So you’ve created the perfect website. It looks stunning, it’s mobile optimised and your products are beautifully beaming from the page. You may feel that you have accomplished your goal but any good marketer knows that the job has only just begun. It’s now that you need the world to notice you and the traffic to flow.
Before you jump into content plans, optimisation and CPA, take a moment and look at what you have. Looking at your current traffic sources will show where you’re already attracting an audience and where your efforts can be concentrated. Simply by looking at how and where your visitors are coming from – a direct URL search, a referral, or via a search engine could help you to improve page views, tailor the site and communicate more effectively, essentially put you on the right path with an online marketing plan.
Don’t forget to study how long are people spending on each page, and where are you losing them? Working well with your existing traffic is essential to adjust and edit your content for the most important outcome of any marketing tactic, conversion. Good data means knowing where further marketing investment or time is needed and where your efforts have paid off. Tracking your users means avoiding the guessing game and knowing what has the best effect on your prospects. Conversion rates include but aren’t limited to sales, don’t forget to look at positive engagement such as promotion redemption, reviews and feedback, social share, and newsletter subscriptions.
Analytics alone won’t make your business a success, however identifying and continually measuring your key metrics will enable you to attract relevant, quality traffic and boost marketing performance.
Bring quality visitors to you:
Some marketers spend hours “scratching their heads” when considering SEO but they often lose sight of the fundamentals of optimisation, building a search engine friendly website. When using the right web development platform this isn’t a task that is necessarily scientific or costly. Once the site is up, there are many SEO tools readily available that help marketers enhance website visibility. Using original images additionally helps to supercharge your website, but must be labelled with appropriate titles and descriptions so search engines can navigate the content. With 44% of online shoppers beginning with a search engine, there’s no doubt SEO is important but start with solid foundations.
Regularly update content:
Potential customers will keep coming back if they know your site is continually updated with quality content. Whether it is in the form of an ever-changing product inventory, blog posts, or social savvy Twitter posts, new content not only boosts your SEO efforts, it helps position your business as an industry leader, whilst social media updates will keep your broader audience informed and entertained. For 2016, embracing the social media influence of today can be an easy way to automatically update content. Adding an Instagram feed, for example, enables customers to easily share content. Visual content is more than 40 times more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content and with Instagram’s userbase now more than 400 million strong, utilising the platform’s vast social reach is an effective way to engage your visitors while promoting your business. If Instagram isn’t your cup of tea, there’s always Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and more! Including relevant images alongside content gets 94% more views than content without, so always remember to add quality images to any website content shared on social platforms.
Build personal credibility:
Three out of four marketers globally, prioritise an inbound approach to marketing(HubSpot, State on Inbound 2015 Report). In the digital age, voicing your opinion or expertise online is the easiest way to reach a large audience. Getting involved in your wider network, through the relevant online communities, will help boost your reputation and yield traffic. Invest in a genuine conversation and you’ll have greater digital influence. Tips, guides, news and opinion pieces will help develop your credibility as a market leader. Another way to be heard above the noise is to collaborate with other top people in your industry. Offering to write guest blog posts or features for relevant, successful sites is a great way to lure in new prospects. Guest posts also help to build positive relationships with other relevant market leaders, which can never be a bad thing!
Reward loyalty:
With the cost of getting a new customer seven times more expensive than retaining an existing one, never forget to continue to keep in touch with customers via tailored and personalised communications. Personalisation begins from analysing users’ data and buying preferences in order to send hyper-relevant email marketing. 2016 will be a year of data-driven personalisation, with consumers no longer interested in reading generic emails that aren’t tailored to their preferences. Targeting each block of customers via their preferred method, taking into account information such as previous purchases, browsing history, age, gender, and more will make a huge difference in encouraging repeat purchase.
It is important to tailor different messaging to repeat and first-time, or one-time, buyers. Keeping your messaging specific to the audience helps build strong relationships and rewarding returning customers is a great way to shift to customer-centric communications. With customer experience set to overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator by 2020, it is vital to value and empower your customers from the moment their customer journey starts to the ongoing relationship.
As marketers we may often be blinded by new tools, techniques, audiences and opportunities online but we should never forget that some of the best marketing begins well and truly at home.
