HOW YOUR WEBSITE CAN BE THE "MAKE IT OR BREAK IT" FACTOR WHEN IT COMES TO YOUR MARKETING

This article can be broken up into four different sections, each section being EXTREMELY important in showing you how your website can be the make it or break it to your success in digital marketing. The four sections, in order, are: 

• Which Web Platform should I go with?
• Website Examples That I’ve Used In The Past Which Did Not Work & Why They Did Not Work + The Importance of Tracking In Helping You Understand These Factors
• What do you need to do before starting a website? Market research, color psychology, keyword research
• Our new website: WHY MVPs ARE SUPER IMPORTANT! You'll never start otherwise

WHICH WEB PLATFORM SHOULD I GO WITH?

There are a bunch of options to choose from, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. In order to make a wise decision for yourself, you need to deeply understand these advantages and disadvantages. 

Saad Hassan, one of my team members and close friends, goes into detail on this topic and reveals everything you could ever hope to know as a beginner in this area. See Saad’s article below to learn about this!

"Which Website-Builder is right for you"

WEBSITE EXAMPLES THAT I’VE USED IN THE PAST WHICH DID NOT WORK & WHY THEY DIDN’T WORK + THE IMPORTANCE OF TRACKING IN HELPING YOU UNDERSTAND THESE FACTORS

This topic is an extremely important one because by learning about my mistakes, you’ll be able to avoid them yourself. It will also give you insight into a very important topic - the necessities of tracking. Let me start by talking about how I started in the digital space. 

In 2017, I began working in the marketing space. I initially began in a startup agency in Surry Hills called oLab, who I still partner with, in different ways today even as I work on my own digital marketing business. There was one reason why I started - and knowing and understanding this is absolutely crucial to understand my later website predicament - I delved myself into the marketing space because I had a passion for writing and wanted to learn how to market my books so that I could make a living off of that. Possibly quite an ambitious endeavor for an 18-year-old to pursue. But it was what I wanted. And thank goodness I trusted my gut. 

Unfortunately, there were a lot of mistakes I made along the way - and there will probably be a tonne more that I will make - but the important thing is that I made those mistakes, and I now know better. Let’s take a look at the major first mistake I made. 

MY FIRST WEBSITE MISTAKE

I had just learned about the concept of funnels and I was extremely keen to implement a funnel for my new digital marketing business. But you see, I was so interested in creating a personal brand where I could speak about topics such as spirituality and personal growth that I decided to make my website include the marketing side of things and the personal touch. This was a total mistake. 

Upon starting the funnel and using Paid Search (Google Ads) as a traffic source, I generated around 30 leads in a week, but closed absolutely none of them! I couldn’t understand why, until I took a step back and asked myself, whom do I want to work with? 

That’s when I realized, the people I want to work with don’t care about my opinions on spirituality or personal growth. They cared about growing their business, and how I could help them do that. And so, my website needed to FULLY and COMPLETELY reflect that. 

If you have a website right now, ask yourself, ‘if my dream customer landed on this web page, would they feel like I understood their problem, like I’ve been there, and I know how to solve it for them?’ And if you don’t have a website yet, ask yourself how you can build one that makes your dream customer feel like I just described. If you can do that, you’re more likely to close. 

MY SECOND WEBSITE MISTAKE

This one was a big one! My sales calls would always fall apart. Why? Was it that I was terrible at sales? Of course not (although there’s always room for improvement). 

It was because I didn’t have a clear product-market fit. I was selling ‘digital marketing services’. But what does that mean?

At the end of the day, I’m trying to sell a service to someone, and that someone knows this, and my service has to include very specific things at a very specific price point for that someone to want to buy from me. In other words, I needed a clear package, based on research and data. 

I see so many businesses today selling something, but not really being specific about EXACTLY what’s involved. You’re selling personal coaching? Ok, great. What type of personal coaching? Who is it for specifically - mums, dads, teenagers? Be really specific and create a VERY SPECIFIC PACKAGE OR OFFER THAT FITS WITH YOUR TARGET MARKET. Ideally, you would have several of these, and your website would be built around these main offers/packages you are trying to sell. 

