So Your New Website is Live. Now What?
You’ve had a whirlwind few months – going back and forth with designers, developers, writers, and project managers to ensure your new website is beautiful and functional. Every last icon, image, letter, and pixel has been double-checked for absolute perfection. You devoted extra attention to user experience, workflow efficiency, and information architecture to ensure your online goals are not only met, but exceeded. Today, your brand new website launched, the floodgates are wide open, and new business has poured in like never before – right? Probably not.
How could this be? You did everything right. You hired talented people. You did the research. You invested your time, money, and resources into building a well-oiled digital machine engineered to sell. Don’t panic – these efforts aren’t in vain. It’s important to keep in mind, your pursuit of online success doesn’t end with a new website; it begins with one. Now is the time to get to work! Here are a few actionable items that should help inspire your next steps…
Content Marketing
Of course your new website is search engine-friendly, but that doesn’t mean it has the content to appear in search results. To put your business in front of potential customers online, you have to offer valuable content (blogs, videos, podcasts, infographics, white papers, etc.) that they might be looking for. The more you publish on a particular topic, the more authority you build within your industry and in Google’s very complex algorithm. Posting “evergreen” content that stays forever relevant will continue to work for you over time and cumulatively increase organic traffic to your site. Be sure to supplement your content marketing efforts outside of your own domain with social media, guest posting, and public relations as well. Everything ties into (and funnels back to) your website’s primary call-to-action.
Paid Advertising
Surely, you’re financially exhausted from building this aforementioned beautiful and functional new website. Now is not the time to close the purse strings, though. Trust that your improved design works as it’s intended to and begin sending large volumes of target traffic its way. Spend some money on Google AdWords and Facebook. Create specific landing pages to further increase visitor confidence and goal efficiency. Finding the perfect balance between ad spend and ROI is by far the most effective means of online growth.
Email Marketing
Does your reimagined website entice visitors to join your email list, complete a form, or contact you? Without a doubt, email marketing is still one of the best ways to reach a captive audience of past, present, and future customers. Remember, these individuals have opted to hear from you! Collecting new subscribers every day should be a top priority. Delivering relevant content to those subscribers’ inboxes is a close second. There is a lot that can be done with an email address these days, from responsive promotional templates to automated drip campaigns and even behavioral segmentation. An effective email marketing strategy keeps people engaged with your brand and coming back to your site!
Mind you, the items above are just a handful of directions to go after a website launch. Although independent efforts, they work in symphonic harmony together, when executed properly. Remember, a shiny new site may be an essential first step to growing your business online, but it’s just that – a first step. There is no such thing as “set it and forget it” in the highly-competitive digital marketing world. Passionate persistence and strategic action will surely garner measurable, positive, ongoing results for your business.