When people want to know more about your company they “google it”. They will not sit in front of their TV’s and wait for your add to come up. If someone searches for you your website should be what comes up in the search results. Google “search engine optimization” and you will find countless articles going into the technical details of how to optimize your site for search engines. I am going to explain the basics of how to share your message and content from your website. This is by no means an all encompassing encyclopedia, but rather a quick “Get up and go” article.
Your website is your number one way to find out more about your business and what you have to offer. If your website does not contain that information you are wasting valuable real estate.
In today’s connected world your website should form an integral part of marketing strategy. In fact, I believe that your website should be the central hub of your marketing platform. When your television, radio or print add is no longer running in traditional media your website is still there. This means that you can make your traditional media campaigns last much longer using your website.
Traditional marketing (print, television and radio) campaigns are notoriously expensive. Here are some quick tips to make your marketing efforts outlast your campaigns.
Place marketing content on your website
You’ve paid for it. You own it. So why not display it on your own platform? News feeds or blogs work brilliantly to showcase your multimedia content. Add your video’s, newspaper ads, radio interviews, etc. to your news feed. This helps grow your content base. Search engines love content and the more you provide the more they will like you.
When you use your images and video’s, it is important to use text as well. This can be done in paragraph form as well as adding tags to your posts/articles. Remember search engines (currently) only index text, so use descriptive keywords that make sense in the context of the post.
Share your content to social media
When it comes to social media – content is KING. The power of social media lies in the shear number of people at your digital fingertips.
The first type of social media marketing is getting people to share your content. People share things for a few reasons and you should decide on a strategy according to these reasons.
People share something:-
- They like
- Find valuable or interesting
- Find funny
- They want to be associated with
If you cannot tick one or more of these boxes, social media will not work for you.
The way you share is also important. This article’s focus is on driving people to your website, so it’s important to share the url to social media and not copy your information to Facebook, Twitter, etc. Doing so is not wrong, but will not get people to your website. This means that if someone sees your post or content on Facebook and they click on it, it should take them to your website.
The second type of social media marketing is getting people to advocate on your behalf. This is pure word of mouth advertising. Make it easy for people to recommend you by having a social media presence. Collect reviews and encourage current customers to recommend you.
Leverage the big platforms
If you have good video’s, put them on YouTube. If you have good images, post them to Instagram. These platforms host your content for free in order to attract visitors to their platform (which they use as a marketing platform). In essence you are using their game in your favor. Make no mistake. You will be helping them, but in doing so you are also helping yourself. If your video is popular on YouTube it will drive traffic to YouTube and get your name out there.
When you use a platform like YouTube, embed that content onto your own site as well. You can use it in your news feed or on your website itself.
Advertise your website on everything
Add your website address or name to all images, videos and articles. When someone sees something they like chances are they will want more. It is important to make it easy for people to find it and the easiest way is give them the website address.
Generate leads
OK, so you’ve got hundreds or thousands of people visiting your site. Now what?
If someone visits your site they are already interested in what you do or sell. Make it easy for them to contact you and try and get their information. Have a decent contact page with all your contact details, a form your potential customer can fill in, an option to subscribe to newsletters or marketing and a map if you are a brick and mortar establishment.
Having people give you their contact details is the first prize. Now you can contact them and as long as your product or service is valuable you have an excellent chance of converting that into a sale.
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