“I don’t believe in websites…”
“…because I paid for a website and it didn’t bring me any new customers.”
This was a response I received from a business owner who contacted me to help him with his marketing.
You may be able to relate to this business owner’s response because you’ve tried marketing your website or online marketing but received disappointing results.
It’s not that website marketing doesn’t work; I’ve found that most businesses don’t understand what is the best online marketing strategy for their business.
The same business owner who didn’t believe in websites, saw my online ad on a website, landed on my website, read how I could help him and filled out the contact form on my website.
Get the point?
Your website can work very well in acquiring new leads and customers for your business.
In this article, I’ll show you the process we use for website marketing and the results we’ve generated for our clients.
Your website is not enough
Launching a new, fancy-looking website won’t generate new leads and sales if you don’t have the right type of website traffic visiting your website.
Think of your website as an online office or storefront for your business. Your ideal audience will not know you exist unless you are marketing your website and leading your prospects to your business.
Your website can help convince your visitors why you’re the best choice to help solve their problem but first, you need to get them to your website.
There are a few common website marketing strategies and channels that you may have heard of before:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Google Adwords / Paid Advertising / Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
- Social Media Marketing
Let’s discuss each website marketing strategy and how to increase leads, sales and acquire new customers.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
There’s a reason why companies are constantly contacting you about SEO. That’s because, when done properly, SEO yields one of the highest ROIs in marketing.
With SEO, your potential customers already know that they have a problem and require a solution.
You don’t need to pull them in and convince them why they need your product or service. They’re already at that point. What you need to do is to show them why they should buy from you.
So how do you do that?
Simply having a website isn’t enough. You need a website that stands out to consumers and clearly demonstrates how your company will provide them with the best solution to their problem.
You need a website that’s full of carefully crafted content that speaks directly to your target audience and is presented it in a way that’s easy-to-read for both consumers and search engine robots.
By having a website that is full of informative content, is properly structured and has a great reputation around the web, Google will reward your site in the way of rankings.
But ranking anywhere on Google isn’t enough.
Did you know that 75% of consumers never scroll past the first page of search results?
That means that if you’re not ranking on the first page of Google, then your competitors are – and they’re taking all of your potential sales too.
Considering most consumers make their purchasing decisions online today, you can’t afford not to be on the first page of relevant search results.
You need a reputable SEO agency to help you achieve those rankings and, more importantly, structure your website so that all of those new website visitors convert into customers.
Look for SEO agencies that have a proven track record for success in your industry, demonstrate a thorough understanding of your business goals and target customers, and offer a clear vision of how to convert your website visitors into sales.
Paid Advertising / Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
Google AdWords
The most common form of pay-per-click advertising is on search engines, like Google. It’s a quick way of showing at the top of the search results pages for keywords that your target audience is searching for.
For most searches, these ads take up the first 4 positions on the page.
I’ve heard mixed reactions from business owners whether they believe if their ideal customers are clicking on these ads.
The truth is… people use Google differently. Some will click on ads and others will scroll further down the page and click on an organic listing.
Google AdWords gives a business a flexible way of marketing their website and business.
- You can easily target specific areas, zip codes or a radius where you would like to market your business
- You can easily start and stop the campaign at any time
- Google gives you a wealth of knowledge and data on what is working to generate leads and sales
- You can easily show for hundreds or even thousands of keywords faster and more predictably than with SEO
From hundreds of Google AdWords campaigns I’ve reviewed and managed, I’ve found a few common mistakes amongst them all.
- Not tracking conversions
You would think this would be a no-brainer… but unfortunately its not. I’ve reviewed many campaigns that weren’t tracking phone calls, website contact form submissions, sales or other important goals.
How are you supposed to know the ROI of a campaign if you’re not tracking what’s most important… new customers!!
Not only do you need to know this information, but Google does as well.
By having conversion tracking setup, it allows Google to optimize and focus your campaign on the elements that contribute to more conversions (leads and sales).
- The ad campaign is setup incorrectly
Google has made a valiant effort in simplifying the process of setting up an AdWords campaign. Unfortunately, the system is still complicated and you can very easily create a campaign that will drain your marketing budget with no sales to show for it.
Many self-managed campaigns don’t have the restrictions in place to limit Google from showing your ads for keyword phrases that are unrelated to your products or services.
Here is an example:
Let’s say you sell hats online and enter the word “hats” as a broad matched keyword into your campaign. You are telling Google to show your ads to anyone who searches for keywords somewhat related to “hats”.
This could be searches for “caps”, “hat reviews”, “hat repairs” and other similar words. Those keyword searches are likely not what you’re looking to show for. Can you see how you can quickly waste money on a campaign that isn’t setup correctly?
Google Adwords can be very effective in acquiring leads and sales quickly and efficiently. I recommend for small business owners to hire a website marketing company with a proven success record, to manage and optimize their Google Adwords campaigns.
