It begins with someone at home doing a search for a local business. Or it begins with someone who’s already familiar with your business yet wants to learn more. It could begin with someone who finds your site after reading a friend’s rave on Facebook. It might begin with someone coming across your site after searching for a particular related topic.
Whatever the circumstances, when it comes to learning more about a business or organization, your website is what people will turn to. Think of your site as the culmination of all your marketing efforts: it should embody your brand and convey everything you want the user to know about your company. It’s where they’ll expect to find information about what you do and who you are. How you present your information and the branding style of your web design and graphics will all play a part in whether the user will be motivated to become a customer.
When it comes to a website’s marketing potential, an effective site should be informative as well as interesting. Anticipating what users want to learn or know from your site will give you a good idea of what to include. Here are five tips for making your site a powerful marketing tool:
- Great Design:
- Calls to Action:
- Social Media Connections:
- Search Engine Optimization:
- Strong Content:
When users access your site, they’ll want to find what they’re looking for quickly and react positively to how the information is presented. The look, feel and accessibility of a website will play a big part in establishing an engaging connection with people. Anything that looks amateurish or that doesn’t convey professionalism will make the user hesitant about doing business with your establishment. If someone simply wants to find your hours of operation or get a phone number, she shouldn’t have to hunt through page after page to find what she needs.
Once a potential consumer arrives at your site, the end result will ideally be a sale, a download or a request for more information. In other words, you want the user to make some sort of purchase or commitment. That’s the action you want the user to take, and a “call to action” is the means for the customer to do so. Everything should be arranged in a clear, uncluttered way, without anything important being obstructed or hidden. Users who are interested in buying a product or signing up for a newsletter shouldn’t need to look far to find the necessary button they’ll need to click.
Exposure is one of the fundamentals of marketing and getting the word out about your site and your business in general is a crucial step. Social media is an effective means for doing so and outfitting each page of your site with social share buttons will allow customers to share links and attract more traffic to your site.
When someone searches for your business, you want your site to appear at the top of the search results, not buried so deeply they won’t bother to locate it. Using search optimization is a marketing strategy that provides major benefits if done correctly. This depends on utilizing keywords within your content that users will likely search for. Making sure your site can easily be detected by one of the major search engines will guarantee that you’ll be easily found by the curious seeker.
Your design may look excellent, and your search engine optimization may allow a constant flow of traffic, but if the information you provide isn’t compelling, doesn’t answer questions or prompt sales, then all the marketing expertise in the world won’t do any good. The content on your site has to be well written and informative, as well as engaging to the user.
Your online presence isn’t just a central part of your marketing campaign. It will be a major factor in the success of your business. Making sure it’s appealing to both customers and search engines will raise your profile in your field and increase your profitability. Online marketing offers some great opportunities along with a variety of challenges, but with some creativity and ingenuity, your business can make its site the nerve center for its marketing efforts and add to your organization’s success.
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