As a web development agency we frequently get the same questions after the launch of a new website. How do I get more traffic to my website? How do I generate more leads? How do I capture more customer data? How do I increase sales? Sound familiar?

This post highlights same of the main channels a digital marketer can explore.

1. Paid Search (PPC)

I’m starting with this one as it’s one of the most straightforward methods and can instantly deliver new visitors to your website. Paid search is advertisements at the top of search engines, such as Google using AdWords or Bing and Yahoo through the Yahoo Bing Network. You bid for keywords, such as “chocolate cakes”, and when someone searches for “chocolate cakes” your ad appears above the other organic (non-paid) results. It works a little bit like an auction as other companies are likely to be bidding on the same keywords as you. The higher you bid the higher up the page your ad is likely to be. Search engines also analyse the relevance of your ad and your landing pages to determine the position you get on the page, so make sure your landing page is well constructed with the right words, images and tags.

My top tips:

  • Choose a goal – increase traffic, completed contact forms, phone calls, e-commerce orders.

  • Set a budget – you tend to be charged on a cost per click (CPC) basis, so set yourself a budget for your first month and stick to it.

  • Choose days/times – B2B you might want to target Monday to Friday, B2C you may want to target evenings and weekends only.

  • Target locations – if you’re looking to target local customers, choose your area, if you’re looking to target customers from abroad exclude your country.

  • Create campaigns – create different campaigns for different products or goals, this allows you to manage your budget more efficiently.

  • Have fun with your ad copy – it’s likely that your ad will be competing with similar businesses, have fun with your copy and try and produce something that stands out.

  • Test, test and test again – test your copy, test your keywords, and test your landing pages. Test and then test again. Remember conversion rate is normally more important than click-through-rate.

See how Webnetism can help you with your Paid Search needs

2. Email Marketing

You’re likely to capture email addresses on your website, if you don’t you should! Email marketing is a great method of bringing users back to your website, whether they’ve shown interest previously, bought something off your website, commented on a blog post, or registered you should have their email address. Don’t let the fears of the GDPR stop you from collecting useful data about your prospective customers – we can help you through these hurdles too.

Types of marketing emails:

  • Welcome email – this is an important one as it’s likely to have the highest open rate and the user is most engaged.

  • Newsletter email – this is usually a weekly or monthly email that contains offers and recent blog posts. IF you do too many they will unsubscribe. If they are not useful they may unsubscribe; so be careful with what you send and give your customer a reason to interact. Provide a discount or some free information.

  • Abandoned basket email – up to 70% of online customers add items to their online shopping basket and don’t complete their purchase. An abandoned basket email re-engages the customer and reminds them of the product(s) they were looking at buying and sometimes an incentive to purchase.

  • On-boarding emails – the first 30 days are usually when a customer is most likely to be engaged, use this to your advantage. Map out an email series telling your new customer about the different products or services you offer.

  • Lapsed emails – this is for customers who haven’t purchased anything in a while, anywhere from a couple of months to a year. Use this opportunity to bring customers back to your site, perhaps with an incentive. If you use our CMS:42 system you can do that through the promotions module.

My top tips for 2018:

  • Define a goal – what outcome are you looking for? Increased traffic? Purchases? Measure success against this goal, it’s not all about the open rate.

  • Bite-sized content – get a lot of emails? Your subscribers do too. Don’t overdo it, attention spans are shorter than ever. Hit your subscribers with your key content and call to action (CTA).

  • Responsive – email design has always been behind web. Sign up to a few large brands and you’ll see what I mean. With 50%+ of emails being read on phones there is no longer any excuse, your design must work across all devices.

  • Personalisation – use the data you have to personalise your content. That doesn’t just mean adding someone’s name. Personalise the products or content based on past purchases or articles viewed.

  • Allow easy unsubscribing – the law may have previously been unforgiving, with the GDPR it isn’t, always provide a simple, clear, opt-out process; it’s not only the law but it builds trust too.

Find out more about Webnetism's email marketing services 

3. Social 

Has the bubble burst on social – no not at all. Posting on social media and building a social presence is still immensely important. It’s seen by your prospective customers and it’s registered by search engines such as Google and for the most part its free!

You can also try advertising with social websites and the Facebook advertising platform is a very cost effective way of reaching a very targeted audience. Remember, Facebook have a LOT of information on people and their habits.

Let’s look at a simple example: Kate makes specialty wedding cakes in Cheltenham. How should she advertise? On Facebook she can select her target audience: females between the ages of 19 and 30 who are single. She can select the region: 70 mile radius of Cheltenham. She can continue to work through the pages of detailed information available to ensure her advert is shown to the correct audience ensuring she gets the very best value for each click.

4. Responsive design

Everyone has been taking about responsive design for several years and every bit of work we have done over the last four years has been responsive. SO there is no excuse for a website that only works on a desktop computer and doesn’t render well on all other devices. 

Your customers use their phones and tablets more than desktops to look through websites. We have clients with 80% of their shoppers using mobile devices. If your website isn’t responsive then your customers will have a poor experience and ultimately the search engines will penalise you in their listings too.

5. Website speed

The speed of your website is a critical element to how much traffic you get. There are several reasons for this. The most obvious is that people don’t like browsing a slow site, especially when using a mobile phone. Just as importantly, Google will penalise you by dropping your listing if your site is slow. The faster the better! 

So you need to get the right balance of imagery, text, technology and hosting power behind your website to get it working correctly. There are many tools available for checking the true speed of your website and we can make it go faster. Optimising images, minifying CSS and reducing JavaScript are just a few of the items we can look at. The hosting of your website is critical too. Your provider needs to have ample bandwidth and the knowledge to setup appropriate caching systems to present a faster website.

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