Automation is one of the biggest strengths of having an online presence. Whether it’s increasing sales, finding new customers or educating your existing client base, make your website and online marketing do all the heavy lifting for you. In step 1, we created good website goals. Follow these steps to achieve the goals you have set.
Step 3: Determine your marketing strategy
You will achieve the best results in your goal by achieving it from multiple directions at once. Some strategies which could help include:
Getting the right text
Writing good copy is important for all websites. Even if you are not a writer by trade, you can add relevant information to your website including service area, what you do, quality of work, qualifications/awards, testimonials, and good calls to action like “email us for a free quote” or “phone us now”. Your You can do some of this work yourself in making sure the right text is in your website. I can help point you to some articles on writing good copy for websites. However, you could also invest some money in getting professional copywriting.
Getting the right people
This is a complicated field called “Search Engine Optimisation” and mainly comprises of two parts – targeting the correct information ‘on page’ (see above) and ‘off page’. Off page optimisation involves writing articles and blog posts which relate to your industry or service, and obtaining good links from related businesses or industry directories as an example. Get a qualified professional to do this for you. Get a referral from someone you trust, or contact some of their clients to get an unbiased view.
Hone your online offerings
Tailor your online offerings to ensure website visitors are helping to grow your business in the way YOU want it to. Analyse which products/services on your website:
- Get the most enquiries
- Have the most purchases
- Provide you the highest profit
- Are the most fun for you
- Fit your business growth plans
If you want to highlight a specific product range, emphasise it in your website! Don’t get much profit or enjoyment out of certain jobs? Remove all mention of them from your website. This makes sure your website is funnelling you the type of business you value the most. By updating your website offerings, you are allowing it to work hard so you can reap the highest rewards possible with the least amount of effort. Don’t limit this just to your website either, make sure you follow up in other mediums such as phonebook and newspaper advertising, trade show booths, brochures, project tender documents or business capability profiles.
Step 4: Followup and analysis
Give yourself a reasonable timeline to achieve these goals, e.g. within 12 months. Now divide that into 3 or 4 equal parts. This is the frequency you will be doing analysis of your growth. To measure how well your efforts are working, you need to be gathering statistics both online and offline.
One great way to do this is through a good online analytics program. Tools such as Google Analytics allow you to compare your website statistics to the same period last year, check how many people are viewing your website, how they have found you, which pages, times of day, or days of the week are most popular for your website. You can also set up conversion goals which will automatically track how many people have performed your desired action, e.g. submit an enquiry form, make a purchase, etc.
Search Engine Optimisation professionals will set up analytics tracking and goals for you, and will also provide you with written and/or verbal reports on a regular basis.
Don’t forget to use offline methods as well – ask all new enquiries where they found out about you. Check reports from your accounting software on product sales. Run customer satisfaction surveys. Make sure that you are saving statistics on all actions related to your goals.
Analysing your data will show you where you are achieving your goals, and where you need to make adjustments to your methods. You may find that you are getting lots of traffic from a keyword phrase, but that those visitors tend to lose interest in your website quickly. Change your strategies to emphasise the best performing methods, and scrap anything that isn’t working for you.
Conclusion
Now that you have perfected the strategy, you simply need to remember to reassess your goals and performance at regular intervals. If you are not an analytical person, delegate reporting and analysis responsibilities to your search engine optimisation provider, bookkeeper, or manager – someone who will enjoy the responsibility of creating reports to share with you.
Share your goals and successes with your entire team to keep everyone motivated, and celebrate together – your business is primed for growth!