You’ve spent a lot of time, energy and sweat building your new website. Stressing over every word, image and pixel. Now that you’ve done the hard work, the fun can begin. There is much bad advice on the Internet about how to promote your new or existing site using less than ideal tactics. I’m going to give you some straightforward ways to properly promote your site, and fast! Read on to get to work.
This is one of the simplest ways to get the word out. You probably have a list of customers or prospects that you’ve been communicating with over email. Now’s the perfect time to send a broadcast email letting them know you’ve got a shiny new website. Make sure to include the announcement in your newsletter you may already be sending on a weekly or monthly basis.
Bonus Points: Try to create an element of excitement by hiding an “easter egg” on your site for someone to find. You could offer up a $10 iTunes gift card for the first 5 people that find an image or random word that you’ve strategically placed somewhere on your site. This gives an element of competition and more of a reason for someone to visit.
Update Your Email Signature
Often overlooked, this is a simple way to get increased exposure by doing what you are already doing – emailing your customers. Make the change once and its automatically added to every email. Make sure you instruct everyone in the company to do the same, especially those in customer service.
Social Media
Social media is a great way to generate excitement and traffic. Carefully crafted messages and striking images go a long way towards capturing attention. Add on a good call to action and you’re sending fresh eyeballs to your new site. If you’re not already using social media to promote your business, shame on you! It’s time to bite the bullet and put together a plan. Get help if it seems overwhelming.
Social Media is broken into two categories:
- Organic: This is free and will give you increased exposure. Most businesses shy away because they think it takes up too much time. Well, that’s partly true because you need to put in the effort. However, using tools like Hootsuite help you save time by scheduling posts in advance. Even better, the basic version of Hootsuite is FREE. Get started creating messages about the new site and spread them over the course of several weeks. You’ll start to see the results in time.
- Paid: Most social media networks allow you to advertise for an additional cost. This can do wonders for getting greater reach, is affordable and highly targeted. Take Facebook for instance. Facebook allows you to target based on the enormous amount of data they collect on its users. Use that information to tailor your ads to target your ideal audience. Better yet, create a custom audience using your email list and get even better results. Advanced Technique: Facebook ads can be used to target people who follow your competition.
Flyers
If you’re an e-commerce company or sell any products you need to ship, you can create more buzz with one simple addition. Add a flyer to pack with the merchandise that announces the new website. Include a limited time offer or discount as an additional incentive for them to take a look. For example: We just launched our brand new website and are offering 20% off all orders through May 31st. Use code “NewIn16” to get the discount!
Even if you have a brick and mortar, you can add a flyer to customer’s bag. You can post signage up throughout the store. Anything to draw more attention to the new site launch.
What To Avoid
DON’T launch everything all at once. If you’re planning to launch a book, video, webinar, etc in addition to your new site, don’t do it all at once. Spread it out. You want your initiative to be focused on one thing for a good period of time. Distraction kills. Avoid distraction.
DON’T sell yourself short by promoting the new site for a week and then moving on. Spread it out. New is relative and just because some people saw this week’s posts, there are likely many that didn’t. By keeping the new site “new,” you give yourself more of an opportunity to capitalize on the “freshness.”
Analytics and Last Thoughts
Now that you’ve got this new site and you’re killing it with the promotion, make sure you’re analyzing the activity using tools like Google Analytics. You want to know what people are viewing most on the site, how often they leave and where they’re coming from. Are they using mobile devices more than desktop? How are Facebook ads doing versus sponsored Tweets? You need to know all of this.
It boils down to having a concrete strategy. You created a plan to build your site. You should have created a plan to promote your site. You should also have created a plan to measure performance. A good content marketing strategy goes a long way towards driving results. Putting these pieces in place may seem daunting, but with help, it’s not impossible. Quite the contrary. Put it all together and you’ll create great quality traffic for your new site, know what’s driving the activity and have the information available to improve future outcomes.
Good Luck!
The post Effectively Promote Your New Website In Under 20 Minutes appeared first on Inbound Marketing & Customer Lifecycle Management Experts - Mixed Digital.