Marketing Strategy

The One Thing That Solves 100 Other Things…

Before we dive deep into the wonderful world of websites, we need to talk a bit about marketing strategy.

Many people struggle in their small businesses because they haven’t solved one problem.

What is one problem that, if solved, would solve 100 other problems?

A lot of times, that one problem is MARKETING STRATEGY.

Think about marketing strategy as fishing: There are a lot of other people fishing in the same sea as you. Other people who are in the same business as you. People who are fishing for the same customers or clients as you.

But they might be doing pretty well, and you may not be. The questions to ask are:

Where are they fishing?
What bait are they fishing with?
What are they doing differently to net those fish?

Most successful businesses have developed a repeatable process for “fishing”. They have created the best “bait” for a specific group of “fish” and are casting lines in the right “fishing holes”.

For many small business owners it might seem like having a successful website (one that helps grow your business) is more like an accident or a lucky happenstance. But in reality it is about hard work and strategy (that repeatable process).

Marketing Strategy is the overall game plan of turning your website visitors into leads, and customers. You should remember that you’re one offer or one sales page away from getting people to respond to you!

I’m a local business owner just like you, so I understand the pressures of running a small operation and how important it is for you to invest your time, and effort into the best customer-getting methods you can find…without draining your checking account.

Ultimately your website success will come from you sitting down and developing a solid marketing strategy (plan) — one that will actually work for you.

So the main thing you need to think about before you get started is…

Your website success must be planned for!

So, do you want your website to:

Build visibility or improve your branding?
Generate leads for your business?
Bring foot traffic to your store?
Make sales online?
Engage with potential customers?
Attract good employees or better vendors?
Provide 24/7 customer support for your company?

For example, as a solo web designer and digital marketer, my main goals are lead generation and attracting more clients. I don’t want to bring anyone to my front door so I don’t show maps or give out addresses on all the pages of my site.

Your goals could be wildly different but you do need to have your future marketing goals firmly planned out before you even think about building any kind of website.

A Simple Website Marketing Strategy

Remember I said that marketing strategy was just a game plan reach out to potential customers? Here in just four simple words is an easy-to-understand and simple repeatable process that will help you develop a powerful marketing strategy almost any small business can use:

Connect > Communicate > Convince > Convert

Connect – “How can you help your customers?” Small business websites that focus on solving customer problems always attract more attention and build better online visibility than other sites that just brag about the business. A customer-focused website will create a steady stream of traffic (phone calls or visitors to your business).

Communicate – “Do you tell your visitors what they want to know?” Do you create educational content like articles, videos, downloadable files and consumer reports for your potential customers? Helpful, good quality content helps engage the interest of prospective customers and makes you stand out from the crowd.

Convince – “How will you keep potential customers interacting with your site (your business)?” They say the ‘fortune is in the follow-up’ — so how to do you plan to follow up with your visitors? Are you going to use callbacks, emails, blog article series and videos or social media to build rapport and develop relationships with them?

Convert – “What system do you plan to use to turn visitors into leads and sales?” Most local business people use some type of in-person sales process or phone-based lead generation to close the deal. So how are you going to use your website to connect to your process? Are you going to use emails, social media, phone calls or in-store foot traffic to direct people to your sales system?

….

Before you continue you should take a moment, and really think about these four fundamental marketing principles. You need to understand how these principles fit into your business because no website, no matter how visually impressive will produce the leads or in-store traffic you want unless it is backed up by an effective marketing strategy.

Marketing strategy is the one thing that will fix a 100 other things. But it you have problems understanding how to develop a marketing plan for your business, feel free to contact me > Free Consulting Session.

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