ADVICE
Digital Lighthouse
Double your
online profits
If you have bought into the myth that to succeed online, you only need to
build a website and customers will flock to you, you're condemning your
business to an early grave, say marketing specialist, Digital Lighthouse
T
he business landscape has
undergone a seismic shift
in the past few years as
B2C and B2B consumers
have adopted the internet
as their preferred way of interacting,
and that means online marketing is
no longer an optional extra – it’s a
business survival strategy.
Digital Lighthouse’s team of
marketing experts have developed a
system of key online marketing tactics
that, when used together, transform
any business’ online efforts. Those
tactics include using short, attentiongrabbing videos on your website,
using a lead-generating microsite,
using an automated follow-up email
system to nurture leads, ensuring your
website works as a lead-generating
machine, giving away valuable
content, creating a Facebook and
LinkedIn presence, using Google’s
pay-per-click advertising, and using
re-marketing to target website
visitors after they leave your
website and visit others.
The key to any company’s online
success is its website - it should
work as a lead-generating machine.
The website needs to be the hub
of an integrated system that draws
prospects in and then nurtures
them as they move along their
buying process.
This is unfortunately something
that very few companies succeed
in doing well. That’s because the
majority are still working under the
illusion that if you have a website,
people will come. It’s not enough
merely to have a website.
People need to be made aware of
your website, and they need to be
given a strong reason to visit and to
take the action you want them to take.
Those things don’t happen on
their own; you need to know how
to encourage people to move away
from where they are online - Google,
Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube to visit your website.
When they arrive on your
website, they should be able to see
instantly that you can help solve their
biggest problems.
According to Digital Lighthouse:
“Most visitors give a website eight
seconds or less before making the
decision to leave, which is why your
content, images, and videos need to
show them immediately you have
something they want. After all, once
they hit the back button and leave,
they’re unlikely to ever return.
When they go, they take with
them any opportunity you have of
convincing them that your business
has what they want.”
Since the majority of your
prospective customers – both B2B
and B2C – are likely to be using
social media on a daily basis, you
need to be active on the most popular
social media platforms.
You also need to communicate
with your prospective customers in
the right way –hard sales tactics don’t
work on social media networks and
do nothing but alienate the people
you’re hoping to reach.
If you do succeed in getting
prospective customers to visit your
website, you need to have a way of
capturing their contact details so that
you can continue to communicate
with them after they leave.
“There was a time when offering
visitors free subscription to a
newsletter was enough to convince
them to hand over their email
addresses, but that’s more of a
turn off these days,” says MD, Mr Jay.
“Very few people want yet another
newsletter email clogging up their
inbox. Many of them view the offer
of a free newsletter as a complete turn
off rather than a powerful enticement
to give you their email address.”
Instead, you need to offer them
something for free that they perceive
to be very valuable.
If your free offer works and they
give you their email address, you
then need a follow-up system in
place so you can begin to develop a
relationship with them. However,
they need to get to know, like, and
trust you and your company first.
Knowing which online marketing
tactics to use and how to use them
effectively is something that many
marketing professionals struggle
wi