Last Updated on June 10, 2022 by James Castro
Website Marketing FAQ:
So you are here to learn more about marketing your own website? Great! We have created a very detailed overview of how you might be able to do that internally or independently depending on your business or personal needs.
The following advice is for anyone with a website. If you don’t have a website, some of this advice can be applied to other digital assets like your social media channels, or another web 2.0’s.
So here it is, the absolute truth on website marketing strategy. If you found this, consider yourself lucky and bookmark the page (ctrl+d ?) before you lose it in a search for the Holy Grail of website marketing insight.
This, in our humble opinion, is as close to the secular version of said grail in the quest to discover exactly how to drive traffic to your website and convert that traffic to a client or customer.
Website Marketing Strategy
Forms and Templates To Use Right Now:
If you want to create a good strategy for promoting your website online, you need a few foundational things in place. For starters, you’ll want a guide for your brand to follow to stay consistent online, you’ll want a clear understanding of who your customer is, and you’ll want to get a handle on your competition in the market. Below, you’ll find a quick and free way to get started, so that you can create strategic digital assets.
1. A Brand Guide is an invaluable tool for creating a consistent voice for your company. There is a professional way to do this which provides color pallets, mood boards, use-case examples, tone of voice and so much more, which can be compiled from interviews, creative sessions with your core team and clients, and also long walks in nature, but if you don’t have the time or money for that, we created a downloadable “cheat sheet” you can use right now for free.
Website Marketing Brand Guide
Create a high-level overview of your business brand. In the end, you can DOWNLOAD A PDF IMMEDIATELY, and use it as a reference for your website marketing! **IF YOU DON’T HAVE A BRAND GUIDE DO THIS NOW.**
2. Having a Customer Avatar is another resource that can sit nicely next to your computer while you draft your next winning sales letter. It’s not easy, and lots of companies including us will be happy to take the burden off your shoulder and make some money on a done-for-you customer avatar profile.
However, if you’re not hiring a professional already, our guess is you’d rather try your hand at creating your own customer avatar than hire some big shot agency to tell you who your customer “really is”…
Here’s another handy DIY resource that can help you create a customer avatar right now.
3. Competitor Research can make or break your website marketing strategy. Trust us, we compete with companies 100 bazillion times our size online. For some reason, every single digital marketing expert wants to start a content marketing company and they all know the basics of what to do to show up for OUR keywords, and provide value to OUR audience… it’s really something special to be a digital growth company today when so much competition exists.
So, we feel your pain if you have a massive list of competitors with bigger budgets, more employees, or even a dedicated marketing team!
And of course, if you need hired guns to turn off your competitors’ lights and be your VIP web marketing team… head on over to our marketing page and we might just consider it.
But if you have the time, and want to take on the world alone you too can find your growth zone, protect it, and scale your business (if and only if you know exactly who you’re competing against).
Content Marketing Agencies Secret Strategy
There are a lot of ways to make the work easier and faster and of better quality. However, if you’re here (1200 or more words in) you’re most likely not a content marketing agency, and thus you’ll be taking the long and hard road at first.
We all had to go on this journey so don’t worry. Just follow this quick list of 10 things any business owner or marketing director can do now to increase their effectiveness in web marketing and you’ll be driving new visitors to your site and turning them into customers in no time!
10 Things Any Business Owner or Marketing Director Can Do To Increase Their Effectiveness in Web Marketing
- Create a Mind Map
Create a Mind-Map of all the questions your customers ask you. What do you hear most often? What do they consider important? Are they asking about the technical details of your proposal or are they asking about the budget? Are they looking for insight into their problem, or do they want to know what else you can do beyond solving their most immediate challenge?
It’s important just to write it all out on a whiteboard or piece of paper or any system or solution which doesn’t slow your brain down too much while you work through the rapid firing thoughts of the 1,000 questions you hear from your customers and clients every day.
Get these questions all together and then group them. After that, label your groups. Those groups can effectively become your “cornerstones” to any content you create. For example: Let’s say you own a flower business.
Many people ask you which flowers are best for south facing windows, which are best for shade, how to take care of roses, how to keep flowers fresh, what do the colors of each flower mean, etc etc. You can begin to put those into groups: Caring for flowers,
The meaning of Flowers, Best Flowers for Every Occasion, etc. Whatever the questions are – try to group them into the bigger topics, and then give those topics a name.
- Keyword Research
Your groups are wonderful. But to be a Website Marketer, you’ll need some keyword data so you know what people are actually asking outside of your small customer base. Enter your group name, and your most popular questions and subjects into Google, and see what else people ask, and other search terms…
Modify your groups accordingly, so that you are able to reach the highest possible number of people when you answer questions that your audience has. This could also give you some good insight into local search terms, like “Best Flower Shop in Atlanta”, for example. Just click around.
At this point you don’t need special tools to do your work, because Google spends a lot for their tool, and they don’t make much better than that when trying to find answers to problems online. Use what is available to you, and if you exceed limits of that, then go for something more tactical.
- Content Creation Plan
Your website should have a way for you to create a blog. That’s pretty essential. However, there’s more to content than blogs. There are videos, graphics, photos, social posts, articles, white-papers, emails, audio recordings, interactive, Jiffs, and more…
So look at your categories and figure out exactly what medium is best to answer that question or solve that problem. If you’re showing how to trim a flower you’ll want a video, great drawings, or potentially a few photos, along with written copy, for example. Write down the best way you can provide answers and solve problems.
