Digital DIY—Operate At Your Own Risk

Digital marketing isn’t as dangerous as, say—mining or something. But it can get pretty technical. So much so, it’s easy to miss some key details.

Yesterday, our brand manager Marta was showing me how to put together an email template in HubSpot. She herself is HubSpot-certified (and Google AdWords-certified; and an all-around pretty savvy marketer in general), so it was a little fascinating watching her work.

As unflattering as it may sound, she kind of reminded me of my grandpa for a minute.

I’ll clarify. My grandpa is a crafty guy. He worked as a mechanic for most of his life and now spends his time “tinkering” (building chicken coops, turning wooden bowls on his lathe, etc.).  He still dabbles in auto maintenance and he helped me change my car’s brakes a few weeks ago.

Now—I’m not all that unskilled in the art of car maintenance. And, by virtue of proximity, I know a thing or three about various digital marketing practices. But ask me to do a job all by my lonesome—be it auto maintenance or digital marketing, something will likely get lost in translation. Or else, it will take forever.

Had my grandpa not been teaching me as we worked, the job would have taken less than an hour. Without his guidance, a little part of me would wonder whether the job was done well.

Likewise with Marta. She’s familiar with the HubSpot interface and knows its subtle nuances. Before not too long—voila, fresh, new marketing collateral was live and ready.

Everyone’s a generalist. We’re all pretty competent at a variety of different things. But we can’t be all things to everybody.

The true mark of a pro is the attention and care on the seemingly little things. Like keeping an eye on the brake fluid as you retract the pistons—or, more to the point, taking the time to make sure each social share button in your HubSpot email corresponds to the proper link. They make technical tasks look easy. They instill a confidence that the end result is the right result.

Digital “do-it-yourself” marketing is risky.

It’s not impossible, but I for one would rather place certain matters of importance into the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing. Mistakes make our work look shoddy—or worse. Time spent making up for a lack of experience is inefficient. Save yourself the hassle—in this case, leave the digital marketing to the digital marketing professionals.

photo credit: HowardLake via photopin cc