If you have a website, you are ahead of the 64% of small businesses that still don’t have a website. And if your website is mobile responsive, even better. You’re now ahead of the 70% who still ignore Google’s directive for all sites to be mobile responsive.
Clearly, you are serious about growing your business. You recognize the opportunities available on the Internet and want to keep on pace with the competition.
However, putting up a mobile-responsive website is just the first step in maximizing the reach and scope of the Internet. 36% of 2 billion active websites amount to 720,000,000 websites which is still a prodigious number.
You should take the necessary steps to make sure your website is discovered by potential followers and customers. This means you should invest in developing and implementing digital marketing strategies for your website.
Why You Should Market And Promote Your Website
If you had a brick-and-mortar business, would you market it? Of course! That is how your business is found by potential customers. This is the same reason why you should market and promote your website: It represents your business on the Internet.
Marketing is not just advertising about your business. You are providing valuable information about your business and the products or services that it offers. A marketing campaign can have different objectives. However, the underlying goal is to make your business to stand head and shoulders above the competition.
Every day more than 4 billion people are surfing on the Internet. They are looking for information that answers their questions, meets their needs, and fulfills their curiosities.
Your website could be a valuable resource but it is just one out of thousands in your industry. Marketing can help your website be found by potential customers. More than that, a well-designed and conceptualized marketing campaign can help drive more followers to your website and increase your sales.
2 Reasons Why Small Businesses Do Not Invest In Marketing
Unfortunately, for many small businesses, marketing is just an after-thought. They do not allocate enough resources; if any at all, to support any kind of marketing program.
Here are 2 reasons why small businesses do not invest in marketing:
1. They Have Limited Understanding About Marketing
Many small business owners still have the opinion that you need a lot of money to run a successful marketing campaign. After all, marketing is more of an investment than an expense because you expect to get a return out of it. Thus, the higher the investment the higher the return.
However, if you have read our article, “How To Launch A $100 Digital Marketing Campaign”, you know it is possible to do marketing on a tight budget and still realize high returns.
For the most part, their ideas on marketing and its benefits are outdated. You will still come across people who think marketing and sales are one and the same thing.
2. They Had Previous Bad Experience
In our dealings with clients, we have come to realize that many small business owners have lost their confidence and belief in marketing because of a bad experience.
Some of our clients have dealt with spurious digital marketing agencies that over-promised and under-delivered. They shelled out a lot of money and had very little results to show for the investment.
This does not have to be the case. In our article, “How To Tell If You Are Getting Ripped Off By Your Digital Marketing Agency”, we shared valuable tips on how to avoid getting scammed.
The bottom-line is: Marketing is a key function in every type of business. If you want your business to prosper, it must be found. Marketing will increase your website’s visibility, enhance your online presence, and improve your rate of sales conversions.
7 Proven Ways To Market And Promote Your Website
Marketing your website is not as complicated – or expensive – as you may have first thought. Most of the tips we’ve listed here should be part of the web design process. If these suggestions were not incorporated into your website design, ask your web designer or digital marketer to include them right away.
1. Adapt Mobile-Responsive Design
We have discussed the importance of having a mobile responsive design in our articles, “Why Your Website Needs Responsive Design” and “12 Signs That Tell You It’s Time For A Website Redesign”.
We still believe the importance of having a mobile-responsive design is worth mentioning. As we disclosed in the introduction of this article, only 30% of website owners have adapted mobile-responsive design.
We are living in a mobile world. That is not a fad or a short-term trend. That is the current and future reality of life and commerce. Man will continue to look for innovations that will make mobile technology more efficient and effective.
Unless your website is mobile-responsive, it cannot be accessed by the mobile population. Viewing a website that is not mobile-responsive will not be a pleasant experience. No one wants to zoom in on a web page just to read its contents.
Statistically, your website will just be ignored. On top of that, Google will slap your website further down the search rankings.
If you want your website to be found – and who doesn’t – make sure it is mobile-responsive.
2. Increase Your Website Download Speed
Website speed is a major ranking factor in Google’s search algorithm. Put simply, a website that loads pretty fast – 3 seconds or less – contributes to a great User Experience. If your website is mobile-responsive, make sure it has fast download speed.
Here are a few statistics that should convince you of the importance of having a fast loading website:
- 40% of users will abandon the search if the website takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
- Every additional second delay past the expected 3-second loading time increases the customer dissatisfaction rate by 16%.
- 52% of Internet users say website speed is a crucial factor in establishing customer loyalty.
