Month: May 2019

Have you been thinking about doing a website redesign?

If you have, there’s a lot to consider.

You have to think about budget.

You have to consider whether or not you’ll use a custom web designer or template solutions offered by companies like WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace.

In the changing marketing landscape of 2019 and beyond, you’ll have to consider how a potential website redesign fits into your content marketing strategy.

If you go through with a redesign, you’ll want to focus on elements that affect your site performance, ability to build your brand, and keeping up with Google’s ever-changing standards.

In today’s guide, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know if you’re considering a website redesign. By the end, you’ll have enough information to make the best decision for your business.

How to Think About Your Website Redesign Investment

If you’re on the fence about whether or not to do a site redesign, you can break down the decision into two separate buckets:

• Definitely need a redesign
• Potentially need a redesign

We’ll walk through each option. Depending on your business, revenue, marketing budget, and more, you’ll be guided through either of these three paths.

Before diving into each, let’s talk about the idea of investing in your own business, especially in marketing and design.

There’s a right and wrong way to think about investing in your business.

The right way? Carefully make a decision with the right mindset. Yes, you need to take things like cost into account, but you should never make it the sole criteria for your decision. Failing to invest in marketing out of fear can leave a lot of opportunity and profit on the table.

The Hidden Cost of ‘Cheap’ Marketing

Nathan Gotch of Gotch SEO talks about this in his post about Why You Should Never Choose ‘Affordable SEO Services’:

I get it. You want to squeeze as much profit out of your business as you can. But there are some things in life that you never want to go “cheap” on.

SEO is one of those things.

First, cheap SEO will likely land you a penalty. So, even if the low-quality tactics work in the short-term, you will end up getting nailed later on. If your site gets penalized, you will have to hire another agency just to get the penalty removed. Once your site gets a penalty, it’s a long road to recovery. In fact, your previous traffic levels may never recover.

And these are only the visible costs.

You also have to take into account opportunity and time costs. If your site gets penalized, you will have wasted precious time and capital.

The same thinking applies to design.

No, you don’t need to necessarily shell out top dollar for a website redesign, but failing to invest enough in your website design can lead to unintended consequences down the road:

• Having to redo your design for performance issues
• A site design that doesn’t reflect the quality of your business
• Failing to meet the tastes and standards of your target audience

Think of the people in your audience. Think of the impression a well-designed and high-function website would have on them vs. a slapped together design that lacks originality?

Appearances in design matter for both your customers and the performance standards Google uses to rank websites. If you can afford to make a solid investment and the decision makes sense for your business, make the smart choice that pays off in the long run.

Signs You Need a Website Redesign

There are some clear cut signs to take the next step for your website. These signs include things that can definitely hurt the performance of your business on Google or lower the quality of your brand.

If any of these signs ring true for you, it’s time to level-up your website.

Your Site Isn’t Mobile Optimized or Responsive

Imagine you’re looking for a product online using your phone.

It’s tough to navigate because the site doesn’t fit on your screen.

It loads slowly.

Since the website doesn’t work well on your screen and you’ve had tons of experience with sites that do, you’re not impressed with the quality of the business, so you click away.

You move onto a website that loads quickly on your phone. You can tell the design was made for phones. The information you’re looking for is easy to find and shown in a professional way.

Which website are you more likely to buy from?

On top of the impression, you’re leaving on visitors, a site that isn’t mobile optimized leaves a bad taste in Google’s mouth.

Quite a while back, Google said it will use the mobile version of your website when deciding how high to rank it:

When Google flat out tells you it’s doing something, take their word for it. We build all of our sites using responsive web design, meaning your site design looks great on any device. Ensuring a positive user experience for everyone means your site will perform better.

Your Website Is Just…Old

If you’ve had the same website design for more than five years, it’s almost certain you’re behind on either visitor preferences or search engine standards.

