Recipe #6: How do I market my new business website?

So, you’re hungry to start up your own business - and Harry Redknapp with GoDaddy are showing you the recipe for success.

Back in Recipe #1 we assembled the ingredients you need to cook-up a successful business.
In Recipe #2 we advised you on how to whip-up a tasty brand for your business and for yourself.
In Recipe #3 we found that choosing the domain name for your website - is a piece of cake.
In Recipe #4 we talked you through building a sweet website.
In Recipe #5 we introduced you to great content.

Now we’re going to help you market your new business website. You can have the sweetest digital presence in the world, but if nobody can find you, how are you going to get them to bite?

A website is a tool. It is there to help your customers. Answer their questions. Then guide them towards profitable actions. Digital marketing is the lighthouse that will steer them towards your awesome business.

Do you need to dip deep into your pockets and hire a marketing team? When you’re ready, stepping things up always makes sense. For now though, there are a number of steps you can take to make your digital marketing hit harder than Muhammad Ali.

Why do you need to think about this? Let’s take a look.

Ingredient #1: Content strategy

Keen to jump straight into marketing? Time out! Stop the bike. Sure, you love your business. So it’s understandable you want to get the word out there straight away. Before you do though, think. Start with a strategy. Doing so will massively increase the success rate of all your digital marketing efforts.

So kick things off with a content strategy. This might sound technical but don’t worry, it’s not. Everything you create going forward to promote yourself will have its foundations in content. From blogs, videos, social to emails, getting your message and tone right from the get-go is key.

Lay down a plan of attack. The outcome will always be unique to you and, more importantly, your customers. It’s about understanding what they want, then feeding them a healthy diet of marketing to consume.

Your measurable plan of attack could include things such as:

Profiling your customers’ needs, desires and concerns
Profiling your business goals
Defining your brand voice
Drawing valuable conclusions from competitor research
Defining call to actions and conversion metrics
Outlining top keyphrases, niches and customer vocab
Defining which topics and types of content will engage your customers
Planning social media usage
Creating your editorial calendar
Defining your success metrics

Ask: where are your customers hanging out? Are they Googling you? Forums? Social? Defining these hot spots means you can take the marketing party direct to your audience, then lead them back to the after-party at your website.

Ingredient #2: Content marketing

Think of your website as a car, now think of content as the fuel. Without content marketing, your site is unlikely to go far. Why, you ask? Because Google loves fresh and regular content. This could be blogs, service pages, FAQs or landing pages. When someone types a phrase in the search engines to find you, they consider the relevance, quality and frequency of your content output.

That’s why content marketing is king. Your website is more than a pretty picture. Content is your personality. It helps people find you. Then strikes up profitable conversations with buyers.

After all, the information they hunt down will impact their purchase decision. Powering your website and digital platforms with content:

Turns you into a trusted online resource
Builds brand awareness and loyalty
Fuels search engine optimisation
Makes you findable in the search engines
Drives traffic and qualified leads
Stimulates your social media streams

Get things started by writing a blog. This can be published on your website and shared on social platforms to build valuable inbound links. Consider this a testbed.

Pick a topic: What will grab the attention of your buyers? Choose an area of interest that will leave their eyebrows collectively shipwrecked on their foreheads. Generate buzz. Now write the article.
Keywords: Research the keywords relevant to this piece of content and your readers. There’s plenty of free keywords tools out there - just Google ‘keyword tools’.
Optimise your content: This means parachuting keywords into the content. Start with the headline. It needs to be powerful! Then sprinkle these words throughout the rest of your content. Be careful not to add too many though, Google will put you on the naughty step for keyword stuffing.
Layout: Time is money and in today’s age, people don’t have an hour to read a blog. So chunk it down. Keep it short and on point. Use multiple headings - also good for SEO - and lists. Aim to make the page more scannable than a photocopier.
Imagery: Everyone loves a pretty picture - so drop some in for good measure.

Pro tip: lights, camera, consumer action

Video marketing is the now. YouTube, after all, is the world’s second largest search engine. You might think that only the big boys can invest in video. Thanks to affordable technology, this needn’t be the case. So consider pouring video into your marketing mix.

