5 Essential Marketing Tasks for Your Small Business Website

For the sake of digital marketing, your website is the be-all, end-all of your business. It’s likely the first impression prospective customers experience with your brand, distinguishing you from your competitors. It’s where customers, employees, and stakeholders go for updates and online purchases. It’s the one piece of online real estate where you control the narrative and can establish credibility.

No pressure, though.

If none of those reasons make you want to spend time and energy maintaining your website, consider this: customers and potential customers wholly expect you to have one. So while there are other marketing tactics that deserve your attention, make sure you prioritize the following essentials for your website. 

Include an Email Capture Tool

To grow your business, you need to acquire more customers and/or ensure current customers are repeat buyers. Neither of those are possible without contact information. Enter: the online form-fill. This form is your golden ticket to building customer and prospect lists for your advertising, email marketing, and other content distribution efforts.

But if you want something from this audience, you have to give them something in return. High-quality content, promotional offers, events—whatever the value proposition is, make sure it incentivizes them to give out their contact information.

These days, you can make a landing page or newsletter subscription bar faster than you can read this sentence. There are so many simple tools available with pre-loaded, customizable features. For landing pages, check out Unbounce, Instapage, and Leadpages. SumoMe, SleekNote, Bloom are great options for sign-up bars and pop-ups.

Add Content Regularly

Give users a reason to come back to your site through regularly updated content. Typically, this is done through a blog or other valuable content (e.g., case studies, e-books, webinars).

Only you and your marketing team will know what’s most important to your audience, but the key is to create content that’s useful, consistent, and relevant.

Some blogging best practices include:

●Don’t write solely about your company and its products; keep the customer in mind.

●Optimize your blogs for search engine optimization (SEO) to generate organic visitor traffic.

●Add interesting images, videos, or rich media to each blog.

● Create an editorial calendar for content ideas and planning purposes so you never run into publishing delays.

Use Imagery Wisely

There’s a reason for the saying: a picture is worth 1000 words. Our eyes are automatically drawn to imagery, and it often conveys emotions, values, and overall messaging much stronger than text can. This is why the type and quality of images you use on your website are important.

Use stock images sparingly. And when you do use them, make sure they’re royalty-free or licensed for distribution. There are plenty of stock photo sites available with high-quality options.

Also, don’t forget to optimize imagery for SEO by adding alt text. Go through and ensure all image files use the same naming conventions, include keywords, and are compressed so as not to hinder web page loading speeds.

Link to Social Media Profiles

The next best thing to a customer viewing your website? A customer scrolling through your social media content.

Keep social media profiles linked in the footer of all webpages for maximum visibility. It’s also a good idea to keep them in your email signature. And double-check those links! There’s nothing worse than a broken link on a business website.

Make Contact Information Accessible

Keep operating hours, customer service availability, and your contact information easily accessible and up to date. It’s a good idea to update it across all your social profiles and Google listings as well.

While some of these tasks take more time and resources than others, they all serve an important purpose for your marketing. And at a time when small businesses need a leg up, having a strong web presence can play a big role in achieving your business goals.