Whether you are a teacher, own a food catering, or run another type of small business, a well-designed new website can be essential for growing your business! A growing number of people want to have a personal online presence, which makes sense. You don’t need to rely solely on an Instagram profile, a LinkedIn page, or a Youtube account… platforms you can not fully control.
By its very nature, a website offers a convenient and quick way of sharing information between consumers and businesses. You can also use your website to sell your products or services directly to consumers, potentially eliminating the obligation to operate “brick-and-mortar” stores that typically have high expenses.
For your website to be attractive and maintain its audience, you must take certain steps. For example, determine what your target audience wants and needs from your website and provide them with an easy way to accomplish their goals.
Or create an easy-to-use navigation system that enables users to get to the pages they are looking for in no time. Of course, you should register with Google Search Console once you launch your website to inform Google that the site page is live for search, aka web crawling. And that’s just the beginning of your journey toward establishing a credible and profitable online presence.
The Mobile Web Life
You've created your first website! Congratulations, pat yourself on the back; you deserve it!
Now it’s time for you to tell people about your small business clearly and concisely to avoid any confusion about your company's website. And you don’t want that to be any different for mobile visitors, as statistics show that 4.32 billion mobile internet users worldwide were active in 2021.
This indicates that more than 90% of all internet users browse the online world through their smartphones. So it’s safe to say that you’ll lose a great deal of traffic and lower your search engine ranking if your mobile visitors don't have a satisfying web experience on your site.
“Create a new mobile-responsive website built from the very beginning. This is because a responsive website displays the same content and details no matter what device and screen it is displayed on. A responsive website adjusts sizing and spacing to the exact device it’s shown on, and automatically optimizes its design as needed. It is like getting custom tailor made clothing from a designer versus grabbing whatever is on the sale rack.”
Social Media Integrations
Social media profiles are also common on websites (for instance, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), so you can interact with your visitors and even potential clients beyond your website.
You should integrate your new mobile responsive website and social media smoothly. This will promote your brand while driving more traffic to your social media pages. This strategy is especially useful for those in the visual arts, like graphic designers, photographers, videographers, digital artists, and fashion designers.
Take a look at those social media buttons you see on blogs and websites. It makes it possible to share a piece of content directly from the webpage quickly. This is a great example of integrating social media into the web experience process.
“Create embedded content mirrors of your social media posts to some pages on your website. Instead of just asking web visitors to simply click and follow you, give them some recent posts to view. That way they can see the content before they opt in or out. Website building platform Squarespace offers this simply for Instagram, Twitter and connecting Youtube links into your page content, simply. ”
Lead Generation Strategies
The lead generation process is the most important objective for six out of ten marketers. Your business will grow if you are able to attract new quality leads that will ultimately become paying engaged customers.
Developing lead generation strategies, however, can be more complex than they appear to be, as anyone who has tried creating them knows. Today, lead generation strategies need to be customer-centric, to the point where relevance can distinguish your business from your competitors.
It is important that you customize your message to the brand, industry, product or service, and target market. The best way to generate leads is to avoid self-congratulatory remarks and try generating leads in the following innovative ways.
“Think outside the traditional box when it comes to a blended approach of lead-gen strategies. Remember in-person and live events are often some of the best methods to gain new leads for your business.”
Create Lead Magnet Assets
Creating lead magnets, attraction assets to your company, is now a large part of the second phase of the inbound marketing process. It takes place once you have attracted visitors and are prepared to convert them from prospect sales leads for the sales department to convert.
Your lead magnets should provide the reader with an incentive to receive emails and content from your business. Moreover, they shouldn’t be pushy or come off as ‘too salesy’ for your audience. They should also follow through with the promises you made when asking for the person's email address. Essentially they are trading you their information (name, email, phone) for a value added magnet. Here is a PDF download example from one of our partners at Zen Hustlers.
Make sure you don't deliver too much, just enough for your prospects to know you’re an expert and can take them the rest of the way.