Old website designs miss the mark in many ways:

• User experience – User experience (UX) has become a growing factor in not just design, but content marketing and SEO. Google continues to work on sites that do everything well, not just standard SEO techniques.
• Preferences – Think about it. People use the internet now more than ever, especially on their devices. They see great looking websites every day, which means they expect quality businesses to have quality sites, period. Odds are, a site that’s half a decade old doesn’t exactly scream professionalism.
• Brand – Has your business stayed the same in the past five years or has it grown? Shouldn’t you have a design that reflects the growth of your business and brand?

Often, we have clients who ‘know it’s time.’ If this is you, what are you waiting for?

Your Website Gets Traffic, But Not Enough Leads

Many experts say the average conversion rate for a website is anywhere from 2-5 percent.

This means if your website receives 1,000 visits per month, 20-50 people should either sign-up to your e-mail list, fill out a form on your website, or call your business directly.

If you’re not getting this type of conversion rate, there are a few potential reasons why:

• Calls to action – If you don’t use the right calls to action with your site copy and design, e.g., using buttons instead of hyperlinks, you’re not making the next step for your users obvious enough
• Lack or lead capture elements – A ‘sign up for our newsletter’ form tucked away in the sidebar of your page isn’t going to do a great job of collecting leafs
• Confusing design – If your website doesn’t make the next step clear and easy to take by doing things like having a simple menu, using forms, and properly placing CTAs, people are going to leave your website instead of convert

Our design philosophy includes the idea that you should make it as easy as possible to take the next step. This makes for a better user experience and an overall increase on the metrics that matter to business owners.

Signs You Might Need a Website Redesign

There are times where a website redesign isn’t urgent, but could still make a positive difference for your business. In these cases, it’s important to weigh the benefits of moving forward.

Some possible reasons you might need a new website redesign are:

• Rebranding your business
• You bought a new business
• You’re entering a new market

Let’s take a look at each scenario.

Rebranding Your Business

Often, businesses will rebrand because they’re looking for a fresh start.

Maybe you founded your company and website a while ago and you need your brand to speak to the current market.

Maybe you want to rebrand because you’ve seen competitors in your space updating their brands with design, content marketing, and more.

In any case, there are some important questions to ask yourself before going through a rebrand:

• Ask yourself ‘why’ – Simply articulating the reason behind wanting to change your brand can bring out great insights you can use in the design process
• What does your audience want? – In our guide on B2c marketing, we touched on the idea of having a deep understanding of your audience — where they hang out, why they buy, and who they trust in your industry, knowing the answers to these questions makes sure you create a new design with a brand that matches the needs of your audience
• What direction is your industry moving in? – Almost all audiences are moving toward preferring a professional, up to date, responsive web design. Your industry may be trending toward more online inquiries as opposed to phone calls. Pay attention to the actions of your current customers and potential customers to see how design trends are affecting their behavior and act accordingly.

You Bought A New Business

When you buy a new business, you have the option of retaining their brand and marketing or changing it. If you’re looking to update a brand with a website redesign, here are some important items to consider:

• Business philosophy – Often, if you buy a business, you’re betting on being able to improve the quality because you see a new direction for the company. If this is the case, a new website with a new company and updated information about the company leadership makes sense.
• Reputation – Each business has a reputation that impacts how it performs in an industry. This ties into the point above. If you want to reshape the reputation of the business you bought, a redesign helps you establish a new presence under your leadership.
• Name  – Again, tying to the point above, if you’re looking to really change the identity of a business by changing the name, a web redesign may be a necessity.

You’re Entering a New Market

Maybe you’re adding products and services to your business to capture a new related market. You’ll definitely want to have a menu with pages and content that reflect the new market you’re trying to serve.

Often, a total website redesign can help you think holistically about the entirety of your new business, which can lead to many changes including design, content, and marketing strategy.

Entering a new market can mean hiring new employees, too. You’d want to update the employee information on your website and focus on design and copy that attracts the new employees you want if you’re still hiring.

Conclusion

A website redesign can help you move your business in the right direction. Working with a smart web design agency can mean the difference between a decent site and one with all the performance, style, and marketing techniques needed to move the needle for your brand and the bottom line at the same time.

