This week we’re taking a look at budget solutions that can help you get the most out of your website, at a lower cost. If you missed our first blog in the series, definitely go back and check it out to find out if your business truly needs a website.
DIY WEBSITES
We have seen a big rise in DIY websites in recent years. Services such as WIX and SquareSpace offer anyone the opportunity to get up and running online at a low cost and relatively quickly.
There is most certainly a place for these kinds of websites. Most often, we recommend this option to young start ups who are operating on a shoestring. If you just need a destination page and to prove a concept, then they are great. You can build them yourself quickly and, with the right eye, they can look excellent. Where you will struggle is adapting to top end requirements to drive more customers through your doors. You’ll be limited by the infrastructure and constraints that these services operate within. If you’re considering building your own website, it’s worth looking back at our blog (‘Advice from a developer: Can you build your own website?’) that will help you decide if it is the right path for your business.
STRATEGIC LANDING PAGES
We are not suggesting that every business must find enterprise-level digital budgets, but we need to think more carefully about where that money is being used. EConsultancy highlights that “for every $92 spent acquiring customers, only $1 is spent converting them.” This makes sense if we are trying to build our customer base because we look at trying to spread the word to more people. However, this doesn’t make sense if we stop to think about increasing our ROI. Yes, getting more eyes on your product or service is great, but getting more customers is better.
With this in mind, we urge you to consider a strategic landing page. Marketo have reported that strategic landing pages are used by 68% of B2B businesses to acquire leads. They are essential mini-sites and therefore can be put together at a lower cost but, in addition, will allow you to track the success of the campaign and your efforts.
INTERACTIVE CONTENT
Another lower budget solution is to utilise interactive content on your social media channels, on your website (if you have one), in your emails and anywhere else you have an online presence. Content Marketing Institute shows that 53% of content marketers are using interactive content in lead generation efforts.
Interactive content is defined as: “content that requires the participants’ active engagement — more than simply reading or watching. In return for that engagement, participants receive real-time, hyper-relevant results they care about.” In other words, this type of content encourages a back and forth between the creator and the audience and, as a result, you can hold the attention of your audience for longer. Examples include surveys and polls, video, infographics.
Time Magazine estimates that you have approximately 8 seconds to capture a user’s attention online, which is increasingly difficult to do using conventional content such as a written blog. The use of video, on the other hand, will allow you to show the personality of your company and talk directly to your audience. We’ll come back to this specific type of content later in our blog series, but the benefits of video are countless. First and foremost, it will build trust between you and your audience. If you don’t have the budget to invest in security measures for your website, video will show the faces and personality behind your company letting your audience know they are dealing with real people behind the brand.
If you’re already utilising these lower budget solutions, come back next week when we will discuss the digital applications that make the difference between a cheap website and a mid to big budget site.
SOURCES
https://www.singlegrain.com/blog-posts/content-marketing/7-types-of-interactive-content-why-and-how-to-use-them/
https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics
