When it comes to your business, YOU see and think of your business as the greatest resource for the problem you solve. However, when it comes to marketing ideas about making it a place for your target market, are your PROSPECTS and CUSTOMERS hanging out there? If not, why not? Imagine doing a simple exercise to see how to make your website a more exciting place to regularly visit.
Marketing Ideas That Make Your Website Attractive to Your Target
When it comes to marketing ideas that attract prospects and customers, pretend YOU are your ideal prospect. Visit your website. Look at the things you really like. Then, take out a piece of paper. Draw a line down the middle to make two columns.
In the first column, write out on paper the specifics about what is so likable or lovable about your website. ONLY write what you like/love. That’s the first step.
Next, compare your website with your most common competitor. What do you like and even love about that person’s website? Write out in the second column on your paper the “likes” for your competitor’s website. Now you have two columns to compare.
When you casually visit a website, do you “ooh” and “ah” over every aspect you see? Probably not. You look for something specific that satisfies some personal interest. You may also verbalize what you like or dislike. So, do that now for your own website AND for the competitor site. You’ve already written what you like or love. Now write the negatives for your site and the competitors. Doing this exercise can help you get ideas about how to change your own website to make it more attractive to prospects.
If you’ve never done this exercise before, you may discover you’ve been inadvertently repelling prospects. You might even find out why you are not getting enough clicks and sales conversions.
The first place to look and see the “attraction/appeal factor” to your business is your website. Remember, something like 80% of people who come to your website do so use their smartphone. So, if your website is hard to navigate or buy from, it’s better to discover it now.
The next place to look for positives and negatives is with all other marketing materials your business distributes. What’s so appealing? What is kind of “blah?” What makes prospects keep your business card, hand out, premium?
See if you can find a way to bring excitement, enthusiasm and interest into your website marketing copy and marketing materials generally. Seeing what’s wrong and what’s right can make a big difference for your brand, your conversions and your business impression/reputation/trust factor.
One More Exercise Step
Write out a business scenario. What’s the worst possible scene of something negative that can happen? How would you handle it and STILL look like a reputable, professional business? When you write out ahead of time things that can go wrong and how to respond to/with them, it can help you see how you might inadvertently be repelling instead of attracting business.
Using simple marketing ideas like this helps to strengthen your business. When you know what your market sees while visiting your site, you can change things up to make their visits more pleasant.
Think of the sites you visit often. Start with something as simple as the site that shares weather information. What keeps you coming back to any particular site to check on the weather. After all, it’s JUST the weather.
What is the weather site doing to make you keep coming to that one site? The same philosophy might hold true for your business website.
Find out what is making your site so attractive (or, gulp, plain repulsive.) If you are not getting the traffic you want to your site, you may be repelling people. Luckily, you can change it to something different.