Giving Away Our Trade Secrets
Here at Knights Digital, we know all about building an online presence – it’s one of several key services we provide for our customers across the North West and beyond.
In this article, we’re going to give away the process we follow with our clients to get more eyes on their business and website, from relevant people who might be interested in buying from them!
Ready to learn? Get your notebook out…
But First, Why is this is so important?
Setting up a website isn’t a once-and-done job. After you’ve spent good money building your company site, why on Earth would you want it sitting idle?
Think of it like a shop window. If you keep the same stock on display, month-in and month-out, why would anybody bother taking a peek inside?
Aside from anything else, search engines like Google can tell when a website is being left to its own devices – and they don’t like it. As a result, static websites tend to rank poorly on Search Engines Results Pages (SERPs).
So, what can you do to remedy the situation? That’s easy… sort of.
^^ Google’s offices at St Giles, London – yes those are giant deck chairs.
Step 1. Build Your Blog
Blogging is a great way to draw attention to your site. Informative articles – like the one you’re reading right now – show potential customers that you know what you’re talking about.
Not only that, it shows that you understand your customers and their problems and (most importantly) that you know a way to resolve them.
Best of all, a short, snappy blog article is just the start. That same blog can be distributed across your social media accounts, used as the basis for a podcast, turned into a YouTube video, or an on-site animation, and so much more.
Takeaway Points
- Figure out your audience
- Get to know them, what makes them tick
- Write down their problems
- Then how to solve them
- Write an article about each one
Step 2. Get Social
So you’ve got some fresh content appearing on your blog, every month or week (depending on how fast your business moves). That’s great, but how do you get people to see it?
Playing the waiting game doesn’t really work unless you’ve already built up an audience of return visitors.
The best way is to tease potential customers with eye-catching posts on social media. Whether you favour Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, a juicy snippet from the blog with a catchy title, striking graphics, and a link to your site will tempt people to take a look.
Don’t be afraid to use your personal social accounts as well as your business ones. Friends and family are perhaps more likely to spread the word on your behalf.
Takeaway Points
- Write down key chunks of tasty intel from your article - 4 or 5 of them
- Create some cool graphics for them, maybe use Canva
- Share or schedule them on social (on Facebook or Hootsuite)
- Include some catchy post content too, and link back to your article
- Tag people and ask for interaction from your network!
Step 3. Paid Prospecting
Okay – that’s a fancy way of saying adverts. The fact is, organic social reach is not as easy or as quick as it used to be and sometimes you have to grease the wheels a bit.
Facebook ads and the like can be targeted to an absurd degree to find your perfect demographic.
It takes a bit of tweaking for you to get really good results, but with the right audience insights and a suitably arresting call to action to read your blog, you’ll be getting new visitors who are really interested in what you do.
Create audiences before boosting posts. When you create your audience add things you know your target will like.
Eg. Expectant mothers will be interested in Mamas and Papas, Emma’s Diary, and other baby shops and magazines. Adding geography to that will refine things even more.
Eg2. Bricklayers would probably be interested in Travis Perkins, Screwfix, and the like. Catch my drift?
Takeaway Points
- Create a new Facebook audience with your key demographics
- Add targets for the types of things your audience will like
- Get specific with geographical targeting if you're a local business
- Target that new audience when you boost your post
Step 4. Retarget Interested People
Yep – it’s still advertising, but this time it’s aimed at those people who have already taken the first step of visiting your site. They know you, they know your product or service, and (hopefully) you’ve made a good impression.
A second round of adverts (maybe with an offer or two to sweeten the deal) can help convert interested visitors to paying customers.
You’ll need a slightly different approach, either in language or where you advertise, but the results can be worth it.
Takeaway Points
- Create a secondary re-targeting audience for site visitors and post interactions
- Make a new ad that's trying to get them back to a service page linked to the article
- Give them an offer or something with more call to action
Step 5. Shower, Rinse, Repeat
Once you’ve run through this cycle once, get ready to do it all again.
That fresh content you posted and promoted last month? It’s not fresh anymore!
Google wants more fresh content but, more importantly, so do your visitors. Make your site a repository of knowledge and information, keep on sharing, and people will keep coming back.
Takeaway Points
- Review your content monthly
- Change your creatives
- Keep your image and content fresh
- Target different services every month if you're struggling for ideas
How To Find The Time?
If all this sounds like a full-time job, that’s because it is, and your energy is probably better spent on the nuts and bolts of your day-to-day business, right?
You could always hire someone to handle your content for you – that would include a copywriter for the blogs, a graphic designer for the posts, a PPC specialist for the Facebook ads, and a social media manager to look after your accounts… at the very least.
Of course, if four full-time employees is an extravagance you can’t afford, why not consider an all-in-one solution at a fraction of the cost? Check out Alchemy from Knights Digital and get everything you need to attract the audience you deserve.
