3 Things Your Web Marketing Strategy Is Missing

Not everyone can be a web marketing rock star, right? Sure they can, when the right things are in place. Chances are good that you probably have a website and may even be doing some sort of marketing such as SEO, PPC, maybe social media...but what are you missing? Are your marketing efforts just not hitting the mark? There are probably a few things you are probably missing.

Failure to Have Top-of-Funnel and Middle-of-Funnel Conversions

The first web marketing item that many small businesses fail to do is to actually have conversion opportunities! They may have a simple contact form on your site or even an RFQ page, but how many conversions are you missing because there is nothing collecting soft leads or even directing visitors to read more content or connect on social? The truth is everyone that arrives on your website won't be in the buying stage yet and may need nurtured into a more qualified lead. Start paying more attention to the actions that your website visitors are taking and if there are no top-of-funnel or middle-of-funnel conversions, you may be missing out on opportunity to generate more true leads and sales expecting the person will just remember to come back when it is time to actually buy. By nurturing these leads you'll stay top-of-mind and likely be dealing with a more educated buyer.

Example Top-of-Funnel Items

• Getting a visitor to read blog articles
• Connecting on social media
• Reading deeper into your website

Example Middle-of-Funnel Items

• Ebook or whitepaper downloads downloads
• Signing up for your email marketing campaign
• Accepting an offer from your website
• Filling out a basic contact form

Pay attention to these items when creating your website and afterwards by looking at your Google Analytics data.

Not Implementing a Content Marketing Strategy

You may consider content marketing to be a buzz word, but as long as I've been an SEO professional the phrase "content is king" has been around. There are many reasons to implement a content marketing strategy including:

• It will improve your search engine optimization and your ability to generate search engine traffic from terms related to your product or service. Search engines use content to understand your website...give them something to read. Please keep in mind, your content cannot be just garbage. It should be good, unique content that provides a value to your readers.
• That brings me to my second point...good content brings great value to your website visitors. That should be reason enough. They probably aren't on your site to read an encyclopedia entry about your business and how great you are, but they are probably looking for some sort of solution, with content you can provide that solution. You are also building trust with the reader and potential buyer.
• It helps build inbound links. Another important aspect of search engine optimization is the volume of inbound links coming to your site. These would be other websites that are linking to your website. The ideal link is from another very related website with a good reputation.
• It's a way to stay active with social media. Nearly every business we talk to wants to be involved with social media to a certain extent but they almost always say that they have nothing to share. If you have a content marketing strategy that is actually implemented, you'll will have something to share all the time.

Did you know that a B2B company with a content marketing strategy will generate 67% more leads than one without one?

Not Using Landing Pages

Landing pages are extremely underused when considering the value that they can provide. According to Hubspot, companies with more than 30 landing pages will generate 7X more leads than a company with less than 10! Would you like to have 7X more leads? Sure you would.

Why are landing pages so good at lead generation? If done right, a landing page has one specific purpose and it is to create a conversion. They should have few distractions, be to the point, explain the benefit, and capture the lead all from one page. Landing pages can be used in email marketing, social media, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising and more. Landing page optimization is considered to be the MOST IMPORTANT tactic for a high performing sponsored advertising strategy!

So why aren't you using them? It's partially because this is different than what most businesses have been doing for years. Traditionally a small business would have their website pages, a contact page and that's it. Well, that is just not good enough anymore. As you probably know, people get very distracted online...capture a conversion before the distraction happens? Another reason SMBs don't use them is just due to lack of knowledge. They don't know how powerful they can be or how to create one...we want to change that! Below are 6 articles that will get you 1 step closer to becoming a landing page expert!

• What is a Landing Page?
• 10 Tips To Optimize Your Landing Pages And Get Results
• 3, 2, 1, Your Landing Page Headline Better Not Suck
• What a Terrible Landing Page Looks Like
• Landing Page Structure – A Whiteboard Discussion
• Do You Know When to Use Landing Pages?
• Easily Create Landing Pages with the c80 CMS

Now that you know where your online marketing strategy may be lacking...what are you going to do about it?