What to share on your social platforms? This is the question most people start with and, all too often, get wrong. Now, the best thing about content marketing is that you’re continually creating a library of user-friendly content ready to share on your platforms. And, given that you’ve already created images for your blogs, you should have visuals ready-made to share on social.

Start by:

Defining the type of content your customers consume, and their preferred platforms - i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.
Signing up, branding your pages and acquiring good handles.
Creating head-turning content.

In getting social with your customers:

Build an audience: It’s no good sharing content everyday if nobody follows your pages. So invite friends, family and business colleagues to follow and share. Have staff? Then get them involved too. This is a good way of amplifying your social presence and getting in front of new, relevant people.
Engagement: Pose questions, ask for responses. When you get them, make sure you engage back. This will push your social post in front of more eyes whilst showcasing you as a business with real people behind the scenes.
Listen: Make sure any comments or direct messages don’t fall on deaf ears. The quicker you respond the better.
Drive traffic: When putting your message into the social sphere, remember: content is king. So regularly share stuff your customers really care about, linking back to articles, graphics and videos on your website.

Ingredient #4: pay per click

Publishing content on your website will raise your profile in the search engines over time. This is called organic marketing. Paid marketing refers to things like PPC - pay per click. Organic and paid complement each other - they go together like a knife and fork.

Whilst organic content marketing takes time, it builds a long term sustainable presence in Google. PPC, on the other hand, allows you to instantly appear at the top of the page on specific searches. You website ad will stay there for as long as you’re paying for it or until another company outbids.

PPC means you’ll pay a fee each time one of your ads is clicked. It is a way of buying visits to your site, rather than earning them organically. Search engine advertising allows you to bid for ad placement when someone searches on a keyword.

Carry out keyword research. Google will recommend keywords and bid prices. Choose words you think people will type into Google to find you.

Pro tip: Benchmark a budget in your Ad Words account. Don’t overspend. Oh, and while you’re at it, create a landing page on your website. This is the destination where you’ll send people who click on your ad. Not only will you drive them to relevant content and create a seamless user journey, you’ll be able to measure clicks, bounces and conversions. Monitor analytics and tweak campaign parameters such as keywords, audience type and location.

Ingredient #5: email marketing

Email marketing has been around since the dawn of the internet. Sure, today it might not get as much hype as search engine optimisation or social media.

And with GDPR bringing new data protection laws now in effect, some fear that email marketing may become harder to do than ever before. But despite all this, email marketing can still play a huge part in your marketing mix. It empowers you to send bulk messages directly to the smartphones lurking inside your target users’ pockets.

Kick your email marketing campaign off by:

Picking your message. Perhaps you want to highlight a product, an event or a special offer. Tailor your content and imagery accordingly then send it to targeted email lists.
Getting creative with your subject lines to encourage people to open your campaigns.
Writing brilliant copy. Keep it short, to the point and relevant to your end user. Don’t waste their time telling them why you’re the best, tell them about how you’ll help solve their problem.
Ensuring each email you send has an awesome call to action, linking to a landing page on your website.
Analysing your data. See who has opened your campaign and click through to your website. Create a hot list of contacts to follow up with.

If you need more help getting started with email marketing, check out this guide.

Ingredient #6: measure your ingredients

Remember the days of newspaper advertising when it was hard - if not impossible - to measure the impact of your marketing campaign? Digital has made things more measurable than Harry’s secret jam roly poly ingredients - and that’s a thing of beauty.

It doesn’t matter what type of campaign you’re rolling out, you need to track and measure. From content, social, pay per click to email marketing, doing so ensures your digital marketing is performing optimally.

Get started by:

Setting up analytics on your website so your marketing output becomes trackable and measurable.
Monitoring how many people enter your site. Where they come from.
Defining which marketing methods are generating the best returns.
Counting how many pages they visited and if they simply clicked back and bounced.

These insights will empower you to tweak your marketing efforts and maximise success.

GoDaddy online marketing services

Need help with your digital marketing? Then GoDaddy is standing by to help you kick ass. After all, even the best products go unsold if customers don’t know where to find them. Give your business the attention it deserves with promotional tools that attract visitors and keep them coming back for more.

Search Engine Optimisation: Make it easy for people to find your business online. Boost your site higher on Google and other search engines. Tell me more.
Email Marketing: Make you email market deliver. Create and track emails that integrate with your website. Tell me more.