If you want to grow your business in 2020, you must achieve digital marketing success. There’s just no other way about it.
You may not know where or how to begin and that’s okay. Many people like yourself face this challenge too when trying to get their digital marketing journeys going.
There is an abundance of information on the internet about d
For many people, it is common to use social media as their entry point to digital marketing since it is relatively easy and free to start.
However, not all is as smooth sailing as it seems.
Where did everyone go?
Facebook has over time steadily updated their algorithms that effectively reduce the reach of the organic posts that you share with your fans and followers.
These days, it is not uncommon that any post you publish reaches only about 4% of your entire fan base organically.
Facebook has become essentially a pay-to-play platform.
So now if you want to reach out to your audience, you just have to start paying.
If you’ve been spending considerable time, money and resources over the last few years building up an audience on Facebook, only to be undone by an algorithm change, you may feel a bit betrayed and frustrated.
I understand exactly how you feel; I’ve experienced it too, both for my own business and for my clients’. It stings big time, doesn’t it?
But there’s no point crying over
In this article, I’m going to share with you the most important component you need to start your digital marketing on the right footing, instead of relying on external platforms that you have no control over.
You’ll also learn about the factors that contribute to its effectiveness in order to ace your digital marketing game in 2020.
Are you a digital marketer looking to take your business to the next level? Then you’ve gotta out this article by my good friend Robert Neckelius: “How To Move From Solo-Freelancer To Starting A Digital Agency“.
Start your digital marketing on the right foundations
For many people, getting started on digital marketing simply means running ads on Google, Facebook or Instagram, as well as posting nice photos and status updates on their social media accounts.
Everyone does this in a desperate attempt to win over a buying audience that is increasingly having a shorter and shorter attention span.
And many business owners pour thousands of dollars into pushing out and promoting stuff on their social media pages, playing right into Facebook’s hand and coffers.
But do you realise that once you’ve captured the audience’s attention, you have to lead them somewhere to be converted into real sales and revenue?
And that place is your own website.
The problem is, if your website is not properly constructed and optimised, your visitors won’t stick around and stay long enough to turn into paying customers.
So, before you start any digital marketing, it is critical that you first and foremost optimise your website to be effective at converting traffic to customers.
Ultimately, your website is the only digital estate that you’ll ever truly own and control on the internet.
Therefore, it is the foundation from which all your digital marketing efforts build out.
Digital marketing starts with having an optimised website
Digital marketing success: While social media networks and aggregate platforms such as online marketplaces are good channels. To find an audience for your products and services. the common (and ugly) truth is that. To perform well in those channels, you need to play by their rules, not yours.
Your long term marketing goal then is to bring the traffic, engagement and attention of the target audience you’ve amassed through those channels onto your own website.
In this manner, you will have full control over the brand narrative and the direction of the conversation you have with your audience.
I can’t stress this enough: your website is the foundation of your online presence and the key to getting your digital marketing off to a strong start.
The more effective your website is at delivering value to your audience and giving them the answers they seek. The better it converts and the more successful your business will become.
If you do not have a website, you should get one built immediately, right after you’ve finished reading this article. There is nothing of greater importance.
Need help building an effective website? Contact us now.
What is an effective website?
A website really only has one true purpose for its existence: to generate conversions. Everything else is just in support (or conflict) of that overall objective.
Depending on the nature of your business and its revenue model, a conversion can be any of the following:
- A sale made through a checkout process
- A purchase enquiry made
- A subscription to the mailing list
Judged by this criterion, an effective website is simply one that generates the optimal amount of conversions to fulfil your business goals.
Why is having an effective website so important?
This is stating the obvious, but the more conversions that your website can generate, the more sales (and revenue) you can get out of it.
Let’s face it: if nobody likes whatever is presented on your website and feels interested enough to ask for it or buy, you ain’t going to make a dime. That means no conversion.
And without conversions, you won’t be anywhere near making money.
An effective website that has a high conversion rate is also most likely to be delivering a good user experience to your visitors.
Digital marketing success
It is most probably serving up useful information and solutions to help your audience solve their pain points or achieve
As it turns out, these are the exact qualities that Google the most prevalent search engine in the world looks for in a website when considering its search results ranking.
It is also one of the most important factors that influence the PPC (cost-per-click) for your advertisements in Google Adwords.
If your website converts better, it gets better mileage on Google Adwords and a lower PPC versus advertisers competing for the same keywords. You can more bang for your buck.
In short, making sure that your website is effective at conversions keeps your marketing and advertising costs low while improving the upside of your revenue top line. You would want that, wouldn’t you?
How to know if your website is effective?
Unfortunately, there is no magic score that can straight-up tell you if your website is an effective one.
Performance expectations and results differ from business to business and target market to target market. They are also highly dependent on your own specific desires and ambitions.
But I’m willing to bet that, no matter what your current conversion rates are, you want them to be better. That’s the spirit. :).
You need to understand and remember that no matter what you do, your main goal is to make your website get better at converting. Stay away from vanity metrics that do not contribute to improving your conversion rates and your bottom line.
In this manner, you can be sure that you’re not wasting your marketing efforts or spending money on unnecessary activities.
Alright, so how can you go about making your website effective at converting?
In the next article, we shall learn more about the most critical factor for having an effective website: content.
Read next: Creating High-quality Content for Effective Websites