsource

Many SMBs end up outsourcing their website to an agency. They need the help with design, content development, and regular maintenance.

Five years ago, this probably made sense. An agency could be an extension of your core team and allow you to tap into a larger, more specialized team.

But those days are gone. Yes, there will always be scenarios where it makes sense to work with an agency to get a website off the ground. This up front investment can help ensure your UX, accessibility, and content are all in a sound place.

But as soon as the website is published, there should be a clean handoff. You shouldn’t have to work with your agency to publish website updates.

When you keep everything in-house, you’re saving countless hours of back-and-forth communication just to make progress.

When you have a powerful no-code tool, you could run a million-dollar startup website with one marketer. That’s how powerful no-code can be.

Move faster and with less friction

I’ve been a part of a lot of website, microsite, and landing page builds. And if not precisely project managed across developers, designers, UX/UI, and marketing, they are slow, slow, SLOW.

Like rush hour traffic on I-45 in Houston slow. Like Flash from Zootopia slow. It can be crippling for your external marketing and demoralizing for your team who is constantly waiting to ship new messaging or move projects forward.

I’d argue it’s better to hire an expert in no-code web developer and a designer to sit on the marketing team. Two hires, zero headaches. That sounds like a good investment to me.

In an attention economy, you have to constantly be shipping content, running new awareness and demand campaigns, and generally, staying top of mind among your audience.

If you don’t move fast, you’re taking cash and essentially lighting it on fire.

Scale with a lean team

Which brings us to another value-add: the ability to scale.

I don’t care if you’re a small start up or a Fortune 500 company. You want your marketing team to be lean and mean. We covered speed and agility. Now, let’s talk doing more with less.

In a pinch, with a great no-code tool, you could cause some real damage as a marketing team of one because you could constantly be shipping content and updates.

Say you’re in growth mode, you’re now doing more email, performance marketing, content creation, and expanded your social presence. All of those aspects of marketing impact the website. So it would make sense to add a team within marketing to own making updates and improvements – that’s not a developer. My recommendation: a no-code web developer and a graphic designer.

From there, scaling is easy, because everything is consolidated within one team.

Improve SEO

Title tags. Meta descriptions. Keywords.

If you’re an SEO, these are a big deal in making sure you’re found online. Google is constantly making updates, and best practices change from time to time.

So if marketing owns the website, optimizing for SEO is as easy as making a simple copy change. It can be quick, easy, and painless.

Recommended no-code tools

My personal favorite CMS and no-code tool? Webflow.

It’s more customizable and user-friendly than HubSpot, WordPress, or Wix.

There are other enterprise CMS and website tools out there, sure. But I have yet to find one as marketer-friendly and customizable as Webflow.

So marketers, if you’re serious about activating growth mode, go no code.