The Battle Between IT Companies and Marketing Agencies

Leland Dieno
3 min readMay 12, 2021

It’s 2021. It’s very rare that a traditional IT Support \ Infrastructure company is also designing and developing websites these days. Back when a website was extremely technical more so than creative, they were the goto, but now that design has taken over, a marketing agency is usually hired to build a company’s website.

Let me make this very clear. I come from an IT background. My first corporate job was IT support, then Systems Support and then IT Management, before I transitioned to a marketing role at a large organization. I am technically inclined, I wouldn’t say I’m a wizard systems admin (my geek friends would agree) but I can work my way through infrastructure documentation and understand DNS like a pro.

I am the Vice President of a Digital Marketing Agency who developed a brilliant web development model. My incredible team designs and develops a lot of websites, I’m also the owner of a small consulting firm and partner in a few other digital strategy \ marketing related companies.

I reached out to one of my childhood friends, still a great friend, and my first business partner (circa 2001) and simply asked him about this situation I seem to encounter on a regular basis. He’s been a systems administrator his entire career and now operates a successful IT focused consulting company. He deals with “Next level geeky shit” as I like to say. He’s my goto when I can’t figure out why my VPS won’t allow to build accounts in cpanel on a secondary drive or ensure my backups are not only exported and uploaded to the cloud, but cycled on a regular basis.

His response to me when I asked him why every time we’re dealing with an IT company, or an “IT GUY” they make launching a website difficult was:

“You gotta get your client to tell them to handover all access. Also, you’re not an IT person, you’re an agency so you’re technically scum”.

We laughed… at the hard truth. Sometimes very technical people, believe that more business \ creative focused people aren’t “on their level”. I experience it regularly.

I thought I should make a website “whattheITguysaidtome.agency” or something like that to start capturing these quotes, but then decided on just writing this article instead.

No matter how friendly or polite I am throughout this process, 2/10 times I am dealing with a seemingly bold, asshole.

Is it because they are threatened that we want to steal their client? It can’t be… I don’t want to build servers and deal with load balancing. I want our company to deliver high performing, lead generating and business servicing websites.

Is it because they think they are better than us? It can’t be… humans aren’t that broken.

Is it that marketing agencies are normally a-holes to the IT team they are working with? If so I formally apologize in my colleagues behalf, and knowingly apologize for even the people in our industry who over promise, under deliver and simply put, do a bad job at what we do.

All I know is I have strong hope for a few things in this life. They are in sequential order of priority, peace on earth, success for my family, health of my family and friends, my legacy, that Biggie Smalls isn’t really dead and that some day, god willing, the IT firm and the Marketing Agency get along when launching a website project.

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Leland Dieno

Passionate about fatherhood, my faith, watching the Raiders lose and being a geeky entrepreneur.