Your Website is Your Marketing Foundation
In order to transact business on the internet, in order for your business to grow, in order for your marketing to be successful, you have to remember one key concept: your website is your marketing foundation. The rest of your marketing plan builds on that base.
A well-built website is like a silent salesman. It’s always open for business. It’s full of information about your products and services. It’s easy to navigate, literally closing deals for you while you sleep (or eat or live your life). Only if the site is built well, that is. Just like a house that will fall down in storms if it’s not built strong enough, so your website will fail to bring you the sales you want if it has not been designed and developed correctly.
Engage, delight, and build relationships
All of the marketing that you do should be designed to engage, delight, and build relationships with clients and prospects in a way that leads them to your website. That’s where you are going to invite them into a business relationship with you to buy your products and services.
Just like you wouldn’t want to go into a “shady” store, would you want your clients to have to use an old or poorly-designed website that doesn’t reflect the high quality of the work you do? Of course not! You want a site that looks great to your clients and prospects. And you want your site to always operate correctly according to ever-changing Google algorithms – or it won’t come up in searches.
Functionality
Donald Miller of Story Brand is an expert you should get to know. He offers excellent training on everything you ever wanted to know about business. Plus, if you really want to know how to set up your website home page to inform and engage your prospects and clients, sign up for one of his great webinars. Don explains what your site needs to do. He reviews several sites each time so you can learn from other website reviews. Maybe he’ll even pick yours to review!
Websites have lots of different parts. Some are more essential than others. The “look” matters, but the functionality is even more important. Here are just a few tips. Your site should offer a lead generator. That’s a download of value that you’ll make available to anyone who “opts-in” to your email newsletter. (More on lead generators in a future blog post.)
You can use forms to sort requests for information. To automate some tasks, you can integrate a variety of other apps like Mailchimp for your newsletter opt-in or Book Like a Boss for setting appointments.
And once your site is built, you aren’t finished. In fact, you’ll never be finished. High-performing websites are continuously updated. New blog posts. New back-end work to keep up with changes on the internet. New products. New images. (Ready to call for help yet??)
So….
Do what you do best and delegate the rest
This is one of my favorite business mantras (I mean, we can’t do it all – trust me – I’ve tried!). It applies particularly well to websites. Since your site is such a key component of your marketing, trying to do it yourself (if you don’t have the skillset) isn’t the best plan. And asking a friend who “does” websites to put one up for you can end up frustrating and cost you more than just arranging for a professional to do it for you. Many (like us) offer payment plans to help offset the cost. (It’s not cheap – I get it). There’s a big payoff for your investment in a web dev guy when your new site brings in the sales you want.
Instead of you spending hours learning how to master WordPress, wouldn’t you rather get busy bringing in more sales or clients so you can afford pay someone to do it right the first time? I never guessed in a million years that I’d end up knowing how to put up a website. (OK, actually, I don’t – I delegate that to my wonderful technical hubby and biz partner!) Learning how incredibly detailed it is to design and develop a website… and how many blessed hours it takes to get it right, good heavens! I’m more than happy to delegate that job to someone else! I’d much rather hang out with you and teach you about marketing.
Speaking of marketing, this is the first of weekly blog posts to do exactly that…
I have a big hairy audacious goal this year: I’m going to blog once a week and follow that with an email newsletter, Facebook post, Instagram post, LinkedIn article, Facebook Live, and maybe even a Pin on Pinterest! (Told you it was a BAHG!)
If you want to learn more about marketing, meet some cool experts in various fields, and hang out with me, I’d love for you to sign up for my newsletter. Email me HERE with your name and email address. I’ll add you to my list. The newsletters will lead you back here to read my longer blog posts (I’m keeping the newsletters short).