Just What Does it Really Mean to have a Website?

Your website is just a component of an overall marketing plan.  A lot of that plan can take place online, but you also have to “get it” about what it really means.  I would like to briefly highlight those main points so you can get the right big picture of things to get effective perspective about this little thing we call the Internet.

You

First of all, there is you.  You are a human being; you have talents, knowledge, experience and skills.  You are a valuable commodity, although you are certainly more than a “thing”.  You are at the center of the whole enterprise.  You are likeable and valuable, and people should get to know you for many reasons.

If people know there is a real person behind your business and website, they are much more likely to like you and want to do business with you.  Everything ultimately is a relationship, including business.  You need that KLT: know, like and trust factor.  Don’t make too big a thing of it, but don’t forget to include that necessary human element in your outreach.

Website That has a Specific Goal

A website is more than just an online business card, it’s a powerful tool that should be directed to a clearly defined goal.  Usually that goal is a call/email to you, to buy something from you, or to add them to your list of ever-increasing prospects; which you can then market to in the future.

You need to make the steps to those goals to be easy and simple to do.  We call them in the business a Call to Action (or CTA).  Examples of CTA’s are “Call Now” buttons, “Order Now”, or “Click Here to Receive this FREE thing”.

You only have a few precious seconds to get their interest, and attention. With all the billions of websites out there they may never return.  You really can’t afford to be messing around.

Good Design Principles

You need to have a website that gives a good user experience.  It should be clean, uncluttered, and not overloaded with huge slabs of text.  The website should have a fresh, visually interesting and current look; not like it was designed in 1997.  People can tell.

Do not use grainy, blurry photos, or tiny text that is hard to read.  You need to make things on the screen “pop” when they need to, i.e. don’t use dark text with dark backgrounds, etc.

Give information but not too much, you want the site visitors to call/connect with your directly for more.  A good video on the homepage is good too.

The Right Words and Placement of Them

I speak here basically of SEO (search engine optimization).  First, you need to research what are the keyword phrases people are using to search for businesses/organizations like yours and put them in the proper place on the pages.

I’m places I’m talking about are in paragraph headings, titles, and in prominent places of the body of the text.  If you don’t employ these specific keyword phrases you will be invisible on the internet.  Google sees these keyword phrases “signal flags” to send hungry, desperate visitors to you whom you can help.

Connections to Other Similar Websites. 

Your site has to be associated with other similarly focused sites.  There need to be links to and from those sites to yours.  Google equates these links as signals of authoritativeness and ranks them against your competitors.  These are called in the biz backlinks, and the more of them you have the greater is your reliability as a destination for your visitors.

These are according to Google’s algorithms, of course, but it works, and if you don’t employ this concept in your web marketing, you will not get much traction.  The same goes for what are called citations, these are listings in industry-niche related directories out there.  For instance, if you’re a carpenter, you’re going to want a listing on Angie’s List, Yelp, and other home contractor directories.

The more the better, but not just any directory, of course.  You need to have listings on high profile and well-known directory sites such as Yelp, Yellow Pages and Manta; this also includes well-known directories and reference sites that are in your niche.

Use of Social Media and Video

You definitely want a Facebook page for your business.  If visitors are interested in your business they probably will want to follow your Facebook page, so they can get juicy new info about the industry/niche/subject, new products and services, to pop up on their feeds.

New content (pages, posts, events) posted on a regular basis is important to keep you in the minds of potential customers and will raise your KLT (know, like, and trust) factor as already noted of above.

A new service, product, or piece of information serves as the basis for a new blog article, which then becomes repurposed as a social media post (and linking people back to your site), which becomes a video on YouTube. This content is liked, commented on, and shared with others.  It’s free but can be labor intensive, and there are shortcuts and workarounds, but in today’s social media dominant world, it’s essential to understand.

The Google Business Profile

The GBP is a more recent addition to online marketing, but it is increasingly taking center stage in the marketing world.  With the use of Google Maps, which is so intrinsically connected to smart phones, Google creates a business profile of a business it can find, which then shows up in the Google Maps section of searches.  You can either not touch it, or you can make it more powerful by soliciting reviews from customers, adding photos and information about new products and services to it.

It’s incredible free exposure.  The Google Business Profile on Maps also prominently displays recent reviews of people who visited or bought from those businesses.

Occasionally some bad reviews happen, and they can stick out like a sore thumb.  Bad reviews may or may not be deleted (but you can request that they be renewed), so your best course of action is to continually ask people to leave you a review.  Bad reviews are then pushed down with the newer, more favorable reviews showing.  It is always good to respond to a review good or bad.  Responding personally shows you care and appreciate their business, and therefore also increases that online KLT factor.

Paid Ads

Good SEO, site design and new relevant content is going to help with your exposure online to new prospects, but at some point you need to turn on the traffic fire hose, which are online paid ads.  Facebook ads and Google Ads, most prominently these days.

Also called pay per click (PPC) these obviously are direct financial outlays on your part; but with the data collection abilities of Google and Facebook you can serve up these ads to very demographically-specific groups of people, including people who have recently been making queries online about your product or service.  For instance, if you search for new shoes one day, almost instantly you’re going to notice ads EVERYWHERE online about shoes.  Businesses pay for those ads because they know that they are showing to very hot prospects.

You can literally have ads follow the prospect around the internet, it is called retargeting.

Conclusion

There is a very hard science and technique for online marketing.  If you understand it, you have the potential to go far.  If you don’t, your website (no matter how much you paid for it to be built) will be buried on page 9 of Google and a financial liability to your business.  If you have any questions about websites, SEO, social media, or paid ads, connect with us for a free consultation.