Is your website the hub of your marketing or just
bolted on?
Integrating your website with all of the other marketing you do
is essential for businesses today. Your website should be working
for you as a 24 hour attendant providing customers and potential
customers with a channel to your business and what it offers.
| The key to making your website centre of the hub
is to ensure that you are driving traffic to your website by
planned online campaigns as
well as traditional offline campaigns. |
Setting up a website is NOT about simply bolting on an e brochure
to your business but should be much more. Websites can be designed
to deliver a wide array of applications and methods for customers
and other people to contact your business. The website needs
to be providing its visitors with some value which then prompts
them to contact your company, which should be made easy. |
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Putting your website at the centre of the hub
Below is an eight step plan to put your website at the centre of
your marketing communications hub.
1 |
Understand what you want to achieve from communicating
with customers, suppliers, partners, prospects and other stakeholders
and draw this into a plan
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2 |
List all of the different methods that will be used to communicate
with all of the above people
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3 |
Build a website that meets the needs of the communications
plan
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4 |
Keep the website current and deliver a plan for site optimization
(SEO) and couple this with other online based traffic generation
campaigns such as email marketing or Google pay per click (PPC)
ads
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5 |
Make sure you add your web address to every piece of literature
that leaves the company (i.e. add website to invoices, letterheads,
business cards, newspaper ads, posters, flyers, brochures, and
don’t forget company vehicles or promotional items)
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6 |
Align any traditional marketing campaign to drive traffic
to your 24 hour attendant as well as offering a human alternative
during business hours
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7 |
Measure the response to online and offline campaigns using
all of the statistics available
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8 |
Use the data to continually evolve your website and strategies
for driving traffic to the hub!
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Website design and technology is advancing at a fast pace and
a good web designer will help keep you informed of the best ways
of optimising your website in terms of its ease of use, application
and search engine ranking.
Plan to drive traffic to your site
Driving traffic to the website is not just about the things that
can be done with online technology; things that include Google pay
per click (PPC) ads, Search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing.
Etc. Offline or traditional marketing campaigns can be used to drive
traffic towards the website. You will notice more and more companies
adopting this strategy in their newspaper, billboard, radio and
TV campaigns. It is not enough to leave communicating the website
to the marketing team; ensure you add the website address to every
piece of communications leaving your company including invoices.
Anything that your prospective customer may see should be branded
with the website.
People who end up at your site want to be there!
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The website is a very powerful tool; having driven traffic
to your site the people will be there because they want to be
there. Whether the traffic came from a Google search or the
sight of a TV ad your visitor wants to find out about your company
and its products / services. |
Now you have attracted the visitor there is a great opportunity
not just to tell him how you can help him (which is building your
brand), but there is the potential to capture their contact details
as a qualified lead for new business. It is also possible to use
the website for research, whether this is through a traditional
form filling or a customer blog.
Use the data you collect
The latest websites offer a wide opportunity to really engage with
customers and provide the marketing teams with data and information
that has not previously been available. This data will provide opportunities
to improve product and service offering and also help to more accurately
provide measure on how given campaigns have performed providing
a stronger guide to the potential return on money invested (ROI).
More information
This article was written by Mark
Carver. If you would like to find out how we can help
you achieve better return for your online and offline marketing
and make this hub work for you please give us a call on
02476 22 6814. |
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