“Popular types of lead magnets are: PDFs, Powerpoint presentations, video series, audio files and be sure to add value with exclusivity on each and every magnet you share.”
Blogging + Vlogging Strategy for Traffic
You'll need to improve your website's SEO further in order to attract as many customers as possible. The process is not very difficult, but it requires some time (months now weeks) and consistent effort over time to rank.
SEO (search engine optimization) is a set of techniques you implement on your website so that search engines index and rank it properly and then allow users to find it. The moment your website is “crawled” by search engines, you are competing against other similar websites. The more optimized your website layout and content are, the higher it will rank in search engine results.The intention of search to provide the seeker with the best, reputable and longest standing results on the web.
Blogging and Vlogging are a new key strategies in the media work online, here is one example.
Blogs are simple option for those who like to express their thoughts regularly as writings. The purpose of them is to offer visitors a reason to come back to your website and to encourage them to leave comments for more engagement. You are experiencing the power of this strategy right here in this post in our blogs for Check Your Assets as media marketing insights by Brick House Media Co.
The word count and the quality of your content are equally important to search engines, which is why you need to post quality content on your website, as well as, on external sites linked to yours called backlinks. Remember that using innovative content formats like videos (above) and podcasts boosts your ranking and increases audience engagement. These are the strategies of online media marketing leaders.
“There are essentially two audiences to satisfy online; search and humans. Search wants to see targeted written text words as a blog post. Humans want to view media, watch videos and also read text on blog posts. So do your best to satisfy them both online when you post content. ”
Email List Gold
You’ve now built your online home base and are ready to provide your audience with what they need. The website has valuable blogs, engaging content, new videos, a lead generation strategy in place with smart lead magnets. The best way for people to receive these updates is email, a direct one to one with your fans, followers, customers and prospects.
Having obtained your leads' email addresses, it's now time to follow up and keep your brand top-of-mind. Don’t forget those lead magnets can often be one of the fastest ways to expand your email list effectively.
Did you know that numerous studies have found that email outperforms all other online marketing channels ROI-wise. Email is still one of the most effective online marketing techniques across all market segments, every time.
By using email marketing, you can nurture prospects as potential customers, to convert them into long-term customers, and stay in touch with them. Your email list will be especially useful for e-commerce sites, startups, and web content providers.
“Add video content into your emails and even the word video into your subject lines can increase email open rates. Think of your emails less like a format and more like stories… tease your subscribers with more coming in the following emails. This helps open rates and conversions.”
Build a Strategic Approach
to Break on Through
A businesses and brand’s growth online is a continual process, and a skillfully designed website is only one step toward your goals. A website will need regular tweaking and adjustments for optimum performance, and content based blog/vlog posts need to be updated to ensure they are relevant to your audience.
It’s not an easy feat to keep a webpage thriving and profitable in the long run, but it’s definitely worth the amount of time, effort, and research brands put into it. In fact, it must now be quite obvious that it’s only through careful strategic thinking that your online presence can grow and your business can succeed.
Today's motivated and creative experts and professionals need to establish themselves as niche industry thought leaders. Ones who can aspire to move beyond their own expertise and become leaders to their targeted niche audiences. To further support you we have created a bold online course to support your evolution.
Break On Through is a 6-week online video course for thought leadership aimed at equipping participants with growth strategies, from innovative content creation to new syndication processes. This course promotes goal-driven leadership, and has supported emerging leaders since BH Media Co began in 2013 by helping clients step-up and effectively manage their online presence. Learn from not just one, but five experts about how to develop a personal or business brand. The goals are to be viewed, respected and sought after as a thought leader via media, strategy and more!
At Brick House Media, we solidly support experts transforming into leaders. Make sure you check our online courses and contact our professionals should you have any questions about our thought leadership development services.
Our one goal is to not only see you and your company grow but for you to be featured in the spotlight as an emerging thought leader. Onwards we go…
“Want to go fast, go alone… Want to go far, go together!”
