A Website Alone is NOT Enough
In this article:
Just a website?
Well, it is not enough. You need an online marketing strategy that brings your offline business online!!
Bringing your offline business online is essential and a website is a great step. But you have to make your website work for you and that is a little bit more than just putting up an online brochure of what you do, who you serve and who is on your team.
You are probably using marketing that IF paired with online marketing strategies would truly accelerate your growth.
So, what is involved in making a website work for you?
Your number one online marketing goal is list building!!
Yes, you’ve heard it before, the money is in the list, but what does that really mean for YOU??
It means having an OFFER on your website that is irresistible to your audience. An offer that gets them to give you, their name and email.
You want an opportunity to being in a relationship with them and enter into a conversation with them about what you do and what you can do for them.
A relationship is key — because people buy from people that they KNOW, LIKE and TRUST!!
Your new relationship takes some trust-building.
Behind your offer you need some technology!!
“Oh no, not technology!!”
Yes, a simple contact me form will not work!
You need an email marketing program. There are many that are good. An email marketing program needs to have unlimited autoresponders as a feature. Some good programs include: MailChimp, Aweber, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign and GroundHogg (if you are using Wordpress for your website builder).
Through email you are able to start building your new relationship. You can go beyond the first handshake.
It is way for YOU to share your knowledge. You can provide educational emails that give your audience tips for using your products or things to pair your products with or things that they might be able to do at home on their own.
You become a trusted advisor or expert in your field — whether you are a bookkeeper, a chiropractor, a pet shop owner, a massage therapist, a contractor, a coach….. you know your industry and you can share that expertise. Information is a pre-seller.
And you can let people know of special events that you are hosting or sales or new products that just came in and so much more.
Email marketing is a powerful tool for growth when done well and done consistently.
When you use an email marketing program with an autoresponder, you are able to pre-load several messages that will go out automatically to your new contact. You do not have to manually email each person or contact. This saves you tons of time and still gets info into the hands of your new connection.
So for this to all work you need:
- An irresistible offer.
- A website opt-in page that has the offer on it.
- An email marketing program that gathers the person’s info and delivers your offer to them automatically.
- An email sequence to begin building the relationship with them.
This may sound complicated or overwhelming but it can work for your business and it can grow your business faster and easier.
Let me share a story:
A local merchant was using newspaper fliers to get new customers. She was printing several thousand fliers to be inserted into the local paper and paying the paper a fee for the insert. Her total cost for the program was just under $5000 (between printing and the fee for the insert). The flier said call to schedule an appointment and receive a free accounting consult to save thousands per year on your taxes.
She received an average of two clients per newspaper flier campaign at a value of just over $5000. She was happy! She had a new clients and had re-couped her money. But is there really an ROI?
What if she added to her call to action to visit her website to download her “Guide to the Top 3 Tax Saving Tips for Businesses”? And it was delivered to her new contact via email auto-responder. If she received just 100 new opt-ins out of the thousands of fliers and still scheduled her average of two new clients from the flier. She has still recovered her investment but now she has 100 new potential buyers for her service.
If her email nurture sequence gets just 5 of those people to her free consult, she now has 7 new clients instead of just 2 and $12,500 more in revenue for a total of $17,500. That’s a huge difference!!
That is what a solid online marketing strategy can do for an offline business.
FYI – this site may contain affiliate links. That means that when I am recommending a product, I have include a link to the product and may receive a small affiliate commission for the referral. I recommend products that I personally use or that I believe are of high quality and integrity.