View the results we’ve achieved for our clients using paid advertising
Display Marketing and Retargeting
There are a lot of options when it comes to display advertising, but I’ll focus on Google’s Display network, seeing that is the most popular.
Display ads allow your business to show on websites within Google’s approved-site network. You can show image-based advertisements on related sites by topic, keyword context or even website behavior.
Display advertising can be a great way to market your website and drive traffic to your pages. You can select demographics, interests and web behaviors that apply to your ideal customers within Google’s system, and run your ads to the most relevant audience that meets your selected criteria.
Ad retargeting allows you to display ads to website visitors after leaving your website. Ad retargeting can be used to stay in front of prospective customers and lead them down the next step in your sales funnel.
Although display marketing can be effective, I recommend most small businesses to start with a search engine advertising campaign using Google AdWords.
With search engine marketing, you are advertising to users who are actively looking for a solution. Typically these users are looking to make a purchase or decision soon. Quick sales will help you to recoup your advertising costs more quickly.
Social Media Marketing
Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and LinkedIn are just a few different social networks that you can use to drive traffic and market your website.
But with over 2 billion active users, Facebook is undoubtedly the leader of social media networks.
Unfortunately, most businesses utilize Facebook incorrectly when it comes to website marketing.
Posting status updates, images, and wishing your followers happy holidays is not an effective way to generate new leads and sales.
If you want new customers, then you MUST use Facebook ads.
Over the last few years, Facebook has gradually decreased the reach of organic posts from business pages to their followers, to practically zero
What that means is that your Facebook business page is practically useless, unless you are buying ads on Facebook to reach your target audience.
There are several factors that make up a profitable Facebook campaign, but here are 2 vital pillars that greatly affect the success of a Facebook website marketing campaign:
1. Know your ideal customer’s pain points, struggles and desired solution. Then show them that you and your product or service can take them from their pain to their dream solution.
Your messaging is extremely important in the ads you run on Facebook. Remember there are a lot of distractions on Facebook, so your ad needs to quickly resonate with your audience.
2. Knowing exactly who your ideal customers are and sharing that information with Facebook. So in other words, Facebook gives marketers and small businesses an almost endless amount of targeting options.
We can tell Facebook to advertise our business to people in certain areas, by demographics, interests, buying behavior, online usage and MUCH more. But if you don’t know exactly who your ideal customers are, then all of this extremely useful technology is useless to you.
Ok… Now Back To Your Website
Your website is home base. It is where you are sending all your traffic from ads, SEO and social media to, in order to hopefully convert into a lead or sale.
There are several theories, thoughts and ideas on what should be included in a website to help convert visitors into leads or sales.
From my experience, I’ve learned to always “sell the way your customers like to buy”. Your customers may like to watch video… or read long sales letters… or maybe they need to speak to someone before they buy.
Every industry and business will be different. You have to KNOW your customers and what they want.
Here are a few elements that you should include in your website, regardless of your industry or business:
Structure each page on your website for 2 types of people
There will be two types of people who visit your website.
1. The first type of person will only want the essentials. They will barely scroll down your web page, visit 1-2 pages, skim your content and then make a decision based on their confidence on whether you can help them or not.
These types of website visitors know what they want and are looking to make a quick decision.
For this type of website visitor, you want to make sure you include bullet points and headlines towards the top of each page, which clearly communicate how you can solve their problem.
Your call-to-action or the next step you want this visitor to take should also be clear. That could be to add a product to their shopping cart, fill out your website’s contact form or to call your business.
2. The second type of person needs details. They will scroll to the bottom of each page, view several pages within your website and actually read the content.
They want to read testimonials, certifications, awards and other elements that make them feel like they have enough information to make a good decision.
Guarantees, an explanation of what to expect when working with your company, staff profiles, company history and other “feel-good” elements are important to integrate into your website.
Believe it or not, we’ve found that branding is becoming less important in regards to acquiring new leads and sales…
There are many businesses and even website marketing companies that emphasize branding. From logos to fancy-looking websites, we’ve that in some situations it can negatively impact the results of a marketing campaign.
Consumers don’t care much about how “good” your company looks. Consumers want to know, what’s in it for them. How can you benefit them? How can you best solve their problem?
At the end of the day, customers don’t care much about you, its ALL about them.
Website Marketing Client Success Stories
Woodfield Landscaping
- Using Google AdWords, we generated 658 leads within 8 months (February – September 2017)
- The average cost per lead was $35.05
- The client’s average revenue per project is $40,000+
TLC HVAC Services
- We helped them generate 88 additional leads per month
- Reduced their cost per lead by $305.73
- Converted 440% more of their website visitors into leads for their business
Brody Brothers Pest Control
- We were able to increase their leads by 1,084% within 1 year using search engine optimization
- Because of their growth, they have been able to hire additional staff and move into a larger office space
Are You Ready To Start Acquiring New Customers From Your Website Marketing Campaign?
Let’s setup a time to discuss your business, needs and how we can help you increase sales.