8 Digital Marketing Trends & Tips to Help your Website Succeed
By Bryn Abshire - May 21, 2015
Increasingly customers search for and find what they want online, rather than through newspapers, magazines or other more traditional forms of advertising. It is all about the customer experience and buyer journey, from initial engagement right through the sales process to purchase and post-purchase engagement. To help put your website to work for you your website needs to be more than just an online brochure. Below is a list of the 8 most important website functions and online marketing tactics you should engage in:
1. Responsive, Mobile-friendly Design – This means that your website will intuitively adapt to whatever size screen or device the site is being viewed from, whether it be a mobile phone, tablet or desk top computer. If your website doesn’t adapt to different devices and customers have to pinch and squeeze to read information they will quickly navigate away from the site to one that offers a more user-friendly experience. Whether or not your website is mobile-friendly will now also have a tangible effect on your ranking in search engines, as Google has revealed a new algorithm that was rolled out on April 21, 2015 that they have said will have a “significant impact” on mobile search results based on whether a site is mobile friendly.
2. Content Marketing – There’s a reason you keep hearing people say “Content is King!” and that isn’t going to change any time soon. More often than not, a customer’s first interaction with your business no longer comes from a sales representative. As viewers conduct more of their own research prior to committing to a purchase they need a compelling reason to engage in your company’s website. This is why it is important that your site contain quality, relevant and informative content throughout. Early stage content should be primarily educational and customer-centric while later stage content is where you can highlight your business’s strengths and speak about why you are different, and better, than other products or solutions. No matter what stage the buyer is in in their personal journey, crafting excellent content is an opportunity to establish yourself as an industry expert and build trust and credibility with your audience.
3. Search Engine Marketing – In addition to having quality content throughout the site, it is equally as important to add fresh content on a regular basis to appeal to major search engines, particularly Google. Using appropriate keywords and offering educational information on a regular basis indicates your relevancy in your industry and helps to improve your rankings because Google will reward you for helping them to return quality results to searchers.
4. Social Media Marketing – Social media outlets are another way to spread content throughout the web and engage with customers that have varying demographic backgrounds. While some people may find managing multiple social media sites tedious and time-consuming, it is a critical element to building your online presence and Denver Website Designs offers an easy, single-click solution for managing these secondary sites.
5. Email Marketing – Email marketing still remains one of the most commonly used ways that businesses communicate with and stay in front of their customers, but with the onslaught of emails that most of us receive in our Inboxes every day, we know that not all email marketing is created equal. Simply sending an email newsletter is not enough – as with all impactful marketing, content is critical. However, an appropriately crafted and tailored email blast will strengthen your relationship with your customer and hopefully also engage them enough to drive traffic back to your website.
6. Calls To Action & Intelligently Routed Forms – Marketing 101: Don’t make it difficult for a potential customer to find what they are looking for! When a customer lands on your website it should be easy for them to request additional information on a specific product or service or subscribe to an email list. These methods effectively convert your web traffic into leads or buyers.
7. Lead Generation & Tracking – If your website isn’t bringing you leads it isn’t working for you. It is equally as important that the leads you generate be directed to the appropriate person in your organization for follow-up. Sticky notes just don’t cut it anymore. You need to have a CRM that effectively helps you manage incoming leads and follow-up. The Denver Website Designs system has all of this built right into your website.
8. Appropriate page titles, meta data and descriptions – These “back-end” tools are critical elements for any website to be successful in search engines. They provide brief descriptions of each page and provide Google and other search engines with a quick snap-shot of the information contained therein. As an indexing tool page titles and meta tags are critical because Google will ignore meta tags it doesn’t recognize, so it is important to have a professional set this up for you.
Your business website is serious business. It takes work to be on the first page of Google for what you do, and we know how to help.
Go Back 1. Responsive, Mobile-friendly Design – This means that your website will intuitively adapt to whatever size screen or device the site is being viewed from, whether it be a mobile phone, tablet or desk top computer. If your website doesn’t adapt to different devices and customers have to pinch and squeeze to read information they will quickly navigate away from the site to one that offers a more user-friendly experience. Whether or not your website is mobile-friendly will now also have a tangible effect on your ranking in search engines, as Google has revealed a new algorithm that was rolled out on April 21, 2015 that they have said will have a “significant impact” on mobile search results based on whether a site is mobile friendly.
2. Content Marketing – There’s a reason you keep hearing people say “Content is King!” and that isn’t going to change any time soon. More often than not, a customer’s first interaction with your business no longer comes from a sales representative. As viewers conduct more of their own research prior to committing to a purchase they need a compelling reason to engage in your company’s website. This is why it is important that your site contain quality, relevant and informative content throughout. Early stage content should be primarily educational and customer-centric while later stage content is where you can highlight your business’s strengths and speak about why you are different, and better, than other products or solutions. No matter what stage the buyer is in in their personal journey, crafting excellent content is an opportunity to establish yourself as an industry expert and build trust and credibility with your audience.
3. Search Engine Marketing – In addition to having quality content throughout the site, it is equally as important to add fresh content on a regular basis to appeal to major search engines, particularly Google. Using appropriate keywords and offering educational information on a regular basis indicates your relevancy in your industry and helps to improve your rankings because Google will reward you for helping them to return quality results to searchers.
4. Social Media Marketing – Social media outlets are another way to spread content throughout the web and engage with customers that have varying demographic backgrounds. While some people may find managing multiple social media sites tedious and time-consuming, it is a critical element to building your online presence and Denver Website Designs offers an easy, single-click solution for managing these secondary sites.
5. Email Marketing – Email marketing still remains one of the most commonly used ways that businesses communicate with and stay in front of their customers, but with the onslaught of emails that most of us receive in our Inboxes every day, we know that not all email marketing is created equal. Simply sending an email newsletter is not enough – as with all impactful marketing, content is critical. However, an appropriately crafted and tailored email blast will strengthen your relationship with your customer and hopefully also engage them enough to drive traffic back to your website.
6. Calls To Action & Intelligently Routed Forms – Marketing 101: Don’t make it difficult for a potential customer to find what they are looking for! When a customer lands on your website it should be easy for them to request additional information on a specific product or service or subscribe to an email list. These methods effectively convert your web traffic into leads or buyers.
7. Lead Generation & Tracking – If your website isn’t bringing you leads it isn’t working for you. It is equally as important that the leads you generate be directed to the appropriate person in your organization for follow-up. Sticky notes just don’t cut it anymore. You need to have a CRM that effectively helps you manage incoming leads and follow-up. The Denver Website Designs system has all of this built right into your website.
8. Appropriate page titles, meta data and descriptions – These “back-end” tools are critical elements for any website to be successful in search engines. They provide brief descriptions of each page and provide Google and other search engines with a quick snap-shot of the information contained therein. As an indexing tool page titles and meta tags are critical because Google will ignore meta tags it doesn’t recognize, so it is important to have a professional set this up for you.
Your business website is serious business. It takes work to be on the first page of Google for what you do, and we know how to help.