Is your website NOT doing its job? Is it not pulling its weight in generating leads and helping your sales? For your business to thrive in the digital age and to compete with other businesses online, your website needs to be the hub of your internet marketing and possibly most of the marketing you do for your business. But it can’t stand alone in the big online world and there are internet marketing solutions that can help.
If your website is the only asset you have online, it's like a business flier on a wall with 10 billion other fliers…not going to impact anyone.
Just about everything you do online to market your business should draw people back to your website - whether they are there to make a purchase, learn more about your company, find a phone number to call, fill out a form or do a live chat - your website is the hub. There are numerous tools you can use to kick your website into gear, but here are the 4 Internet marketing solutions that NEED to be utilized to get the most out of your business website:
#1. Blogs
Writing tons and tons of great content on a blog is just a big muscular arm of your website. If you are starting a blog, make sure you create it on your main domain or on a subdomain. (example: yourwebsiteurl.com/blog or blog.yourwebsiteurl.com) This will help you get off on the right SEO foot, so to speak.
The blog articles you write will add depth and breadth to your website that is way better than just adding more and more pages and drop downs with new pages. These are the articles that people will find when searching with keywords (if you have done your on-page SEO homework) and since these articles are live on your website, it's acting like a magnet…a customer magnet. Read more about The Real Reason Your Business Should Be Blogging.
#2. Landing Pages
Implementing a landing page tool is a smart internet marketing solution. HubSpot users see a 55% increase in website conversions when they use 15+ landing pages on their websites (HubSpot). Using landing pages provides a specific website page with a specific purpose, free of other distractions for you to offer something to your potential customers.
So when offering a resource, a “sign-up for…” or a “order now” it is way more effective to have these offerings on a landing page that is free from lots of other website information. Landing pages are the tool that helps convert all those website visitors (people just reading and clicking around) to actually become leads that you can nurture into customers.
#3. Email Marketing
When you use emails to nurture your leads and build relationship with your potential customers, you are working smarter. The way you stay connected is to send your contacts emails with resources and links that lead them back to your website.
It's really hard to measure click-through rates when there is nothing in an email to click through to, so add hyperlinks to your website pages, blog pages and landing pages within your emails. This is like a boom-a-rang effect - visitors who have become leads will come back with email nurturing. Read more about 6 Benefits of an Email Marketing Strategy That Are Game Changers.
#4. Social Media Posts
This has been on my mind lately. Your business needs to be on social media platforms if you want to stay competitive and thrive in the digital marketing age. According to AdWeek, this is where people spend their time, averaging 1.72 hours per day on social platforms, which represents about 28% of all online activity. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn and so many others are where your leads are spending their time, being influenced by peers and other brands, and making buying decisions. If you can connect, share, comment, interact and be part of the community, your brand will have influence and you will attract leads to your brand.
That is all fine and good, but if you don’t have a viable website to link back to, to direct social media visitors to, then your company is at the mercy of the platform. If a big face in the social media world decides to change how posts are shared or who they are shared with, then everything you have built on the platform may not be in your control. But, the assets and content on your website are in your control, then you can use the social media platforms to share and promote what you have done on your website. Check out this article for more information on why relying solely on social media isn’t a smart marketing solution.
Your website needs to stop acting like a stagnate page in the phone book or a flier on the wall and start interacting with the millions of people on the internet and on social media. Use these 4 internet marketing solutions to boost the influence your website has and turn it into an effective 24/7 lead generating machine! Now that's what we call a website that is doing its job!
If you have questions about how to put your website to work and transform it into a lead generation machine, contact us at Half a Bubble Out.
