That whole “if you build it, they will come” pitch might work for baseball in the cornfields of Iowa, but in the online marketing field, you have to be savvier than that to bring more of a crowd to your website. Getting noticed takes multiple strategies that kick out your brand to the masses and draw them into your site. If your hit numbers have plateaued, it’s time to shake up your marketing strategy and possibly your website’s design, as well.
Your brand is how people associate you with your business and vice versa. One of the simplest ways to drive more traffic to your website is to be sure your brand is stamped on every piece of communication (digital and print) you put out there. Your URL is a must on your business card and letterhead. Faxes are still relevant today so always be sure to include your URL on there as well as on your emails, as it should be a permanent part of your email signature. Thank you cards, gift cards and even receipts should advertise your website.
With content marketing, such as your newsletter or blog, tease your audience with interesting information about your website, something that will strike their interest. It’s not enough just to add your URL to your social media platforms (although still a must). Readers want to be engaged, so tease them with an interesting fact, topic, sale or idea they can read about on your website.
The top website designs are refreshing, engaging, full of interesting content and, most importantly, always up to date. Sometimes all that is needed is a little shock treatment to get people interested (and re-interested) in your site. Add testimonials that showcase your best customers and have them sell your business to the masses by sharing their positive experiences. Doing so not only shows you are tight with your customers, but these customers will share your website with their network of friends and families. Soon, you’ll have a social media buzz just from others’ sharing. If you already have testimonials on your site, create and install new ones. The more fresh content you have on your site, the more readers will tend to come back again and again.
Another simple strategy is to create a new tagline and add a new accent color to your brand. This gives you a refreshed look that gets noticed. Also, reorganize your website navigation by removing out-of-date content, improving graphics and cutting out unneeded wording. The key to a refreshing look is to make it look fun, bold and new. There are top-rated website builders that can assist you with your redesign so you don’t need to learn code or spend a ton of time trying to get it just right.
You have a mass of potential new visitors through your social media platforms. If you’re only working this Facebook, you have to break out of that box you’re in and get in with the social media frenzy. Twitter is becoming more popular than Facebook among the younger crowd, with the 18-29 age group being the largest of them. Though more than 70 percent of adults still use Facebook, the new growth potential for website viewers are also coming from other social media platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr and even LinkedIn.
Blogging is one of the hottest content marketing strategies ever and will likely stay as such for years to come. By sharing the links on each of your social media platforms, you’re inviting viewers to offer feedback, which builds trust and familiarity, which is most important in the world of business. This also helps build your SEO with search engines like Google. With each new blog post and share over social media, the bigger splash you’ll be when viewers go to search for the topics you’re writing about. As long as you tag your brand with your blogs, you should see a spike in viewer traffic to your website in no time.