As a small business owner I know how important it is to start the new year off by setting goals for my business. Do you do this for your business? Have you considered writing website marketing goals? Your goals should not be vague marketing goals like: ‘to increase the number of visitors to my website’ or ‘to improve the engagement rate on my social media networks’. Instead they need to be written in a more specific and measurable way, which reflects the direction you want to steer your business, in order to be truly successful.
We’ve all heard about S.M.A.R.T goals, but I suggest you focus your thinking on how you intend to succeed by writing smart marketing goals and using your website to support these goals.
If you have some new ideas about marketing your business in the new year, try tailoring your website marketing goals around these six broad objectives:
- Business Branding
- Increase Revenue
- Improve Product or Service Sales
- Attract New Customers
- Beyond Engagement
- Convert Visitors to Customers
Build Your Business Brands’ Awareness
Many small business owners don’t realize the importance or understand the significance of branding their business. Think about this, how often have you Googled a business’s name because that is all you could remember? The more that your business name or brand is mentioned, it is because someone is trying to learn more about your business and locate you. Potential customers may have your heard about your business through word of mouth and gone online to find out more. Or other customers may have seen an advert somewhere and wanted to find out more about what you offer. All this is valuable insight as it builds your business’ brand awareness in your new customers’ minds.
If building brand awareness is one of your goals this year, then that it is a great goal, because it’s measurable. Through being more consistent in your SEO usage on your website, using targeted social media in-bound link campaigns, listing yourself with local online directories, buying more specific keyword driven words, targeting preferred customer demographic social media promotions etc – you can track these promotions and see more quantifiable results. The web provides numerous opportunities for businesses to increase their business branding awareness. Discuss with your website designer creating a tracking code to produce targeted measurable social media marketing campaigns.
Increase Revenue
To be honest, I’m not entirely comfortable with this broad objective. Obviously, every business owner wants to increase their profits, but without writing down how you intend to achieve it, this goal is still too vague. You need to be specific in order to really define what you are going to do, that will bring you tangible results.
If one of your website marketing goals, for example, is to increase your profits by providing your customers an easier, simpler means for purchasing your product or service on your website – how would you do this? You could achieve through making changes to your navigation, re-defining your target market or offering clearer call to actions. You could publish specific content on your social media networks which attracts and clearly funnels new customers back to your website which leads to an increase in your revenue.
Improve the number of product or service sales
If you are looking at your previous years’ total product or service sales, and have decided you want to increase those figures – great! This is a great marketing goal, you can use your website to help you achieve it. The goal is both tangible and obtainable – analyse where your sales were coming from and strengthen that area on your website. You can do this on Google by simply typing in your full URL in quotations. Identify websites that have links which refer back to your website, are they adding traffic to your website?
If your website traffic is lower than you expect, talk to a content marketer and discuss what improvements your website needs to make it easier for your customers to want to purchase from you.
Attract New Customers
This goal is important to help you prioritize your time and attract new customers using the same methods – remember rinse and repeat. It is important to know where and how your customers found you. This website marketing goal is both trackable and useful business intelligence for your website and your business.
Your website developer, if they have installed Google Analytics correctly, can tell you which websites are providing you with referral traffic. Ask your customers, the ones who regularly buy from you, if they can remember where/how they first heard about your business and why they chose you over your competitors? Use these same methods and techniques to attract new leads and turn them into new customers.
Beyond Engagement
I know I said improve engagement on your social media networks was too vague a website marketing goal earlier, but if you were more specific on how you were going to improve your engagement rate and define what this means for your website, then that would be better. Remember that engagement is not just the number of ‘clicks’ and ‘views’ – engagement goes beyond the number of ‘likes’ and ‘followers’. Engagement refers to how your customers and potential customers have interacted with your blog post, published a comment, shared your post, tweeted or liked a Facebook update or left a review of your service.
This metric is important to monitor because customers will always want to know of others experiences. Your reputation is important to your customers so they will have no hesitation from wanting to do business with you. As a business owner, this is one of those things where your customer service needs to be exceptional, you have no control if and what your customers may write. So make your interaction a positive goal.
Visitor Conversions To Customers
The secret to a successful website is providing clear functionality, simple navigation and good web design, know precisely what your website visitors will do once they arrive at your website. Will they sign up to your newsletter? Read through your latest blog post? Purchase one of your products? Will they make an appointment? Your website’s call to actions and your business offerings, will determine what your customers do first. Your website should not provide too many options and leave your customers confused.
Small website tweaks can have a significant impact on how you convert your website visitors into customers. For example, you may decide that one way to increase your customer base is by publishing a regular newsletter. So, have your website developer design a sign up box for website visitors to insert their email address and receive your regular newsletter. Think about it from your customers’ perspective, what do they get for signing up? Perhaps you offer a discount on their next purchase, or maybe they get advance notice of your next sale.
Make sure your sign-up box is prominent on your website and clearly explain to your customers what they’re likely to receive through signing up to receive your newsletter. Convert your visitors into customers.
What Are Your Website Marketing Goals For The Year?
Your website marketing goals will vary based on your type of business, industry, product or service offering. But the most important thing to take away with you is this; set your website marketing goals and make them achievable by understanding how you website supports these business objectives. Your goals in the new year will offer you great motivation and provide a road map for how you intend to accomplish your business success this year. Good luck!