- 70% of Internet users will never go back to a website that offered poor user experience.
Getting your website’s speed to warp drive is an easy thing to do. If your current web designer is giving you the runaround, let us know. We can get this done for you in no time at all.
3. Consider PWA – Progressive Web Applications
Do you want to give your mobile-responsive website a big boost? Consider integrating it with PWA features.
PWA stands for Progressive Web Applications. Basically, having PWA features will make your website function like an app. What’s so good about this?
- The PWA can function off-line. If your user has no connection to the Internet, he/she can still access your website.
- With the PWA, your marketing programs can continue without interruption. You can still alert your followers of any sale, discounting plans, and other promos.
- Your follower’s smartphone will have the PWA icon on his/her interface for easier and faster access.
- From our experience, a PWA runs faster than an app.
If you want to learn more about the PWA and how it can help your website generate more sales for your business, we’ll give you a free 30-minute consultation. Just give us a call!
4. Integrate a Live Chat Feature
Live Chat is a wonderful way to make your business more accessible to your customers. This feature is particularly effective for e-commerce retailers. Customers will be able to relay issues and concerns with the products they bought from your website.
Look no further than the biggest e-commerce retailer in the world – Amazon. Billionaire owner and founder, Jeff Bezos, understands how important it is to keep your customers happy and more than satisfied with your service.
You can also use your Live Chat feature to promote your products and services. For example, if you own a landscaping business, a customer who wants to know the difference between Bermuda and Kentucky Bluegrass can talk to one of your chat agents.
If he/she is impressed with your chat agent, the customer may book you right away for a landscaping project!
5. Optimize Your Website
Optimizing your website means implementing processes, techniques, and strategies that will make it easier to get found on the Internet.
Here are a few examples of optimizing strategies:
- Run a site search to test for response accuracy. The purpose is to find out if the search engine is providing the best results for every query that is launched. If you are an e-commerce retailer, find out if your product descriptions are sufficient for potential consumers.
- Conduct A/B testing for the images used on your website. Again, this is particularly helpful for e-commerce retailers. Find out how potential customers will respond to images that will be posted on your site. If the survey yields unfavorable results, use the data to take better-performing images.
- Come up with good, accurate, and engaging page titles for your website. It should be enticing enough to encourage the site visitor to click on it. Think of your page title as an advertising copy.
- Meta descriptions are not dead! They may no longer be ranking factors, but a good meta description can entice an Internet user to visit your website. Remember, Google includes the meta description below your website link.
- Use appropriate headers. Google prefers content that is well-organized. A header functions to inform readers what the next section is all about. Make sure your header includes the main keyword and that it is an accurate description of the section’s content.
Speaking of content, consistently provide your readers with great content. This means content that is usable, relevant, informative, unique, and engaging.
Integrate the right keywords in your content. Keywords help the search bots track and index your content for search queries. Without keywords, your content will not be found.
6. Include Link Building Strategies
Link building is one the best strategies for expanding the scope and reach of your website. However, it is often abused by unscrupulous digital marketing practitioners.
They will link to websites that are not relevant to their business just to take advantage of the site’s audience base. For example, a health and fitness website that links to a website that sells cigarettes.
Done effectively, link building is excellent in creating awareness for your business, increasing your online visibility, and driving traffic to your website. Link building is hard work! You might have to contact the website owners to work out a link building arrangement.
7. Give Affiliate Marketing A Try
Affiliate marketers are essentially freelance or independent marketers who are willing to help you promote your business products and services. If an affiliate marketer’s efforts successfully result in a sale, you will have to pay him/her a commission.
In Affiliate Marketing, you let the independent marketer do the work for you. Most of them have their own websites or social media channels. No doubt, you have seen them on YouTube. They use the products and services of the client in their videos.
Affiliate Marketing is also a cost-effective way to market and promote your website. You only pay them whenever a sale is made.
Conclusion
Having a website for your business is definitely a step in the right direction. You now have an address where interested parties can learn more about your business and the products or services that you offer. However, it will not run on its own. You have to market and promote your website so that it can be found by potential customers.
It takes time and effort to market a website. But it needs to be done so that your website can produce results for your business. If you do not have the luxury of time, outsource the marketing of your website to us.
We have the experience of running digital marketing campaigns for our clients. We do the work for you so that you won’t have to! Did you like this article? We can create content such as this for your website.
If you are interested, let us talk about it! Consult with us for 30 minutes free of charge!
