The heavy load of custom WordPress development, code updates, and time-consuming marketing with cobbled-together resources can strip away a marketer's biggest advantage - speed.
If you have the average number of plugins needed to just run your website, plus additional marketing services that have been cobbled together to support all the channels and target audiences you're trying to reach, then you probably don't have an effective website. You instead have a FrankenPress, a sum of parts that doesn't lead to an effective whole. Even if your website looks good, cobbled-together resources from both the website and the marketing tools add-ons is slowing you down and keeping you from effective marketing.
In 2023, Streamlined Marketing is the New Competitive Advantage
The pace of market change, coupled with the demand to recapture old customers plus recalibrate to new realities, the biggest cost for effective marketing is actually talent. Today, graphics, software (that used to be free), content, and strategy all cost more. Putting expensive talent into a situation where they have to work with a cobbled-together system drives the cost up, and response time down.
Streamlined marketing allows you to go from market reality to creative concept to active communication quickly. But you simply cannot do that when you are dragging the weight of old systems that are slow online, slow to build, and slow to maintain and develop.
The speed of quality execution is the competitive advantage in 2022.
You May have a FrankenPress Website if:
- You have on average 20, 30, or even 40+ WordPress plugins; each one creating security vulnerabilities, integration requirements, and requiring brand style adjustments.
- Your plugins break every time WordPress updates for security (seems like every week)
- You have to manage your CRM, email, pop-ups, social posting, analytics tracking, and SEO improvements in different and various platforms.
- The learning curve for your website has skyrocketed due to all of the plugins and myriad software.
- You have a custom-coded WordPress site that requires a developer to change or adjust it.
- You are using outside services for landing page development like Leadpages, Unbounce, or Instapage.
- You are in charge of your own server and code security.
- You are in charge of updates to your WordPress core and WordPress plugins.
- You can't easily A/B test landing pages or calls to action.
- You don't have granular tracking of every element of your website.
The WordPress Secret that Developers Never Tell You
In the massive WordPress Plugin directory, nearly 50% of these plugins haven't been updated in over 2 years. The WordPress core has been updated more than 50 times since 2019, with multiple major core updates. What that creates is a dangerous mixture of out-of-date or broken code.
What developers and marketing agencies won't tell you is that many times, they will intentionally not update your WordPress core and/or plugins, because they know they are going to break when they push an update out. This approach leaves you vulnerable to security risks.
When you spend valuable time with updates, can you ever get around to actual optimization?
Improving campaigns and learning from the data that you're collecting takes time, and the burden of slow development and upkeep often crowds out the thing that actually gives you an advantage - the ability to upgrade your marketing based on customer experience.
It's one of the things that will set marketers apart in 2020; agile marketing launches faster and then improves consistently resulting in stronger return on investment.
Streamlined marketing starts by recognizing that WordPress had its day. Today's reality requires that we look to SaaS for a better solution.
Our Experience: We actually love WordPress, but also know that the work of marketing rests on being agile and fast, and that carrying the load of cobbled-together solutions can get pretty heavy for marketers.
The shift to all-in-one solutions for web and marketing is changing the game by unleashing marketers to do, yes, marketing. The days are over when you had to wait weeks for development fixes, allowing execution of just-in-time responsive marketing. All of that is possible with a SaaS platform, like HubSpot.
When you compare the costs including all the software that you need, plus the costs of custom development and upkeep to an affordable SaaS approach, unleashing marketers not only makes sense from an effectiveness perspective but also from a cost-benefit analysis.
Cost Example:
If you have a WordPress Website, Secure Hosting, Advanced SEO, Email services, 20 plugins with annual fees, landing page services, a quality CRM you'll spend substantially more than the $400 per month than the all-in-one HubSpot Pro CMS system that includes all of these tools - you'll already be high in costs. Then add the time and opportunity cost for slow marketing and slow execution.
