If you have a website for your business, you probably started it to establish an online presence, build your brand and make it easier for searchers to find you. Did you know that your website offers even more advantages beyond those basics (which are also really important)? That untapped potential could help you accomplish goals and elevate your marketing strategy. Here are just a few ways you can use your website.
Create an Email List
81% of businesses use email marketing, making it one of the most popular ways to share content with your audience. But before you can send out promotions, savings and other messages, you’ll need to build an email list. Rather than trying to collect emails in person, you can use your website to handle the bulk of the work.
If you don’t have one already, add a contact form to your home, contact and service pages. This way, interested, consenting parties can reach out to you directly for more information. Who better to add to your list of email contacts than those already actively trying to connect with you?
Another great tactic is to install pop-up forms on your web pages. These forms appear when visitors perform a specific action like scrolling down the page or attempting to leave your website. Because these suddenly appear, they may be more apt at grabbing viewers’ attention than static alternatives. However, both kinds of forms offer value on websites.
Gather Audience Insights
Marketing efforts are most successful when a business has a strong understanding of its audience and their habits. While companies usually have an idea of who their ideal customer is and how they behave, this perception doesn’t always align with actual clients. Your website can provide a lot more clarity on who is visiting and engaging with your digital presence.
Tools like Google Analytics collect concrete data about the users visiting your website along with the actions they’ve taken. Not only does this information include demographics, but it also gives insight into the kind of device they viewed your website on, what pages they accessed and how long they stayed on the site, to name just a few data points. This information can be used to measure how well your website and other marketing tactics are working, along with any setbacks that could be affecting how customers are interacting with your business.
Provide Access to Resources
One of the main purposes of a website is to help answer searchers’ questions. Being a source of good information builds credibility. Establishing this trust with website visitors increases the potential of them becoming customers and referring your business to others. So, how can you initiate this process? Creating a blog or offering downloadable resources are effective options.
A blog with content about topics related to your industry, products or services is a great way to draw in organic traffic. By sharing news and analyses or answering questions related to your business consistently, your business is more likely to rank in search engines, driving relevant visitors to your site.
Downloadable resources can also generate leads. This content can be anything from case studies and white papers to brochures or infographics. You can collect contact information from these downloads, which gives you the ability to target follow-up marketing efforts to the individuals who downloaded your content.
Improve Customer Service
No matter the nature of your business, good customer service is key. Whether that’s answering their questions or solving their problems, visitors become customers in part of the effort a company put into catering to their needs. Of course, tending to the needs of customers can take up a lot of valuable time that could be spent working on other aspects of your business. If you miss a call, customers are unhappy. If you spend too long on a call while customers are shopping in person, they’re usually not too pleased either.
Keeping your website up to date on key details like product and service offerings, pricing and operating hours can greatly reduce customers’ need to contact you directly. Other self-service options like chatbots, online scheduling, ecommerce and FAQ pages enable customers to resolve many issues on their own 24/7, which is a major convenience for all parties.
