Key digital marketing channels to focus on for small business owners
Having the nicest website in the world will earn you the sum total of zero business if it doesn’t get any traffic. If you find yourself looking at your analytics and wondering why that site visitors number is consistently lower than you want it to be – this is the post for you! If you rely entirely on paid ads on Google and Facebook to bump the numbers, keep reading for a more sustainable and more diverse strategy for getting eyeballs on pages.
By the end of this post, you’ll have a much better understanding of how to drive interested, effective traffic to your site – in other words, people who are looking for a similar product, service or solution to what you offer.
5 ways to grow traffic to your website starting today
It literally doesn’t matter what business you are in – if you depend on customers to earn your living, you need digital marketing. Why? Because customers today have more choice than ever before, and whether they’re looking for a builder, a therapist or a plumber, there’s a very strong chance, they will do their research online to find one they want to work with.
So, in this post, I’m going to break down how you can use the power of digital marketing to grow your business – whether it’s online or bricks and mortar, and no matter what your actual service entails.
1. Sort out your website
Think of your website as your shop window on the internet. It doesn’t have to be complicated or highly technical – in fact, the simpler the better.
And the top elements to nail on your website are:
A home page that communicates what you do and who you do it for
Your home page should confirm to visitors that they’re in the right place, learn a bit about you and start to trust you. Because here’s the thing – we do business with people we know, like and trust. And your website is where you start to build those three things. Your home page needs to communicate very succinctly what problem you help solve and how that will improve your visitor’s life (pain point, product, and resolution/result). Don’t forget to include a call-to-action (book a call, read the blog, join the Facebook group – whatever it is you want your visitors to do) and some social proof (testimonials from past clients, reviews, case studies).
An About page - and the secret here is to remember it’s not about YOU, it’s about THEM.
Your About page should tell the story of how you can meet your clients’ needs and solve their problems. Yes, you want to share your skills and experience, but that’s not all - you should always tie it back to how this enables you to solve your clients’ issues. That way, they’ll know they’ve come to the right place. Talk about who your ideal clients are, what problems you know they struggle with and how you can help.
You’re probably wondering how to do that? Paint a picture for the reader. Help them to see, or even better feel the benefits of working with you. Being as specific as possible will help you connect emotionally. You want them to start visualising what a difference it would make in their lives (or their business) if they used your service. This is where you really start to hook them in. Always include that next call to action – whether it’s checking out your services page, reviewing your past work, or booking a discovery call.
A Services page that communicates the value of working with you
Listing off your services with a description of what you do and how you do it? I hate to be the bearer of bad news – but no one cares.
What your potential customers do care about is how they will feel after using your service, what it will mean for them, how it will help them achieve their goals and dreams – so THAT is what your services page needs to communicate. And there’s more… Once you’ve created that desire and emotional connection, it’s time to clear up any concerns or objections your visitors might have. How do you do that you might be asking. Well, by providing proof that you can deliver on your promise. Give credibility to your offer with reviews, testimonials, data, and cold hard facts on your previous results – all of which will help put to bed any doubts or niggling fears they have that it won't work for them, or that it sounds too good to be true.
Additional essential elements for your website
A contact page with multiple methods for getting in touch, catering to different preferences
Links to your active social media profiles
A clear, succinct call to action on EVERY page
More resources to help upgrade your website
If you’re DIYing your website and trying to decide between WordPress and Squarespace, this article might help.
Or if you already have a site but your content is not up to scratch, this article provides some guidance in addition to the above for writing better copy using a structured framework.
2. SEO
SEO is the art and science of getting visitors to your website by being visible on search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. In the UK, we mostly focus on Google because they capture such a large share of the search market (almost 86% of all searches).
As a very bare minimum, you want to ensure that your website comes up in the top position when people search for your brand or business name. Submitting your site to Google will help you get indexed quicker so you can start ranking for your business name and your target keywords, and it’s super simple to do:
Sign up for Google Search Console and connect your website.
Click on 'sitemaps' in the left-hand navigation.
Enter the URL for your sitemap and click submit.
Once you’re visible for your name, you’ll want to start targeting keywords and phrases your potential customers are likely searching on with the goal of getting indexed for these terms and starting to appear in search results. I’ve written an entire post on that, which you can read here.
