If you’re starting a small business, one of the tasks on your to-do list will be creating a website. Hopefully, you view this as far more than an exercise to be ticked off a list, because a website is potentially one of your most powerful marketing tools. It means that you need to devote time and energy to creating and maintaining the site, and these tasks should form part of your ongoing strategy, rather than being a single job that gets marked as finished.
How do websites work as marketing tools?
Your website is the focal point for your business, and if it is well-designed and maintained, it will contain all the information a potential customer might need. By boosting your search engine rankings by following primary search engine optimization practice (SEO), you can increase traffic to your site, where you’ll engage with as many of these visitors as possible to increase sales.
For your site to be effective in attracting visitors and engaging them, you need to spend time on it every week, updating, adding content, creating new offers, and advertising your business. You should have time set aside for working on your site regularly, so it doesn’t get neglected.
Nothing is more off-putting for a visitor than to see a site that has ads for expired offers or where the last blog entry was posted six months ago. If you don’t devote time to your site, it will slide down the rankings and do very little for your marketing.
You can’t completely automate your site’s functions, but there are tools you can use to save time and improve efficiency. In addition to your website, you should have at least a few social media accounts, which also require regular updating and new material.
Rather than add content to each account, use a social media management tool that enables you to post to all your accounts at the same time from a central hub. You can schedule posts for when you want them to appear, and post the same article to one or all of your accounts. This reduces time spent on admin and makes it easier to keep track of what you’re posting.
You can also get ad management tools such as an ad server from Reviveadserver.com. These services perform a similar function for your ads, managing when they appear and for how long, so you never have anything out of date on your site, and there are always plenty of new and interesting offers available.
Using tools such as these to manage your site not only saves time and effort, but you’ll get valuable usage and engagement statistics that will help you optimize your website and reach even more potential customers.
Your website is a keystone of your business and should be prioritized as a marketing tool. Neglecting your site maintenance could lose you a significant amount of trade, so make sure you’re exploiting the potential of your site and not letting it detract from your business.
