Your website and blog are both designed to convert traffic, that is, convert prospects to customers. Conversions rates will depend on where your prospect is in the buying cycle, not everyone who views your website or reads your blog posts are ready to buy. So what do you do to increase conversion rates? You use both a website and blog differently to achieve maximum conversions.
What your website is designed to do:
Your website can be viewed as your digital store, it is designed to convert interest into a sale. With an emphasis on social media marketing, the process towards conversion is now different. The process starts with information and education, make certain your website makes clear (within seconds) what you do, where you do it, and why someone should choose you over the competition. The second component is trust and stability; this can be clearly achieved by your social media platforms and your blog. Social media platforms show the viewer you are a stable business interested in customer service. By keeping your social platforms interesting, attractive, and updated regularly you are providing a stability factor for your business. A blog can show the viewer you are a knowledgeable problem solver who in turn can solve their particular problems, whether that is products or services.
Your blog is designed to provide original content for your website, the search engines, and people searching for your products or services. Blog titles and copy within the body of the blog post should, along with using keywords and phrases, ask a question your customers may be searching for online. This will drive traffic to the blog post.
A blog is designed to educate, inform, all while entertaining, and it introduces people to you and your business. Teaching is the new selling –and this can be accomplished with blog posts, instructional videos, podcasts, Slideshare presentations, and more.
A final remark I would like to emphasize is to please keep your blog on YOUR website. Having an offsite blog that you direct people to via a link on your website is taking folks off your website. Remember, your website is the ONLY piece of real estate you own on the Internet that you can control. The goal is to keep people on your website as long as possible, engaged and point them to other areas of your site to explore. Always make a contact form easy to find and fill out, plus prominently display your phone number and email address. The harder you make it for people to acquire information, the more quickly they will bounce off and look for someone else.
People’s attention spans are so short when surfing the Internet, keep your website and social platforms attractive, business like, informative, and interesting.
Digital marketing which includes websites, blogs, social media, PPC, and more can be a lot of work for the typical small business owner. It’s best to develop a strategy and assign others to various tasks that will achieve your goals. Depending on the market you live in, it can be easy to rank high in search and drive traffic by putting efforts into these key digital strategies. The key, like in anything, is consistency.
To help you determine your website and blog goals take a look at key performance indicators (KPI’s) located in your Google Analytics, if you find you get lots of website traffic, but little conversion, perhaps it’s time to up your game with a website copy redo, additional blogging, and more social media platforms and activity.
How often do I need to update my blog? Some exciting new research is out, and I will be sharing that in my next blog post to you!