Your website is the single most important marketing tool for your business. It serves as a virtual equivalent of a physical business for the 3 billion internet users. Think about it: when you want to learn more about a company, you usually turn to Google and search and eventually end up on their website. The same goes for the products and services you are looking for.
Helping Your Users with Engaging Content
As a web development and marketing services company, whenever someone searches for LevelTen, they’ll usually hit our website as the main source to learn about our services, our work, and about the team.
Now, for any company that offers services, users will inevitably turn to past clients and case studies section of a website. So much information is gained by users browsing a website: what users see and read shapes the perception of the company or brand in the user’s decision-making. According to Statista, over 2 billion people are expected to buy goods and services online by the year 2019. So, having the best content on your website is important so that your website acts as your main marketing tool.
More than having a website's main pages written in an engaging way, a business that blogs regularly typically receives 67% more leads than those that don't. Publishing a blog post at least 4 times a week can lead to an increase in website traffic, can build website authority, and can enable readers to engage with your business by leaving comments, as well as sharing valuable content with other users via social media outlets.
Connecting with Your Users – On Any Device
If your website was built correctly, then your site is mobile-responsive. You might be wondering why this is one of the reasons that makes a website the most important marketing tool. Well, as more and more users browse the web on smartphones (more than desktop usage now, according to Google), it is important not to miss out on opportunities for new leads by not having a responsive website.
Even better, a fully optimized mobile-responsive website will be rewarded by Google, and thus, your website will rank higher in searches engines. (The converse is true too: Google has announced that they will penalize sites that do not meet their AMP standards.) Higher ranking, of course, means higher visibility for your website and more opportunities for growth.
Mobile-responsive is important for email marketing, too. If you use email marketing as part of your inbound marketing to create connections with your customers, then your ultimate goal is to make them want them to click on your links. 74% of smartphone owners use their devices to check their email, and mobile now makes up the majority of email opens at 51%. However, if your website isn't responsive, those clicks won't lead to any conversions, and you’ll leave your potential customers with a bad taste in their mouth.
Having an Intelligent Website
A website that generates content based on its visitors is considered an intelligent website. Systems like HubSpot, Act-On, and our own Open Enterprise Intelligence can give business owners, webmasters, and marketers huge amounts of insight into their visitors’ behavior and needs. This lets you know what type of content visitors are most interested in seeing and reading and helps you continue to create content that will truly meet your users’ needs.
Depending on your visitors’ behavior, website content can change or be enhanced. The more a website is personalized to a visitor's needs, the more the chances are that they eventually become a lead and even a client.
An easy way to begin a visitor’s personalized journey is to utilize blogs. Custom calls-to-action depending on the category of the blog can be selected. For example, if a blog is about web development, be sure display a corresponding development ebook as a free ebook, to offer more engagement with your website readers and let visitors know more about what your company does. Same goes with this blog: if you look to the right, you will notice a marketing CTA offer to the right side. Adapting content depending on the customer’s journey will allow them to learn more about your business and begin developing a trust-based relationship with you.
So there you have it – your website is your most important marketing asset, not just because it acts as a salesperson and a brand ambassador, but because you can use your website to genuinely connect with your potential customers, whether that’s through engaging content, mobile-responsive layout, or intelligent analytics and personalization. If your website isn’t hitting all these goals right now, that’s all right. It’s definitely an iterative process, and few if any websites can accomplish everything they need to right out of the gate. But if you add these goals to your overall inbound marketing strategy and work on executing them, we’re confident your business will continue to grow.