And if you need some help identifying keywords to target, don’t worry – I’ve also got you covered. Here are four of my favourite tools for keyword research:
What else to do to boost your site’s visibility in search
Set up your Google My Business listing
Include your physical location on your website – either by typing out your address or with an embedded map – both of which will help you start showing up in relevant local searches.
3. Paid Search
Paid search, or pay-per-click advertising is a good option when you want results – meaning traffic – fast, and you have some money to invest. The downside is that when you stop spending, the traffic stops too – so this is definitely a channel you want to use in addition to all of the others.
It can be expensive, and especially at the beginning while you figure out your strategy, you are unlikely to make money. Expect to start breaking even after 3 months of test and learn. What exactly does that mean? Well, you’ll want to test pretty much everything:
Your targeting (what audience sees your ad)
Your placement (where your ad shows up)
Your creative (how your ad looks)
Your copy (what your ads says)
Your keywords (which ones you want to show up for, which one’s you definitely don’t want to show up for)
With paid ads, you want to target people with your specific services at the point where they are ready to commit and buy – not when they’re just doing an informational search. What do I mean by that? Well consider someone searching for ‘pasta recipes’… it’s highly likely they want to cook something up at home, right? Whereas someone searching for ‘italian food near me’ is more than likely looking for a place to go eat, or from where they can order takeaway.
To avoid burning through too much cash while you figure out this channel:
Set a maximum daily spend of £10
Create a handful of different ads and run them all to see which perform best
After a few days, you can pull spend from the under-performers and increase spend on the ads that are actually driving traffic and sales
4. Email Marketing
Often when we think about traffic, we focus on bringing in new visitors to our site, but getting people back is just as important. Return visitors are engaged visitors. If you’re selling a service or your offer is more of a considered purchase than an impulse buy - then this is key.
And here’s the thing - email marketing is one of the best ways to keep leads coming back to your site frequently to see what’s new, which gives you the opportunity to move them along your sales funnel.
Email is also the best way to stay in touch with your existing customers, remind them why they work with you, and let them know about new offerings. Unlike social media, where an algorithm will ultimately decide whether or not your audience sees the content you post, with email you go straight to your audience’s inbox.
The fundamental components of a solid email marketing strategy include:
Growing your email list
Creating content that your audience actually wants and needs
Automating and optimising
There are countless tools that can help you with all three of these:
Mailchimp
Convertkit
Flodesk
Klaviyo
I personally use and love Flodesk for my own email marketing – you can read more about why over here, where I also explain how to grow your list, how to automate your email marketing and how to create emails your audience will WANT to engage with!
If you do one thing this month – start to focus on your email marketing. A monthly newsletter is a great way to remind people about your site and get them re-engaged with your content. And it needn’t be a huge extra burden. Do you already write blog posts? Use those in your email marketing. Tease a little bit of content in the email newsletter, and link across to the blog for the full article.
Email is the best way to nurture leads and boost customer loyalty.
5. Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing can help you build brand awareness, build and engage with a community of interested followers and ultimately create relationships (back to know, like, trust) that will lead to eventually selling your service or product to your target audience.
As with all channels, you have to start with a strategy driven by your business objectives, which will help you focus on the most important activities and hone in on the best channels to use. One of the biggest mistakes small business owners make, is trying to be on all social channels, which almost always results in doing none of them well.
To grow your brand, your goal on social media will be to create awareness among your potential audience by maximising followers and shares, and to turn leads into customers by encouraging conversion from your social channels (think website click-throughs and email signups).
Before you can do either of these things – you have to do your research to know who your customers are, and what channels you can best reach them on. Tools like Buzzsumo can help you determine what the most popular channels are for your particular industry. This research will also help you understand what content is most liked, commented on and shared, all of which will be crucial to your success on any channel. You can use that research to create a content plan and calendar for each channel.
My top tip when it comes to social media – is to choose no more than two channels and do those two really well, unless you really have enough resource to go broader.
So, there you have it… 5 ways to grow traffic to your website and you can decide which make most sense for you based on your time, skills or budget.
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