Websites can be at the Core of Marketing Efforts
A website isn’t just a place your contact details and list your services, or at least it shouldn’t be. There are many businesses that treat their website as nothing more than a simple flyer with basic details and their contact information. A website can be a powerful marketing tool drawing potential customers in and converting them into sales or leads. A website can be at the core of your marketing efforts where you direct all off-page marketing to landing pages that are setup to convert as well as nurture leads that are at the top of the marketing funnel and lead them through to the buying phase all without leaving your website, so they purchase from you as they have invested and developed a relationship with you.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engines have changed and how you find information is easier than ever, however this means your website needs to be designed with the search engine algorithms in mind as well as the customer experience. Google has changed their system to be more about the intent of the search rather than the keywords used. Take for instance the search query – “Sheets”, it’s a one-word query however it can mean different things to different people. If you were a business person you may be looking for google sheets or excel sheets, however a musician would be looking for composition sheets, and an interior designer might be looking for bedsheets. When google crawls a website it categorizes a website and the pages within and puts them in its index of webpages using an array of data. When someone searches google, it pulls the best webpages that will fulfil the search intent based on the data it has collected from the websites and the user logged in. Your website should be using techniques to make sure your webpages are clear to the search engine’s crawler so it gets properly cataloged and is the best experience it can be for the web visitor’s including being as fast as it can be and the content isn’t behind layers of advertisements or popups so your page is selected as the best webpage for the search query and is ranked at the top or near it.
Having content for the search query is another part of search engine optimization. Your service page for appliance repair might fulfil the intent for someone looking for who does appliance repair near me, but it won’t be very good result for how to fix a toaster. Customers won’t always be ready to buy when they are running an internet search, however someone who reads about the difficulty or tools needed to repair a toaster might decide it’s better to have an expert repair their toaster than try it themselves and if they are finding that information from your competition, they will be more likely to call them rather than you when they decide that.
Backlinks – Referrals
Backlinks are links back to your website from another. This could be from a directory type website like Yelp, or Angieslist or another website that has referenced your website or content from it. When you have great content on your website, others will reference it or share it in comments or social media. Your website can become a great source of information in your industry and become the first place some potential customers will go to when seeking out information for a problem or to learn new information. This can be a great source of referral leads or sales as your information get shared around on other websites or word of mouth offline.
Articles/Content/Video
The content on your website can rank high on search engine results, can become a great source of referrals, or a leading source of information about topics you cover. If your content is in other forms such as infographics or video, you can have your content reach further potential customers off your site and on others such as YouTube or Pinterest and social media. Having great content can lead to large amounts of traffic to your site that only cost what you paid for the content to be created, whether it was your time if you created it or if you paid for someone else to write it. This can cut down on marketing cost and be one of the biggest contributors of traffic and sales.
Social Media
Your website content can be a great source of social media postings. You can not only gain followers but establish trust that your company is a source of knowledge in your industry and can solve their issues over your competition. Having a help section on your website is also helpful to share with customers when they have issues and message you via social media direct messages. Your social media page can also have links to parts of your website to make your social media page an extension of your website and showcase your brand further.
Analytics
When someone visits your website, your tracking code feeds data to your analytics provider. This data can reveal a lot of insight into your customers and their habits to help your marketing efforts focus on those who are converting into sales and allow you to stop wasting efforts into those that aren’t or allow you insights into what you need to change to gain more sales from those demographics. You may find a product that you thought was designed for an older audience has a different use for a younger audience and shift or expand your marketing efforts towards the new market.
Landing Pages – Paid Advertisements
You can have pages on your website designed to sell and convert visitors called “Landing Pages” as they are designed to be the next page after an advertisement or similar source. You want an ad or marketing content to address a pain point of the customer and direct them to learn more about how your company can help on the landing page. These pages have content meant to address just the solution to the pain point while also having call to action’s (CTA) throughout the page so the moment they have decided to buy your product or signup for services you have a button or form right there ready to capture the call, sale, or contact details. Landing pages covert higher than most webpages however they have drawbacks such as thinner content, so they make weak pages to rank on search engines. For this reason, sometimes landing pages are on a separate subdomain or domain so they won’t cannibalize another page on your website that you are trying to rank for similar content.
Customer Support
Websites can also be a way to help customers after a sale as well. The goal of selling a product or service, shouldn’t just be in the sale, it should be in keeping your customers satisfied as a happy customer will keep going to you with future sales and refer friends and family, whereas an unhappy customer can be a source of negativity and scare off other potential customers. Websites can offer solutions to when problems arise such as a help section that offers solutions to frequently asked questions, customer chat, contact form, and product manuals.
This is of course within reason as some customers won’t be happy regardless of what you offer to rectify issues or discount your products or services. You should plan for some negative reviews and have a system for answering bad reviews with solutions and have plenty of good reviews to drown out a few bad ones. Customers who might be turned away from bad reviews can be gained back if you provide a good reason or solutions in your response to bad reviews.
If you find your website isn’t converting as well as you would like, or you don’t even know your conversion rate, contact us for details and let us audit your website and give you details on how to improve your website and reporting.