- Content Creation for Website Growth
Sure thing boss. You have this content map and you have this wonderful list of types of content you can create to reach your audience. However at this point you’ve got a bunch of content ideas but no content. Now what? Create systematically. Start with 1 group. Create a well rounded piece of content and use as many forms of content as you can deliver.
Can you do a quick video on your phone or write a few hundred words? Great – do that! Can you put a professional video together along with photos and an infographic and a few drawings and perhaps even an interactive game which allows them to practice cutting flowers right on your site before they butcher their own? Wow.
You’re ahead of most people! Whatever you have time to do, do it. But keep it organized. Don’t be everything to everyone and dilute your content down nothing. If you want to be an expert, provide expertise in a few key areas or groups. There are lots of ways this can be done, but start with creating content in the groups which matter the most to you, and you’re the most qualified to address.
- Distribution for Driving Traffic
You get your content game in order and you start to create some blogs, or share some videos. Now think a bit more strategically. Where is your audience now? Are they on FB Groups (probably), are they on LinkedIn (could be), wherever your audience is now… guess what? They’re not on your website! So you need to go to them.
If you’re sharing on social channels, share the content that’s right for that channel, use the right hashtags, follow the right people or companies. Articles and blogs can be shared on LinkedIn as well as your site, and maybe you use that as a way to draw people into your site? Share Part 1 on LinkedIn, or a quick tip on social media… then direct them to your website where they can learn more and get better answers. You’ve got to think about their entire experience.
Yes, you can get them directly to your site with SEO. Yes you can pay for ads to get them there. But do you know what makes website marketing so much fun? Succeeding at website marketing! So think about where your audience is now, and be a part of that conversation. Think about trade shows and traditional marketing as well.
Can you drive more people to your site with snail mail than you can with PPC? I don’t think so, but maybe you have a massive mailing list and a pile of stamps… so send them an invite to check out your free guide and interactive app – on your website.
- Unique Sales Proposition
You might not realize this but many people who absorb and value your content are going to take it all in and do nothing for you (directly) in return. They’ll read your blogs, they’ll watch your videos, and they won’t share them or give you that thumbs up. They’ll see your post and check out your social, but never become a customer or client. It’s just the way of the world. But is that really their fault, or is it yours? What have you done to convert the curious into the committed? That’s where your USP comes in.
What makes you special? What defines you? What can you provide that your audience needs to solve their biggest most complicated challenges? There must be an ask or people will not know what you’re even doing online, why your website exists, or what your business is even offering. So define what makes you special, and add a little Call To Action on your website that fully defines that special thing about you.
This way, when those educated appreciative visitors find you, and decide they would rather have a professional do what they’ve been thinking of doing (web marketing, cutting flowers, what-have-you), they’ll have a nice way to experience why you’re the best fit to solve their problems. So think about this, and make sure from time to time that your linking back to your core-service pages and sharing your services with your growing audience.
- Web Data and more marketing Data
So, you need something more than what we’ve given you already? Incredible… Okay. To take things up from there, here’s what you do. Get Analytics and Google Search Console in place. Analytics and GSC are great for seeing the demographics and search terms of your audience.
Now you can see where they are and what they are doing to get there. Did they come from a search engine or another website? Did they find you from social media or from a video somewhere? It’s important to know what’s delivering results, and by results we mean traffic. Next, think about conversions. There are ways to add heatmaps and session recording to your site which can give you insight on where people are or are not clicking.
This combined with your other data can be really nice for taking your website marketing to the next level. We personally like using Matomo for tracking keywords and for the heatmaps, but it’s completely your choice. At a minimum GSC and GA should be in place, and you should watch some of their free training so you know how to use these robust advanced data systems.
- Website Marketing Optimization
Once you know where your customers are coming from, what they’re doing and why you’re really starting to become a website marketer. Congratulations (stalker)… it’s time to optimize your offers and increase the likelihood that you’ll convert a visitor to a customer or client. Get a funnel in place for email marketing.
You can do that by having an “email opt-in” and then attributing certain actions on your website with certain lists, and then creating emails around that list. Did someone download your eBook and then visit a social media channel and then request a demo of your product? Well, there’s probably a list they should be on and a follow-up process in place for handling that communication and nurturing that lead.
- Get a Marketing Automation Platform
Marketing automation can help with email lists and track insight with incredible accuracy. We use SharpSpring and offer that to our clients through our agency so they can use it as well. It’s affordable and really powerful.
It’s important stuff to stay top of mind, so do this and you’ll be likely to have returning visitors and more active and loyal visitors who eventually do convert. With all the data you’ve gather across channels you can create remarketing campaigns too.
- Remarketing and Paid Advertising
Remarketing is like paid advertising for people with data. Unlike traditional online advertisng, you can set some conditions in place that say “if they read my article on LinkedIn AND visit my website THEN send them advertisement 7”… and you can take that a step further and add look-alike audiences to maximize the reach you have with an audience that seems most likely to be interested in your product or services based on actions of the audience that has engaged already. Make sense?
Search advertising is wonderful as well, and there is a ton of ways you can use all types of paid ads to reach your audience and send them to your website. Boosting posts, video ads, etc. it’s not as complicated as it sounds here if it sounds complicated at all. But if you’re confused just know that every advertising platform wants your money and is more than willing to help guide you through an online chat or call.
NOTE: most ad platforms Google included are not incredibly concerned about you maximizing your ROI on their platform since it means lower cost per click or conversion for you. So consult an expert when the money spent on ads starts to feel real. There’s probably a lot of things you could do to do a better job and save money too!