Today I’m going to talk about a quick conversation that I had with a client. We were talking about his website and how crucial his website was to his overall marketing strategy. The company is a small shop husband and wife team who subs out a lot of the work they do while they bring in new clients and do the marketing on their own. So part of the home-grown marketing efforts, they built their construction website themselves.
Your website CAN’T Be An Afterthought
As the conversation turned to their website, I could tell that in their eyes the site was kind of an afterthought. Just put something up there so we can say we have a site kind of thing.
And I was trying to impress upon him (and what I want to impress upon you) is the website is the most important tool you have in your arsenal. Your website really is crucial to your overall marketing strategy and your overall success.
Above all, your website is ground zero for everything else you do
Your website isn’t just a place for you to send people to see what you do. Your website is basically ground zero for what should be a totally full-throated marketing campaign utilizing social media and local resources, blogging and paid media such as pay per click and retargeting.
All that marketing needs to have a destination (your website) that speaks to your best prospect in terms they understand with features and benefits that make sense to them.
What I want to get across is that[easy-tweet tweet=” your website is not just another marketing tool, it is the marketing tool for everything else that you do” usehashtags=”no”] and everything else you do should support your website.
Yelp and Google Really Arn’t Your Friends
Your website doesn’t support your reviews on Yelp, it doesn’t support your reviews on Google My Business. No, everything is supposed to support your website because that’s where people are making the decision to do business with you.
So, if you’re not spending as much attention on your website because you just thought throwing something up there was going to do it, you must know you are failing.
Why do I say that? Because people are making snap decisions on whether or not to do business with you based on what they’ve seen on your website, and what you’re providing them to make that decision with.
What’s a good way to tell if you need a new site?
First and foremost, if it isn’t responsive, it’s ABSOLUTELY time for a new site. Second, if your site doesn’t look like a lot of the other sites in your category in your market, it’s time. You may be saying to yourself, I don’t want my site to look like everyone else’s. I’m going to tell you, people want continuity across the web. Look too much different from the last site they visited, or the next one they visit and you loose.