Where to begin when considering digital marketing - #WednesdayWisdom

One of the most common questions we hear from B2B companies is, “How can we generate more sales leads online?”. The quick answer is that you can do this through effective digital marketing. Hang on though, before you jump right into investing in a marketing campaign, you need to make sure that your house in order first. Otherwise any return on investment could be compromised.

No one knows your business more than you and your staff – that's a fact. As a company director or manager you can see where improvements need to be made, where processes could be tightened and performance levels could be better. Sometimes though, it's not quite so easy to see where things may be going wrong with your website.

Making A Connection

These days, when someone discovers your business, be it through; online search, a social media post, a personal recommendation or maybe you've handed them a good old fashioned business card - one of the first things they will inevitably do is check your website. Therefore, your site needs to sell your business/services/products highly effectively. The days of the passive web presence are long gone. If you're looking to compete online, your website needs to be an integral part of your sales strategy.

It's very difficult to be objective when appraising your own website. This is because the knowledge you have on how good your business is, and what your capabilities are, clouds your interpretation of how effective your website actually is, and how others view it. It is human nature that you subconsciously give yourself the benefit of the doubt. In reality however, any visitor to your website, particularly a valuable new visitor, is 100% impartial. If your website doesn't make life easy for them and give them what they want, they'll just leave. Game over!

Content is King

The crucial first step in any digital marketing campaign is to make sure that your website is designed well and contains high quality content. Consider how many times you've landed on a business website where there is so much jargon and technical information, right there in the home page intro, that you find yourself asking, “what do this company actually to?”. This is more common than you'd think. The tendency when self-producing web content is to want to tell everyone just how great you are and how knowledgeable you are about your business and your industry. However, being wholly self-centred and introspective is not conducive to the sales process at all. Instead, you need to clearly outline the benefits to be had of engaging with your business - and you need pitch these benefits directly at your target customer's wants and needs. It should be all about them, not you.

Nowadays, content marketing and ongoing, regular content production is a specialist area. It takes thorough market research and competitor analysis before digital agencies, such as Big Red Digital begin to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard).

Are You Ready?

Once your website looks great, delivers the right messages and regularly converts visitors into enquiries or sales, then you are ready to consider how a cost effective digital marketing campaign can generate a healthy return through your website.

Contact me today and let's get started!

By Steven Blood