Are you interested in taking the next step? If so, fill out the form below to get a free marketing proposal in 48 hours or less.

Does b2c marketing require a different skill set and strategy than b2b marketing?

Yes and no.

Marketing has foundations you should learn regardless of the type of business you run.

Once you master those, it’s important to learn the difference and nuance that comes with your niche.

Most business owners run into the same problem. They think too much, fail to make decisions, and treat marketing as an afterthought instead of the core of their business.

In this guide, we’ll break down the marketing foundations you need to know and the specifics for becoming a top business in your b2c marketing niche.

Marketing 101 – The Basics All Business Owners Need to Know

Often times, business owners focus on the wrong topics when it comes to marketing.

They focus on tactics and asks questions like:

“Should I do SEO?”

“Which social media channels should I be on?”

“Do I need to run PPC ads?”

Those tactics are secondary. First, you need to focus on the core pillars behind your marketing. After, the insights you gain from building those foundations will guide your decision making when it comes to the channels you want to use.

So what are some of these foundational elements of marketing?

Unique Selling Proposition

This is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot. Often incorrectly. Having a USP isn’t about making a sexy mission statement. It’s about answering these two simple questions, famously pointed out by advertising legend David Ogilvy:

“What does the product do and who is it for?”

Seems like a simple question right?

It is simple, but if you never take the time to truly consider that answer, you won’t be able to create the right content, sell effectively, and convert casual browsers into buyers.

I’m guessing you want our answer to that question.

It’s simple.

We provide content marketing and SEO for business owners who want to grow their businesses.

Notice our USP had nothing to do with increasing traffic, specific tactics, or a super niche audience.

Not all marketing agencies look at their services as a tool for their customers to grow their businesses. All of them look at their services as a tool to grow their own businesses, however.

There’s a stark difference between vanity metrics and the type of content marketing that moves the needle for your business.

When it comes to your business, think of this answer deeply.

You could own a carpet cleaning company. So the answer to the first question is simple. You provide carpet cleaning services, but the who it’s for part of the equation varies.

Here are some examples:

• Commercial businesses who need regular upkeep
• Homeowners looking for an affordable solution instead of needing to replace their carpets
• Commercial business and homeowners who take great pride in the appearance of their businesses or homes

And creating a USP doesn’t mean you can’t serve people who aren’t directly related to it, but it does mean your business has a focus that you can use in the marketing and sales process.

Audience Definition

If the answer to “Who is your target audience?” is anyone who will buy your product. You’re not on the right track.

Defining your audience needs to go above and beyond simple metrics like age demographics and yearly salary. Those are important, but defining your audience goes deeper.

Sales are about emotion, not logic. You need to understand how the people in your audience think — about themselves, about the industry your in, and about the transformation your product provides.

You need to know the hopes, fears, desires, and frustrations of your audience.

For our audience, we’re looking for people who see past the shiny aspects of marketing and understand its a tool for the growth and reputation of their business.

We know how many business owners are hesitant to invest in marketing because they haven’t found the right fit, but see the coming trends and realize they need digital marketing to stay competitive.

They want digital marketing to be like a salesperson and brand advocate for their company that draws leads in. They see that marketing and business growth can free up time and money to improve their product, hire more people, expand their offering, and build an industry dominating brand.

Business owners who only look at the bottom line and nothing else are not in our audience. The same goes for business owners who want fast results or see marketing as an expense rather than an investment.

That comes across in our marketing in many ways:

• We write insanely in-depth and informative articles
• We don’t offer pre-packaged solutions that anyone can replicate
• Our business model attracts people who spend time learning about marketing

Even if you’re in the b2c market, understanding your audience is just as important, if not more, because b2c businesses often have audiences with more choices and shrewder buying behavior due to a large number of products available in the space and social proof metrics to pay attention to like reviews.

This does mean using tactics like:

• Creating customer avatars
• Doing market and competitor research
• Surveying current customers to find additional wants and needs

But these tactics are derived from the philosophy that you’re trying to deeply understand your audience instead of trying to sell to anyone who will buy.

