In business, effective marketing can make the difference between success and failure. But without a clear strategy, online marketing can fast become a money pit.
In this article, we’ll look at how to do website marketing the smart way. We’ll focus on simple, actionable steps that can deliver a strong return on investment.
Let’s dive in…
Use Marketing to Improve Website Traffic
Before we reveal our top website marketing tips, it’s helpful to be crystal clear about your goals:
Website Traffic
Your number-one aim should be to improve website traffic. (i.e. to boost the number of visitors to your website.)
Quality Traffic
At the same time, you also need to focus on improving the quality of that traffic. This will ensure any extra visitors are likely to actually buy from you.
These two aims should guide every decision you make. Your website marketing efforts should be ambitious enough to reach a big audience. But they should also be carefully targeted. This way, you can avoid campaigns that improve website traffic without also improving sales.
Search Engine Marketing to Grow Your Site
Search engine marketing (SEM) is one of the most effective ways to attract more visitors to a website. It comes in two main varieties:
1. Organic SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
SEO involves presenting your content in a search-engine-friendly way. This makes it possible to get a higher position in the search results. Since this can lead to more clicks, it’s a great way to improve website traffic.
Using Keywords
For best results, you should optimise your content around keywords. You should also improve the structure and performance of your website itself.
Learn More: If you’re new to online marketing, terms like ‘SEO’ and ‘keywords’ can feel confusing. Our guide to how to start SEO covers the basics. We’ve also dug a little deeper in our guide to the benefits of SEO. Both articles include practical steps you can follow to boost your search rankings.
Paid Search Engine Marketing
SEO can take months to deliver meaningful results. That doesn’t mean you should neglect it. But it does mean you should use an alternative solution to ‘fill the gap’.
How PPC Works
Luckily, paid search engine marketing can improve website traffic from day one. PPC (Pay Per Click) ads are the most popular form of paid SEM. These appear at the top of the search results when a user enters specific keywords.
As the name suggests, you only pay for the ad if the searcher actually clicks on it. You can choose which keywords to target, and set a budget per click.
Learn More: The costs of PPC can quickly add up, so it’s important to understand the topic before you start. This beginner’s PPC guide from the experts at WordStream will help you get started.
The Best of Both Worlds
Many business owners use paid search ads to deliver extra traffic when they first launch their websites. This works well in the short term, but it comes with a catch. As soon as you stop paying for ads, your traffic dries up.
SEO usually takes a little longer to work. But once you have high-quality content in place, it can improve your website traffic for months (or even years) to come. Use both techniques side by side to deliver short- and long-term results – the best of both worlds!
Learn More: The digital marketing gurus at HubSpot have created a great guide to search engine marketing. As well as covering paid SEM techniques, it also explains how SEO fits into the jigsaw.
Social Media Marketing Strategy
When you first create a social media marketing strategy, you’ll need to identify which platforms your target customers use. Three of the most popular include:
Facebook is the largest social media platform, while Instagram is best for engaging a Millennial or Generation X audience. Twitter is ideal if you like to release regular updates on sales, events or product launches.
Organic Social Media Strategy vs Paid Ads
It’s free to set up accounts with the three platforms we’ve listed above. You can create a profile, publish content and engage with your followers. This will allow you to organically build engagement with your brand.
A more ambitious social media marketing strategy might include paid ads. You can run ads with each of the platforms listed above. As with PPC ads, social media advertising can deliver fast results. This can fill the gap while you build a following organically.
Linking Back to Your Website
When you use social media, it’s easy to fixate on stats like how many followers you have. But this shouldn’t distract from your number-one aim of improving website traffic. This is especially important if you sell products directly via an ecommerce website.
Adding a website link on your profile isn’t always enough. You should also aim to add links directly to posts and social media ads. Always remember that your social media presence should support your website – not distract from it. (We explored this topic in our recent article on websites vs social media.)
Learn More: This guide from the pros at Sprout Social explains how to build your social media marketing strategy.
Embrace Email Markerting for Your Website!
It’s surprising how many business owners forget about the power of email. Some feel that it’s ‘pushy’ or ‘intrusive’. Others are just distracted by more modern ways of reaching customers. Whatever the reasons, email marketing has become the Cinderella of the digital marketing world, neglected and unloved.
We’d like to change that, and encourage you to embrace email marketing for your website.
How to Build an Email Markerting List
It’s easy to avoid many of the problems with email marketing. You can start by focusing on people who actually want to read your emails. It might sound obvious, but many business owners still waste time and money spamming thousands of random prospects. Most will simply never become customers.
A carefully targeted email list can deliver a far better return on your efforts. One of the best ways to build an email list is to offer freebies for users who sign up via your website.
PDF guides are a common choice for these tempting giveaways. A great tactic is to create a blog that covers the basics of a topic. Once you’ve attracted readers to your site, you can present them with an email sign-up option. Those that join will receive a more detailed guide direct to their inbox.
Fill the Gap
It can take a while to build an email list. But that doesn’t mean you can’t embrace email marketing in the meantime. As with SEM and social media marketing, what’s needed is a short-term fix to fill the gap.
One way to do that is to pay for a solo ad. Solo ads allow you to ‘piggyback’ on someone else’s email list, reaching out to their contacts with a marketing message of your own.
Take care when buying a solo ad to ensure the list focuses on people likely to engage with your brand. Otherwise, you’ll stray into the murky world of spam – a big turn-off for would-be customers.
Learn More: Digital marketing supremo Neil Patel has published a great beginner’s guide to email marketing. We recommend you give it a read before launching your own campaigns.
Tip: If you’re going to invest in email marketing, then a professional business email address is a must-have. If you rely on a free webmail service, it could be time to upgrade. Why not explore our Email Hosting or GSuite Hosting plans?
Conclusion
In this guide, we’ve looked at how to do website marketing. By applying the tips we’ve shared, you can create a multi-layered digital marketing strategy. And, by focusing on your target customer base, you can tailor that strategy to your business’ unique needs.
If you want to take a deeper dive into the techniques we’ve shared here, then we recommend ahref’s guide on how to do website marketing. You might also like to explore the digital marketing category of our blog for more inspiration.
Good luck!
