Starting A New Business Marketing "Musts" Part 4
January 11, 2018
I've posted several "marketing musts" blogs for people starting new businesses (see links below.) But today, let's talk website strategy for the start-up business.
As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, your domain name should match your business name- identically. Try if possible to purchase the domain at the very beginning so that you can make sure your business name and domain match. I've used Godaddy.com for years to purchase domains. Quick and easy, and fair pricing. I recommend buying your domain for 5 or 10 year periods. I've read that search engines may take the length of purchase into account in some aspects of search results. Also, make sure you set your account to "auto-renew" so that your domain is renewed when it's close to the expiration date. (I've heard horror stories about people losing their domains. Not a good thing!)
So purchase your domain asap- even if you don't have a plan to build a site right away. Sure, you'll want to have a site up prior to launching your new business, but get the domain registered regardless.
You might choose to build your own website. Nowadays, it's easier than ever to build your own site. I've built sites in Wordpress, NetObjects Fusion, and did most of the build-out for our new site at Lets Go Banners. We chose Shopify as our platform. It's really easy to learn and is very efficient and effective for Ecommerce sites. But you might be happy with a Wordpress site, which is about as affordable as it gets. Check out Youtube for tutorials about Wordpress.
So with starting your new business, you'll be getting some marketing items printed right? -such as business cards, vehicle magnets or graphics, signage, fliers, maybe a catalog. Make sure you post your website on EVERYTHING! And I highly recommend using Camel Case when printing your website/domain name. Much easier to read!
And when first starting your business, make sure you register with Google for local search response. This helps make sure people can find your business or location when searching for products or services you offer in your local area.
If your goal is for your site to reach a regional or national audience, you'll need to learn the basics of search engine marketing as well as possibly pay-per-click advertising. But building your site to reach a large audience will take time and possibly a fairly decent budget- depending if you're going to hire a search marketing company or try to do it yourself.
Make sure your site has important basic information easily displayed, such as your phone number, location, and product or service list. Picture quality is very important. Your site needs to look polished for credibility. And please make its easy for people to contact you by using an online form, or better yet, Live Chat. Many people contact us through our Live Chat which is an app on the Shopify platform. The Live Chats come directly to us to our PC's and also mobile devices, so people can basically reach us all the time!
After your first few months in business, you can reevaluate your website, and add to it or make any needed changes. Google Analytics is a must-have tool to see how your site is doing regarding traffic and conversion. And it's free!
Here are the links for parts 1-3:
Here's a link to Part 3
Here's a link to Part 2
Here's a link to Part 1
Thanks for reading!
Cheers,
Chris
Lets Go Banners
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