What Building My Own Website Taught Me About Marketing

When you work in marketing, you spend a lot of time thinking about other people's websites. You think about their audiences. You think about what information people need. You think about the journey from the homepage to the contact form, from a social media post to a landing page, from a question to an answer.

But what happens when the brand is yours? I found out when I built the Hazekamp Marketing website.

I have written copy for brands and organizations for more than a decade. I've planned campaigns, developed content strategies, managed websites, and helped organizations communicate with the people they want to reach.

But building a website for myself was different. Suddenly, I had to answer questions I had spent years helping other organizations answer: What do I actually do? Who do I help? What makes my approach different? What are my strengths?

And, perhaps most importantly, how do I explain all of that clearly to someone who has never met me? It was a surprisingly useful marketing exercise.

1. Your homepage is a journey, not a list of facts

The hardest part of building my website was designing the homepage. Not the colors. Not the fonts. Not the layout. The order.

What should someone see first? What do they need to know about me? What questions are they likely to have? What information will help them find the service they need?

A homepage isn't just a collection of everything you want people to know about your organization. It's a journey. Someone arrives with a question, a problem, or a need. The job of the website is to help them find their way to the information or solution that makes sense for them.

That meant I had to be intentional about how I organized the page. I wanted visitors to quickly understand who I am, who I work with, what I can help with, and where to go next. This is one of those things that sounds simple until you are staring at a blank homepage and trying to decide which sentence deserves to come first.

2. Writing about yourself is a completely different skill

I found it much easier to write for an organization than to write about myself. When I write for a brand, I can immerse myself in its mission, audience, goals, and voice. I can center the voices of the people they serve.

With Hazekamp Marketing, I had to find my own voice. What can I offer clients? What are my strengths? What is my unique selling point? What kind of work do I want to do? And how can I communicate all of that without sounding like a corporate brochure?

I knew I wanted the website to feel like an extension of myself. Human. Authentic. Strategic, but not stuffy.

I wanted potential clients to understand that I focus on ethical, human-centered storytelling and am particularly passionate about working with organizations that help others. For me, that includes NGOs, nonprofits, educational institutions, and businesses with a social mission.

I also wanted to communicate that I bring more than just the ability to create an Instagram post or write a blog. I bring strategy, data, project management, experience, and collaboration.

When I work with clients, I don't want to simply disappear and come back with a finished product created in isolation. I want to work with them to understand their goals, co-create materials, and develop communications that actually serve their organization.

Finding the language to communicate all of that was one of the most important parts of building the site.

3. Your audience may not speak marketing

One of the most helpful parts of building the website was having other people read it.

My dad pointed out several places where I could explain marketing terminology more clearly. For someone who works in marketing, terms like "SEO" or "retargeting" can feel completely normal. But not everyone uses those words every day.

And even if someone has heard of SEO, do they know what it actually means for their organization? Do they understand why it matters? Do they know how it could help them reach more people?

That was an important reminder: knowing a term doesn't necessarily mean your audience understands its value. So instead of simply listing services, I tried to explain what those services can help clients achieve.

Not just SEO, but how can your organization become easier to find? Not just social media management, but how can you reach the right people and build meaningful engagement? Not just copywriting, but how can you communicate your ideas in a way that people understand and remember?

Good marketing isn't just about naming what you do. It's about helping people understand why it matters.

4. Your portfolio should tell a story

Choosing what to include in my portfolio was one of the hardest parts of building the website. I've worked on hundreds of projects over the course of my career... There was no way to include everything.

So I started with categories I wanted to highlight: Social media, Emails, Video, Campaigns, Copywriting (the list goes on!). Then I went back through years of work and chose some of my favorite and most memorable projects. I wanted the portfolio to show not just what I had produced, but how I think and approach each task.

For campaigns, I wanted to explain the challenge, the strategy, and what made the work successful. For individual pieces, I wanted to show the range of skills I bring to a project, from graphic design to video production, and storytelling to campaign management.

The process reminded me that a portfolio should not simply be a museum of everything you've ever done. It should help a potential client imagine what you could do for them.

My portfolio will continue to evolve as I take on new projects and work with new clients. I may even revisit some of the language and adapt it for a more European audience over time. A website is not a time capsule; it is a living resource.

5. The pretty part is only the beginning

Designing the website was actually one of the easier parts.

Wix made it simple to use pre-designed sections and customize them with my own colors, fonts, and photography. I also created some graphics in Canva for the Services page, while much of the other imagery came from my own photos.

But once the design was in place, there was still plenty of work to do: SEO, accessibility, metadata, mobile responsiveness, and the all-important quality assurance check.

I had several people review the website before launch, and they caught things I had missed. My sister, in particular, was a hero. She found broken links and identified opportunities to improve readability.

That is the problem with working on your own website for too long. Eventually, you stop seeing it clearly. You know what you meant to say, so your brain fills in the gaps when something is unclear. A fresh pair of eyes can catch what you no longer see.

6. Eventually, you have to press the button

I could have continued tweaking the website forever; there was always something else I could change. A sentence I could rewrite, a page I could rearrange, a photo I could reconsider, or a detail I could improve.

But eventually, I had completed my QA checks, implemented the feedback I received, registered my new domain, and reached the point where the website was ready. So I launched it.

And then I continued tweaking a few things. And that's okay.

One of the biggest lessons I learned while building my own website is that it doesn't need to be perfect on day one. It needs to be clear, useful, and easy to improve.

That might be one of the biggest hurdles for a marketer. We are trained to notice every detail. We see the awkward sentence, the inconsistent spacing, the missing metadata, the image that could be better.

But at some point, the website has to become useful to the people it was created for. And the best way to make something better is often to put it out into the world and learn from what happens next.

Before you build your own website

If you are building a website for yourself or your organization, I have one piece of advice:

Make a plan before you start designing.

Before opening your website builder, think about:

• What pages do you need?

• Who is each page for?

• What do you want people to understand?

• What action should they take next?

• What images will you need?

• What colors and fonts will represent your brand?

• What examples or portfolio pieces do you want to include?

The more of those decisions you can make before you start moving boxes around on the screen, the easier the process will be. And when you inevitably find yourself making the same small change for the seventh time, remember:

Your website doesn't need to be perfect on day one. It needs to be clear. It needs to be useful. And it needs to be easy to improve.

That's what I tried to create with the Hazekamp Marketing website. And now that it is live, I get to do the most exciting part: See where it takes me.