[vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0z5Yjl_-d4&feature=youtu.be”][vc_column_text]Hey, Greg here from Mtek Digital.
Let’s talk about the three ways businesses tend to use their websites and how most of them are doing it wrong. So there are three ways businesses tend to use their website. Number one, they use it as a business card. Number two, they use it for marketing or number three, they use it to replace sales people.
A business card website is just that. A business card. It’s not going to get put into anybody’s hand unless you’re doing the engagement for your business. So consider a business card website that is a simple site that has nothing, but a name, address, a map to your location, a general rundown of the products or services that you offer. Don’t expect that site to generate business for you. It generally won’t. It will however serve as an easy way or a reminder for people you’ve engaged with to find you again. Most businesses though, who don’t put a great deal of effort into their website assume that that business card is going to somehow generate business for them. At best it’s nothing more than a replication of data that’s probably already on Google and probably already not serving you.
The second implementation of a website that tends to be used and tends to be used wrong is a marketing site. Businesses seem to believe that by creating a website, that that site will do its marketing for it and they’ll tend to stop doing other forms of marketing. The truth is for a website to generate business, it needs to be paired with mechanisms to get the site into people’s browsers. Search alone will provide certain traffic and a organic search, if done well, so if the site has content, that’s meaningful and usable and valuable to the user, will over time generate traffic and that traffic should in time generate engagement and ultimately sales. But the truth is most sites aren’t built that way. Most sites are built and placed on a pedestal for the world to see, but nobody is ever taken there. A marketing site needs to be marketed. A marketing site needs to be put in the hands of potential business. And that means advertising through PPC, Google search, Bing search, tools like that. YouTube marketing through pre-roll and mid-roll advertising or at least link clicks from the YouTube environment, Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, all of these platforms have tools that will help promote that site to users. That is a critical step that most people seem to, well, they’d rather not have to deal with it.
The last kind of site that we see is a sales tool, a website that is built for the purpose of transacting with a client. Now, again, they tend to be used wrong. If a website is placed and there’s a store embedded in it, that store needs to be treated the same way a retail location would be. Sales need to be monitored, conversion needs to be monitored. Profitability needs to be monitored. And without doing the basic economic work of a store with the site, too much information is left out. That leads to, my website isn’t generating enough revenue, I don’t know how many people are coming, I don’t know how many visitors turn into buyers.
So, using a commerce site, or a sales site correctly, means that you have to treat it as though it were a salesperson. How many calls is it making? How many visitors is it getting? How many sales is it generating? How many times has that salesperson closed it? And more importantly, what is the cost of managing and maintaining that site relative to the income it’s generating. And again, just like a marketing site, that sales tool site is not going to function unless you are sending it leads. That means advertising on YouTube, on Facebook, on Google search, on Bing, on all of those platforms. So there are three sites that businesses use everyday. Business cards, marketing and commerce sites that are very rarely treated and utilized correctly.
If you think you’re one of those businesses, give us a call. We could probably help, but at a very minimum, consider how you’re using your site and what your expectations are of the site. If your results aren’t living up to your expectations, then you probably need to take another look.
I’m Greg from mtek, thanks for watching. If you like what you see, hit the little like button down there, it tells us we’re doing something right and if you wanna see more, by all means hit the subscribe button down below and hit that little bell if you wanna be notified when new videos come up.
Thanks for watching, we’ll see you next time.
(Transcribed from https://youtu.be/b0z5Yjl_-d4 )[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]