When looking at a company, channels are often categorized by their generic job description - For example, the marketing team is in charge of the organization’s branding, finance is the management of numbers and IT is the oversight and maintenance of all computer networks. While these overarching explanation do stand true, many businesses are shifting responsibilities across departments in order to maximize functionality, and who manages the organization’s website is one of them.

Define Marketing
In a simple summary, the marketing department’s main job is to brand a company in a way that, not only reaches the target market, but remains relevant in an ever changing society. In 2018, this is done heavily through social media outlets and digital platforms, the areas in which people around the world are spending most of their time throughout the day. With that, the strategy behind the branding is the most powerful piece of the marketing puzzle. This strategy is what sets the direction for the company’s message in the market in order to make its presence successful while capturing as much consumer data as possible.

Digital Management
Although “building websites” is not a common bullet on a marketing professionals job description, they are the creative masterminds behind it, driving how customers find the site, what information is the easily accessible and how to draw the outside eye in while keeping their attention. All of these reasons and more are why many marketing teams, whether it be internal or external via agencies, are taking the responsibility of managing organizations’ website.

Aside from design and content, what additional details are useful to the marketing team? Short answer - Everything. There is so much data that can be pulled from the backend functionality that gives the company various details they need to know about their digital existence. Through marketing analytics, the brand can see who has visited their page, how many times per day and what route the visitor took to get there. Furthermore, information can be pulled on what click-through links the customer utilized - Meaning, if there are external links on the website to visit a different page or dropdown menu, that can be tracked so the company sees what category or details the consumer is interested in viewing. This is crucial for improving the customer experience, as well as their overall understanding of the brand.

While all SEO (Search Engine Optimization) analysis could be pulled by a programmer or IT specialist, the tasks to follow would be a job for a marketing professional. Identifying the consumer trends and ways to continue improving the site are areas to implement the brand strategy, keeping the face and intentions of the organization the same across all platforms. By companies realizing and voicing this initiative, they are getting ahead of the game and properly executing their identity in the market in the most appropriate ways.