Creating a great website is not enough to get customers. You need to market your website so that people will know about what you're offering and come visit your website. You need web traffic, so that visitors come to your website.

 

Easy ways to start marketing your website

• Social media - A high percentage of your potential customers will be using social media on a regular basis. Use that opportunity to create a presence for your business on the most popular platforms and direct your followers to your website. Some of the most commonly used platforms for small businesses are Twitter, Facebook and Instagram
• Email marketing - Although there has been some negative publicity over the years due to the mass-spamming, email marketing is still a highly successful method of marketing. In fact, it still holds the title for achieving the highest return on investment compared to other inbound marketing methods. To get started, you need to create a mailing list and give people a good reason to opt in, such a giveaway
• Search engine optimisation (SEO) - SEO is a good way to market your website, by getting it high on search engine results pages. Ways to conduct SEO include: create content based on keyword research, use relevant keywords throughout the text naturally, use images and videos (with keywords in their titles), link to relevant websites and including proper text formatting (including H1 and other title tags)
• Pay per click (PPC) - PPC Advertising uses internet advertising such as Google AdWords to position your ads near the top of the search results for your chosen terms. The amount you pay Google is based on the number of times people click your ads and how popular the ‘bid’ is for that specific keyword. You can cap your budget, so that your bill does not get too expensive if more people click on your ad than you expected
• Website content - Make sure the pages which new visitors are likely to interact with, such as the home page, about page and other landing pages) are up to date and focused on getting them to take a specific action. You want copy to be catchy, clear, informative and personable. It should clearly communicate your business value
• Public relations (PR) - The more PR you do, the more word will spread about your business. Press releases are a great way to market your business every time you have an announcement about a promotion, new product, new service. Although press releases can be expensive, they are a great way to be picked up by industry bloggers and increase your SEO backlink profile
• Online reputation management - If you have a lot of happy customers online, they’re likely to advance your business with recommendations and positive comments. To maximize this effect, be visible in the places your target customers are likely to be or leave reviews for you. Not only this, but if you come across some negative reviews you can seize the opportunity to address the issue professionally in a public forum
• Video marketing - Video is an important marketing method at the moment and YouTube is the largest video hosting service in the world. Video has been shown to increase user engagement and visitor conversion. While some videos do go viral – they don’t have to in order to be effective. Also contrary to popular perception, they don’t need to cost a fortune to produce
• Paid ads - Most social media outlets, including Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In, also offer the opportunity to implement paid ads to make your content visible to a wider audience. These ads operate in a similar way to Google’s Adwords, in that they are effectively a PPC campaign. Remember to keep these ads audience-specific and targeted for a better conversion rate
• Offline marketing - You also need to reach your offline audience. Do this by updating your business cards, branded collateral and even your vehicle signage to include your website’s URL. By referring offline marketing and collateral to your website, you’ll be able to boost your traffic and re-engage your existing customers

 

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