Do you have a website? If you do, what do you do with it?
That might sound like a strange question because most business owners don’t realise they need to do anything with it. They build it, and then it just sits there. But your website is the foundation of your online presence as a business, and the destination for pretty much all of your marketing efforts. So you should be making the most of it whenever you can. How? With website marketing.
Why Your Business Needs A Website
Did you know that the very first website was launched on the 6th of August 1991? It was built by World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee, and contained instructions for users on how to create their own web pages as well as search the web for information. You can even still visit it here!
Of course, web design has come an awfully long way in 31 years, moving from a handful of fonts and a rudimentary CSS system to sophisticated multi-megabyte pages with more frameworks, icons and fonts to choose from than we know how to use. The number of global internet users passed the 5.03 billion mark earlier this year, with Google dominating the search engines with an 87.72% market share as the most popular search tool. Unsurprisingly, websites are now a focal point for millions of businesses across the globe, in some places replacing shop fronts and physical operations, so it’s important to understand exactly how you can get the most performance out of your website on every level.
By now, it should be fairly obvious that any business needs a website, no matter the size, shape or industry. It’s essential if you want to be found online, be viewed as credible and generate new leads for your business. It also allows you to keep customers up to date about changes in your business, save time in answering customer queries and showcase your services and testimonials in a positive and appealing way.
Promoting Your Website
Once you have your website built and it’s live out in the world, it’s time to promote it. After all, if you don’t tell anyone it’s there you’re not going to get many visitors! This is known as website marketing, and it’s the process of promoting your website on the internet so that it gets found. It’s one of many approaches you can use in your overall marketing strategy, but the specific goal of website marketing is to get more people to visit your website.
Get SEO Ready
SEO is a big part of being found online, and so it tends to form a core part of any website marketing strategy. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, and it determines how easy it is for Google to find you and recommend your website to users. There are a number of steps involved in getting your website optimised, including:
- Technical SEO
- On-page SEO
- SEO-friendly content
- Off-page SEO
- Local SEO
Some of this you can do yourself, other elements you might need some help with. We’ve written a few guides on getting your website and content SEO ready, including a guide to performing an SEO audit, the benefits of SEO for your website and how to create an SEO strategy, so if you’re not sure where to start, read those first.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is all about producing valuable content that will draw people to your website. The focus here should be on creating the right types of content in the right style to attract your target market. This content can be shared via social media, on your website and throughout other networks to reach as widely as possible, acting as a magnet to draw people in.
Paid Ads
If you’ve ever searched something on Google and seen the top results with a little ‘ad’ label next to them, you’ve come across paid ads before. This is a great way to get your website in front of people who are actively searching for what you offer, and it tends to provide results much quicker than other forms of website marketing. Things like SEO and content marketing are effective but long-term, whereas paying to display a link to your website on Google can give a great short-term boost.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is an incredibly effective yet under-utilised method for getting people onto your website more than once, increasing those touchpoints that can lead to a sale. Having an active email list means you can let people know about new content or special offers, directly advertise products to them or even give away free resources – as long as they get back onto your website!
Remarketing
Have you ever visited a website once, and then felt like it was following you around the internet? Ads for the website or the products you were looking at would pop up everywhere, and you would be constantly reminded that it was a thing you were reminded of? That’s remarketing, and it means it’s working! With remarketing, you can remind customers of who you are and entice them to come back to the site when they’re ready to buy.
Where To Start?
That might seem like an awful lot to take in, especially if you’ve only just got your website up and running to begin with! But the good news is there are plenty of people out there who can help. You can hire a marketing agency to take on your website marketing as a whole, or if you only want to focus on one area you can hire individual specialists to give you the training or support you need.
At Lion Spirit Media, we are a holistic marketing agency, which means we like to look at the whole picture to create a marketing plan that’s tailored to your business goals and resources. However, we also have experts in several individual fields within marketing, so we can support your business on an ad-hoc or permanent basis. If you want to get your paws on some amazing website marketing resources, just get in touch with the team to find out more.
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