Some weeks, the work fits neatly into the marketing bucket.
This week, our team launched websites and landing pages and delivered a detailed SEO audit. All firmly within the world of marketing.
Then came a question about payment processors.
Not exactly a marketing deliverable, but it mattered to the client, so it mattered to us.
Business Problems Rarely Stay in Their Lane
A new website can uncover a problem with how payments are processed. An SEO audit can raise questions about the customer journey. A campaign can expose an operational issue that needs to be addressed before more traffic is sent its way.
The work may begin with marketing, but businesses do not operate in isolated departments. One decision often leads directly to another.
That is especially true for growing companies, where the person making marketing decisions may also be thinking about technology, operations, sales and a dozen other priorities before lunch.
Being a Resource Goes Beyond the Deliverable
We do not need to pretend to be experts in everything. In fact, knowing when to research, make an introduction or point someone toward a better resource is part of being a good partner.
For us, the goal is not to keep every conversation strictly inside the original scope. It is to understand what the client is trying to accomplish and help remove obstacles where we reasonably can.
Sometimes that means building the landing page. Sometimes it means digging through search data to find opportunities. And sometimes it means helping someone sort through payment processor options because that is the thing standing between them and their next step.
Good marketing requires understanding the business behind it.
And sometimes, the most useful question we can ask a client has nothing to do with marketing at all:
What else are you trying to solve?