Well, your shiny new website is ready or you've realized that you're not getting enough traffic to your old website... and now a question arises: " How do I advertise a website ?"
In this post you will find the list of activities that you can and must do to bring visitors to your site, but not only that: I also decided to write all the aspects that usually no one talks about , because they are more uncomfortable.
1 The site is a piece of the strategy, not the end
I always write it, I always say it, and I really mean it: the website must be thought out and created in synergy with the rest of your marketing strategy .
You need to know in a nutshell who you want to visit it, why they should find it interesting, what you want them to do (download something? Write to you? Watch a video?), and know how to follow up with them once they leave.
Because they will leave it!
So if you haven't thought about these aspects you are wrong in evaluating now how to promote your site. You could create traffic, but not sell .
And you don't want that!
2 Not all advertising is created equal
Online as in real life there are different qualities of advertising . Do you want to make a comparison with offline?
It's one thing to choose where to go for dinner because a friend who knows you and has already been to the restaurant recommended it to you, but it's another story entirely to find an annoying flyer under your windshield wiper.
The restaurant is the same, but your rating is different .
The same thing happens online , where a whole series of activities that can be done are equivalent to the flyer under the windshield wiper. For example, banners (even those of Google Ads) or emails that you have not signed up for .
The annoyance is the same, and failure is assured.
3 First contact those who have already decided to buy
Once you understand that you don't have to bother your customers with useless advertising (yes, even useful advertising is annoying) you have to focus first on those who at least have a need to satisfy .
Elementary, right?
So these are the people who are looking for products and services like the ones you sell , that is, the people who use Google because they don't already have a reference in mind where to buy.
Right after asking yourself why YOU are not the reference in their mind, you have to recover and decide to turn to:
who wants to buy
who is getting informed
Going back to the good old offline world, it's like being a clerk in a wine shop and helping someone who is undecided in choosing the right wine for his dinner with friends, or having the customer in front of you with a bottle and credit card in hand .
Which one do you pay more attention to?
Well, the one with the credit card in hand online is called " commercially aware demand " and these are people who need to be directed to a product page, a specific landing page or at least to a product category.
You need to convince them that they need to buy from you now , right away , and that you are the right choice.
They need to contact you now, if you are a consultant or sell services.
They need to request an appointment now.
You can't bother them with " 5 tips for... or 10 rules to... " NO BLOG , yes purchasing information.
How do you intercept them? Using Google Ads if the site is new or if you are not in the first search results, and in the meantime using SEO so that this flow of customers is automatic over time.
End of story.
Then there are in addition: Bing (yes, it has 10% of the Italian market) and the offer aggregators (e.g. Booking, Pronto Pro, etc.).
This is for customers who have already decided to buy. But Google Ads doesn't always work and SEO isn't always enough.
Your job also involves monitoring how users behave on the website (using software like Hotjar for example) and continuously improving the details that lead to the purchase. And nobody tells you this...
SEO is also a zero-waste battle: if you take someone's place in the results, there will always be a battle to be in the top 10 positions because the place you took will want to take back, and it never ends.
The next step is to intercept people who are learning about the solution to their problem/desire.
These can take months to buy and you have to remind them that you exist in the meantime.
The tools to intercept it therefore become a blog , a newsletter , the creation of a community and a bit of remarketing (as needed).
Otherwise a blog is useless: there is no point in having traffic if you don't know what to do with it... remember point 1?
4 Make people who don't know you curious
Social media marketing is used to reach potential customers who don't know you, but who may need you or your products .
Imagine being the Green Peace activist who stops people on the street to propose supporting the association: a (nearly lost) battle!
What if you were a child health expert holding a small seminar for parents, and at the end of a free event you proposed supporting Green Peace to improve the health of THEIR children too?
Would they ignore you again? Probably not!
Social media work therefore consists of intercepting people (on the social networks they use) and gradually becoming familiar with them.
But this is not always the case : in some sectors it is completely useless because the purchase is impulse (and therefore there is no need for a progressive approach) or because your target does not use them .
And so it is useless to fish from here to advertise a site.
Furthermore (another thing they never tell you) social media are platforms that are supported by the sale of advertising , and your visibility must always be bought. Don't believe otherwise (below is a useful in-depth video on the subject):
In this category of targeted trawling advertising you can also include collaboration with influencers and publication/advertising on portals known to your customers .
5 Think about tools that you can manage independently
You're almost there: you've learned how to take people from the first moment of contact to the first purchase .
You have to do it (reread point 3) with directly managed tools . Email first and foremost, but also SMS , letters home and phone calls and much more.
Google periodically sends printed postcards to customers... doesn't that make you think?
What, once again, almost no one tells you ( our friends at WMI do, here is a must-read book ) is that if you don't set up a contact relationship management system before advertising, well, there's no point in doing any activity to promote a site .
What do you think?
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