P.S. Creating a package or offer like this is a great first step. But remember, it should really be based on research - surveys, questionnaires, etc. After all, what you think may be great for your target customer might be terrible, according to them. Just look into the Vegemite iSnack2.0 disaster and you’ll understand what I mean. 

MY THIRD WEBSITE MISTAKE

The final mistake I made was not matching the quality of my website with the quality of clients I was after. If I was after high-paying clients, then I should have a high-quality website that reflects this. My previous website did not have this at all. 

Ensure that the look and feel of your website match the look and feel of the clients or business you want to attract. Conducting color psychology research can help tremendously here. Now, we never make a website at LT Marketing Solutions without doing color psychology research and market research first. 

TRACKING: HOW DID I FIND OUT THESE WERE THE MISTAKES I WAS MAKING?

Obviously, learning more has something to do with this. I know enough now that I would never make those same mistakes again today or tomorrow. However, I knew exactly what mistakes I had made without learning anything new. How did I do this?

It had to do with the tracking I used on my website - one of the things I got right (almost) from the start! Tracking what users were clicking, how they were moving, how far down they were moving on my webpages, and more allowed me to understand why I wasn’t getting the results I wanted. Having the correct data tracking in place is ABSOLUTELY essential to success in the digital space unless you want to leave your success to luck. Data is king. 

At LT Marketing Solutions, we always ensure that we set up the data tracking correctly on our clients (and our own) websites. Without this, we wouldn’t know how to constantly improve and how to spot mistakes before they become detrimental. 

THE KEYS TO STARTING YOUR WEBSITE STRONG

There are a few things you need to absolutely do prior to developing, designing, or even thinking about your website. These have been listed below. 

• Product: What specifically will you be selling? This needs to be mapped out and needs to be based on research. If you are selling it at $197, that needs to be backed by research. If you are selling three different, but very specific packages, this needs to be backed by research. Surveys, interviews, and questionnaires! 
• Keyword & Market Research: It is absolutely essential to conduct keyword research and qualitative market research (even if it is secondary data) in order to better understand your target market's hopes, dreams, fears, barriers, and uncertainties. This will aid you in all future digital and business decisions. 
• Colour Psychology Research: It is essential to do a color psychology test to find out what colors will appeal most to your target market. We have our own in-house test that we do, but you can learn about the details of color psychology online and create your own test. 
• Tracking: Once the website is created, make sure you install the following: Hotjar (or another similar tool), Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel & Facebook Pixel Events, Google optimize, Snapchat Pixel, and Google Ads tracking code.

Our new website: WHY MVPs ARE EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!

Our website is not perfect. You’ll notice that after you land on the first page and attempt to scroll to the bottom of the footer in the mobile version on smaller mobile screens. You see, there are a bunch of optimisations to make. This version is not perfect, and we know it. It’s not a mystery for us. 

However, it’s extremely important for us to post it now. Why do you ask? 

Because if the website didn’t go up yesterday, I wouldn’t be posting this blog today, I wouldn’t be capturing data on the website from interested prospects, and I wouldn’t have started to engage with people who were interested. If we waited till it was perfect in our eyes, it would take a long time and a lot of money to get it up, when we could be gaining new business during that time. 

This whole idea comes from the concept of MVPs - minimal viable products - that is, a version of a product with JUST ENOUGH features to satisfy potential customers and collect data for future improvements.

Conclusion

In conclusion, you need to understand that even if your marketing funnel is amazing and your campaigns are doing the right thing, if your website isn’t up to scratch, you’re not going to get results. In the article above, there are some insights you can garner to help ensure you get the most out of your website, but you can only do so much with those tips. 

If you would like a Free Short Audit of your website, comment ‘Free Audit’ on this article/post and I will reach out to you personally.