Once upon a time, in a digital land far, far, away, websites for business were an optional idea. Nowadays, however, they are considered a basic requirement when starting any new business. You cannot just HAVE a website to say you have one, and stop there. It is extremely important to note that now what matters is WHAT you have on your business website. You need great content that reaches out to your potential, current and past consumers. You want to engage in a conversation with them about your brand. This builds brand awareness and trust for your brand.
Just having a website setup for your business should not be the end point of your digital marketing efforts. You spent time and money in your website for it to be found in the search engines by potential consumers, but that isn’t enough. So let’s take a look at what else should be included in your digital marketing efforts.
Components of Effective Digital Marketing:
- Content Marketing
- Social Media
- Paid Search Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Video Marketing
So you ask yourself, why bother with these other forms of digital marketing? Isn’t just a having a website enough? Nope. First of all, embarking on these other forms of digital marketing will offer additional ways for your potential consumers to discover you. Who doesn’t want maximum exposure, right? Keep in mind that not every single one of your potential consumers are going to just go directly to your website. They may not even find you by traditionally searching in a search engine. By engaging in the other digital marketing efforts mentioned above you can reach your potential consumers where ever they are online, not just when they are particularly looking for you.
As an additional benefit, most of these efforts also help you with the search engines. Content marketing, including blogs and other forms of content, benefit your search engine optimization efforts, while paid search advertising can also help you when customers are searching for your brand or keywords relating to your brand. You can also utilize paid search advertising to retarget website visitors after they leave your website.
Social media can help you to be seen and found.
When the content from blogs and videos get attention from website visitors, such as social shares, that can signal to search engines that your site is relevant and helpful. This can help your search engine rankings. Without these signals your website would have to battle on its own with your competition, who are all also including extra efforts in their digital marketing strategies.
Basically, even if you have an amazing website that converts potential customers like crazy, it certainly cannot do as much on its own as an entire digital marketing strategy could.
The Role of Your Website in Your Digital Marketing Strategy
So, where does your website fit into all of this digital marketing you ask?
Well, for starters, it’s the foundation of the rest of your digital marketing efforts and eventually the destination for sales. Each of the aforementioned components should be driving traffic back to your website, where you have optimized it to convert visitors into customers.
Paid search ads including display ads, for example, should direct people back to your website. Your social media can include links to the blog articles you are posting. Your email mailing list grows from a contact form on your website and your email newsletters should also offer multiple links back to your site. Your website even offers videos a guaranteed home destination, regardless of where else you post and share them. Everyone gets pushed back to your site.
In other words, the focus on your digital marketing efforts should not be about making the sale immediately, but about driving people to your website. If your website is designed and optimized well, it should be primed to make the sale for you, which takes that burden off of your other digital marketing efforts.
Therefore, while it is important to do more with your digital marketing than just a basic website, you also want to make sure that you have optimized your website as much as possible for conversions. Since it is both the foundation and destination of your other online marketing efforts, it needs to perform as well as possible to convert customers.
Once you get your website launched, do not make the mistake of dusting off your hands and say that you are finished with that project. If you want to be truly successful online, you are going to have to do more digital marketing efforts than just a basic website.
Image credit: Shutterstock Maksim Kabakou
