As a small business owner, you know the importance of digital marketing for small business websites. So you have a site and it’s bringing in a reasonable number of customers. But as Barry Manilow used to sing, are you “doing okay but not very well”? Maybe it’s time to rethink and update your marketing strategies.
With over one in four Americans making at least one online purchase a week, 70% of Facebook users interacting with Facebook daily, and the average Smartphone user picking up his or her phone about 1,500 times a week, is your website engaging with your customers in the most effective ways?
Website Necessities
Your small business website is your window to the world and you need to think of and treat it that way. Digital marketing covers a lot of territory including website design, social media, online and email advertising, and search engine optimization (SEO).
Today’s site not only must look good, but also must be optimized for mobile devices. It has to be easy to navigate and visitors must be able to click on your email address or phone number to contact you without having to zoom in or, worse yet, write down your information. Responsive web design (RWD) takes a reverse engineering approach, designing backwards from the smallest device to the largest to ensure that your site scales to each and every one for optimal display.
You may need to restrategize your inbound marketing so that your site has an external-facing focus rather than an internal-facing one. In other words, your company needs to be actively engaged with social media and your site needs to have fresh, original content like blog articles, videos, downloadable podcasts and/or ebooks, and the opportunity for site visitors to attend webinars, subscribe to your email newsletter, and receive your promotional emails on specials, featured products, holiday sales, free shipping promotions, etc.
Another website strategy is revamping your site’s landing pages, those pages where visitors decide whether or not to convert from casual visitors to leads and prospects. Research has shown that a well-done landing page can have a conversion rate of 10 percent or higher. You need to analyze each of your landing pages and determine their respective conversion rates. If they’re less than you’d like, your next step is determining why. Maybe a page is too long; maybe its copy, call to action, and/or form fields need to be updated; maybe its button(s) need to be larger, different colors, or placed somewhere else on the page.
Still another effective website strategy is retargeting your ads to stay in front of prospects. Since only about 2 percent of online shoppers buy on their first visit to a site, retargeting your ads lets you track your potential customers and show them your ads while they’re visiting other sites.
If these and other marketing strategies seem too complicated or time-consuming, consider hiring a small business websites company that specializes in marketing and getting your site placed with all search engines and social media outlets.
Rich Answers
Google searchers are getting “lazy.” They’re not searching for information anymore; they want Google to answer their specific question(s). Consequently, Google has changed its search algorithms and now provides Rich Answers.
Rich Answers are how Google gives their search customers what they want. The Direct Answer Box a/k/a Featured Snippet Box appears at the top of Google’s search engine results page (SERP) and gives the searcher the best answer to his or her question, complete with a link to the site from which the answer came.
And how does Google decide which answer is best? By searching through the content of millions of websites to determine which one it thinks provides exactly what the searcher is looking for. Is that site yours?
Don’t be satisfied with “doing okay but not very well.” Remember, your small business website is your biggest marketing tool. Use it wisely.
