Web Site Marketing Strategies (Part 2)
The pages that I listed in my last post are all quite standard for a business website. If you would like to include some additional enhancements, why not try some of the following?
Forum
Hosting a forum on your website and building your own community around your brand can be a very good idea for several reasons.
•You can get to know your customers much better
•You will have many people returning to your website to answer questions and to read posts
•You can collect valuable feedback with surveys and voting polls about site enhancements and service quality
•You can collect email addresses of users during the forum sign up process, and ask members if they would like to subscribe to your ongoing newsletter
•Your website will receive greater visibility in the search engines, as more pages with relevant content will mean more chances of your site being listed in Google results, etc.
•Your site will be seen as a great resource and a place where you customers can hang out
Blog
Another great idea is to include a blog on your website. This can be used to build up a readership by writing regular entries about your niche, your daily business growth or your industry in general. This is a good opportunity to present yourself as an authority within your market, or even just to connect with your customers and reveal some of the personality behind your business. It’s also another great way to get good search engine rankings.
Articles
Displaying articles on your website serves two purposes. Firstly, it provides a useful resource for your customers, and also helps with your search engine rankings - as relevant articles will be filled with keywords that are related to your type of business. The articles can either be your own, or sourced from free services such as <ezinearticles.com>.
Gallery
A great way to showcase your product or service designs is to have a picture gallery on your website. The pictures could be photos that have been sent in by customers using your products. Suitable businesses might like to run some kind of competition as an incentive for people to send their photos in via email. This is a great way to display a sense of community and ‘social proof’ which will increase your sales as potential customers are more likely to make a purchase from you after seeing that a whole bunch of people already have.
Press
If you’re business has been the subject of any recent media attention, it’s a good idea to display this on a Press page. You can include scanned images of any newspaper or magazine clippings, audio files of radio interviews or links to reviews, etc on other websites. This will also add to the ‘social proof’ of your website and can make all the difference to sales.
News
Many customers like to keep informed, so a News page can work really well. Use it to let people know what is going on in your business. You might also have news on your particular niche or your industry as a whole.
Order Status
When buying something online, the wait for your product to turn up on your doorstep can be painful. For this reason, it’s worth implementing a facility for your customers to track their order status. This can be managed by your e-commerce software and should integrate with your freight company, so tracking numbers can be entered in to locate dispatched packages.
Competitions
Good competitions can really get your customer community involved. If your prizes are good, they will keep customers coming back again and again. The prizes (usually your products or services) can help to get you brand name out there in the public, as the winner will become excited and spread the news of their win far and wide. With a dedicated competitions page, you can also run comps that involve customers submitting feedback about your business.
Street Team
An increasingly common offline marketing tool for many businesses is a Street Team. This is a group of incentivized ‘die hard fans’ whose role is to promote your brand in any way possible within their own sphere of influence. A dedicated Street Team page could have a forum for its members. It could display prizes for the best promoters, have a sign-up form and show pictures or videos of your team out in the public handing out flyers, etc. A Street Team can be a great method of guerrilla marketing for appropriate businesses, and can create a strong sense of belonging within your customers.
Newsletter
Newsletters have become a key marketing component for any online business. It is a direct line to your customers and periodical mail-outs can be used to keep your brand fresh in their minds. You have the ability to invite customers back to your site at any time for various offers and promotions, generating more sales. A good newsletter is an extremely valuable tool, so be sure to include an opt-in form on your home page and other relevant pages so that customers have the ability to sign up.
MySpace/Facebook
Setting up a MySpace or a Facebook page, is a very good way to present your business to a much wider audience. For some businesses, being present on one of these social networks is a great way to find new customers within your niche. It also allows your existing customers to communicate with you in a comfortable, informal way while giving you the added opportunity to build your brand awareness.
Note some of these components will suit your business type and others will not, it will all depend on your industry. Well, I hope that gives you a good start when it comes to thinking about optional inclusions on your business website! By adding one (or all) of these components, you will be able to increase customer- confidence, interactivity, awareness, desire and ultimately achieve more sales!