Long-Term Thinking

Shortsightedness kills businesses in a variety of ways. Shortsighted business owners don’t invest enough in marketing. They can also invest too much in marketing because they believe marketing can help sell any product (marketing only helps sell good products).

If you’re going to become a master marketer or work with an agency to take care of your marketing for you, you should think in terms of years instead of weeks or months.

The data supports this too.

Pages take a while before they rank on Google:

Per Hubspot: Over its lifetime, one compounding blog post creates as much traffic as six decaying posts. (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)

As Neil Patel explains in this video, the average time it takes to rank your pages on Google depend on a variety of factors:

In your case, unless you’re not willing to experiment and take time for your marketing strategies to work.

How B2C Marketing Works

We’re all B2C customers.

The easiest way to put yourself in your customers’ shoes is to think about how you buy products.

Do you buy products from random banner ads? Statistics says less than two percent of traffic goes to these type of advertisements.

You shop differently for different products. You don’t spend as much time mulling over which toothpaste you choose vs. which car you buy.

Often, you rely on word of mouth or reviews. More or less so depending on the type of product you buy.

Yes, you do make impulse purchases, but why? Often, an impulse purchase is for a product you’re already primed to want, quickly solves a problem or need that you have, uses great copy and messaging to persuade you to buy, and is in the right price range to justify the purchases.

It’s useful to go outside of yourself and think of the way you would look at products in your industry.

For a quick example, we’ll use carpet cleaning businesses again.

Carpet cleaning is more of a commodity product. It’s the type of product you’d search on Google and perhaps purchase services from relatively quickly. This insight would let you know that a tactic like SEO might work well for your business over the long run.

People might also buy your services based on your brand and reputation. This comes into play with local carpet cleaning companies and others niches like real estate where companies like Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor have established named.

Insights like these let you know to focus on building your brand over the long-term to get more customers and build brand awareness on search engines.

This is an important step to take before you even dive into tactics — simply having the awareness and empathy to see your product in the eyes of your customers.

You’d be surprised how much of a blind spot this can be for many business owners, maybe even you.

You can want your business to succeed badly, but if you want it to succeed so badly you adopt a “build it and they will come” or “build a better mousetrap” mentality, you can miss out on great insights or take shortcut, both of which cost you the customers you want so bad in the first place.

All of these strategies are dependant on your business and niche, but here are some things to think about when it comes to putting together your b2c marketing campaign.

Stages of Awareness

How aware of your business does a potential customer need to be before they purchase?

What is the average time it will take to get them to know, like, and trust you?

What steps and techniques can you use to move them through the stages of awareness?

When we sit down with business owners, we focus on moving customers through the stages of awareness.

Often, we’ll begin with an SEO and content marketing campaign – writing blog posts, building backlinks and getting traffic to their websites to build awareness around their brand and communicate in a way that convinces people to trust their brand.

Attraction can work with different Mediums depending on the business. A business like an e-commerce business could have a much shorter awareness cycle and a strategy like paid advertisements might be the best fit.

You need a way to convert these visitors. Paid ads can be used to convert people into buyers or get them to sign onto your email list to educate and persuade them further. Either way, you need to be able to answer the question “How do I get the visitor to take the next step?”

The answer to that question leads to additional tactics like:

• Calls to action
• Whitepaper offers
• Pop-ups
• Landing pages

And more.

You have to focus on closing the sale by doing things like answering potential objections and reassuring your potential customer.

And immediately after the sale, you must ensure an excellent customer experience to avoid pitfalls like buyers remorse and refunds.

Let’s take a look at some of the channels, platforms, and strategies you can use to enhance your b2c marketing, move people through the stages of awareness, increase your brand equity, and get more sales at the same time.

SEO and Content Marketing

We’ve covered topics like SEO and content marketing in-depth in many of our articles. Let’s talk about how both work specifically for b2c marketing.

When you’re selling products to customers instead of other businesses, there’s one important word to remember when creating an SEO campaign. Intent.

The way you structure your campaign is based on the intent of the people who are interested as well as the stage of awareness they’re in.

B2c marketing strategies also change depending on the region you serve. Let’s take a look at a few different examples.

Local Service Businesses

Our fictional carpet cleaning business would be a great example of a local service business. Many local service businesses like carpet cleaning companies, restaurants, plumbers, etc have a much simple b2c marketing strategy for SEO.

For these types of businesses, your number one goal would be to rank for the key phrase [main service] in [city], e.g., carpet cleaning in Wichita, KS. If your business offers multiple services, you would want to create a unique page of content for each of those services and try to rank in your area as well.

The process would like something like this:

• Create SEO optimized pages for each service
• Create SEO optimized pages for each location you serve
• Add an SEO optimized blog to your website to feature relevant and helpful content
• Build citations for your business in relevant directories
• Through techniques like blog outreach and guest posting, build backlinks to your website to increase authority
• Get high-quality Google reviews from past customers

On your website, you’d create messaging based on factors like USP and solving the problems of your target audience.

Often, people coming to these types of businesses have the intent to buy or inquire. To move them through the stages of awareness, you’d use compelling website copy and calls to action to fill out a form or call your business.

Product Businesses

Product businesses use a different SEO strategy than service businesses.

In 2019, most product businesses use e-commerce and online shopping for sales.

If you run and e-commerce business, you have many different strategies you can use to grow your traffic and increase awareness for your site.

First, you want to make sure to optimize each product page on your website by:

• Adding keywords to the title of products
• Adding keywords to the description
• Writing detailed product descriptions
• Using keywords in headings, descriptions, alt tags, and all other meta data

You’d do the same thing for each category page on your website. Here’s an example from one of our clients who sells stud fasteners:

In addition to creating SEO optimized pages for each product page and category page on your website, you can create blog content related to the products on your website.

Visit our e-commerce marketing guide for an in-depth look at the process, as well as our other deep dive guides into content marketing and SEO:

• The Ultimate Guide to Content Creation
• SEO Best Practices for 2019
• Organic SEO Explained

 

Pay Per Click Advertising on Google and Facebook

Pay per click advertising on Google and Facebook work well for b2c businesses because potential customers have more buyer intent and take a shorter time to purchase than most b2b scenarios. Compare looking for a pair of sneakers with finding a new aerospace machining company to work with.

If you look at many b2c queries, especially for product businesses, you’ll see ads dominate the search engine results page (SERP):

When browsing Facebook, you’ll often notice ads for products you’re interested in:

The question is – how do you make these ads effective and how should you use them depending on the stages of awareness?

Attraction Facebook Ads

If customers aren’t aware of your company yet, you can use ads to attract them to learn more about you. A couple of strategies to find new people to reach are:

• Using detailed interest targeting in ads
• Creating audiences based on competitors in your niche
• Creating audiences based on your current customers called lookalike audiences

Here’s an example from my feed:

I’ve never personally been to this website, but I do like form-fitting t-shirts and have been to similar clothing sites. This brand is doing a great job of attracting me to learn more because it speaks to the things I want in a shirt, e.g., “athletic fit.”

Conversion Facebook Ads

Some ads will attempt to move through further through the stages of awareness by getting you to act in a way that helps further the relationship, mainly signing up for your e-mail list.

Often, these type of ads try to:

• Offer something valuable in exchange for your contact info
• Sell the benefits of joining their list
• Make the decision to sign up as easy as possible

Here’s an example of one of those ads from my feed:

Closing Ads

These types of ads are either for people who are well aware of the company or from companies who believe they can close the sale quickly.

For the former, this is often called a re-marketing ad. They know you’ve already interacted with their brand and they’re marketing to you again. There are some categories where it goes make sense to offer your product for sale via an ad right way, often a lower priced product with less friction to buy.

Conclusion

These are just a few of the many avenues you can choose for b2c marketing. It’s on you to choose the right strategy after understanding your customers first.

If you want to know exactly how to define your audience as well as how to sell to them, we can help. Just fill out the form below to get your free marketing proposal and competitive analysis in 48 hours or less:

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