In 2024, a digital marketing strategy is essential for the success of every business in just about every industry. According to a Pew Research Survey, 81% of Americans conduct their own research before making an important decision. In most instances, this research is primarily done online. Without an effective digital marketing strategy, it will be challenging to connect with these people and convert them into valuable customers.

Your digital marketing strategy provides your business with a comprehensive plan outlining how you’ll leverage the various digital channels at your disposal to reach your target audience, grow your brand, and generate the high-quality leads necessary for your business to thrive. For your digital marketing to be effective, it must go beyond detailing the specific tactics your business will use and also provide a big picture view of how your efforts will complement each other in order to achieve your overarching goals.

Despite digital marketing becoming an increasingly significant driver of success for businesses in recent years, 45% of organizations still don’t have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy. These companies are failing to leverage one of the most important tools at their disposal to help grow their business. In fact, businesses that have a well formulated digital marketing strategy tend to report greater success than those who don’t:

• 75% of marketers improved the trust and credibility of their company when they employed a digital marketing strategy
• Marketing teams that document their digital strategy are 313% more likely to experience success

Still not convinced? Here are 10 reasons why it’s crucial that you adopt a digital marketing strategy in 2024.

You’ll Have More Focused Efforts Aimed at Achieving Specific Goals

Your digital marketing strategy gives your marketing team direction. It provides a roadmap that keeps your business focused on the goals they want to achieve and the initiatives necessary to reach these goals. When you set clear goals as part of your digital marketing strategy, it also makes it easier to:

• Prioritize the initiatives that will be most effective in achieving your desired outcome
• Arrive at the proper budget necessary to achieve your goals
• Determine that best way to allocate your budget in order to maximize the ROI on your efforts
• Identify the right success metrics to evaluate the performance of your marketing tactics

You Can Ensure the Latest Trends Guide Your Efforts

Many businesses simply keep the same digital marketing strategy in place year after year. While this is better than not having a strategy at all, you risk using an outdated plan that either no longer aligns with your current goals or fails to leverage the latest trends that are impacting the digital marketing landscape today.

Keeping up with the latest digital marketing trends has never been more important than it is in 2024. The last 12 months have ushered in a new AI era that is changing the way businesses operate. Many of the most successful companies have been early adopters of AI technology and are actively pursuing ways to use AI to improve every aspect of their operations, including marketing.

AI technology allows you to automate many aspects of your marketing efforts, improving your efficiency and results. A few ways businesses are leveraging AI in their marketing efforts include:

• Using AI tools to improve keyword research efforts
• Implementing AI-powered chatbots to improve customer experience
• Leveraging AI plugins to more effectively use existing platforms, such as Canva, with their social media efforts
• Leveraging AI and machine learning algorithms to analyze massive quantities of customer behavior data to determine the most effective targeting strategies
• Implementing AI-powered predictive analytics to more effectively examine patterns and trends that will optimize your marketing efforts

When you update your digital marketing strategy every year, it provides an opportunity to evaluate the latest trends, digital marketing channels and tools which can provide your business with a competitive advantage. This process of annual reflection and planning ensures you remain on the forefront of the digital marketing landscape rather than scrambling to catch up with the businesses that innovated before you.

You Gain a Deeper Understanding of Your Audience

In order to ensure you’re targeting the right audience and delivering a message that will resonate with them, you first need to understand your audience on a deep level. What are their pain points? What information are they seeking out? What motivates them to take action?

With many traditional marketing methods, you lack the data necessary to gain these insights about your audience. Digital marketing, on the other hand, delivers a treasure trove of data to help you refine your efforts to connect with your target audience more effectively. You’ll be able to capture a wide range of data, including:

• Which pages on your website are visited most often
• How long people spend on each page (a measure of their level of engagement)
• What questions are most commonly being asked (which you should then address in your marketing content)
• Which CTAs on your website are clicked most often
• How far down the page visitors go when they are on your website
• Which interactive features on your website generate the most engagement
• Which pieces of content are shared the most (an indication that your audience finds this content valuable)

In addition, you can leverage social media marketing to directly engage with your audience on a more personal level. You can learn a great deal about what your audience values by reading and responding to their comments on your social media posts. When you respond to these comments, you’re also creating a direct connection with the individuals who made them. This demonstrates that you truly value them, which will help forge a relationship which may lead to these individuals becoming customers down the road.

Read our article: Current Marketing Trends – Eliminating Negative Reviews

It Becomes Easier to Develop an Effective Value Proposition

Most businesses face a very competitive landscape. In order to succeed, it’s critical to differentiate your business from your competitors so that your audience clearly understands why your offering is superior and provides a better experience. Developing a comprehensive digital marketing strategy with the help of experts from merged.ca can help you refine your value proposition so that it resonates better with your audience.

The data you compile about your target audience makes it easier to build out detailed buyer personas which help you understand their preferences, needs and motivations. This information can be used to develop messaging that will differentiate your brand from your competitors and allow you to convey the value your business provides.

Your digital marketing strategy can then outline the ways in which you’ll deliver this messaging to your audience. A cohesive strategy will also ensure that this messaging remains consistent across all your digital marketing efforts. Whether someone visits your website, engages with you on social media, reads your email newsletters or clicks on your paid ads, they will receive the same messaging about the value you provide and the ways your business is different than your competitors. This cohesiveness creates a powerful effect among your audience and helps you generate a loyal customer base.

You Can Target Your Marketing Resources on the Specific Audience Most Likely to Become a Customer

Traditional marketing methods such as TV, print, radio or billboard advertising provide very limited control over who your ad reaches. While you can make certain calculated decisions with these channels – demographic information is available for viewership of many popular TV shows and magazines – there’s still no guarantee that the people seeing your ad will actually be interested in your product or service.

Digital marketing removes a great deal of this uncertainty from the process. You have the ability to target the specific audience that is most likely to resonate with your message and become a customer. Digital marketing makes this possible in a variety of ways:

• You can target your social media ads to only be delivered to the profiles of individuals who meet the specific demographic information you identify in your buyer personas
• You can use organic SEO strategies and paid search (PPC) campaigns to increase the likelihood that your website and other digital marketing efforts reach individuals who are searching for information associated with the products or services you provide
• You can create gated content pieces that allow you to capture the email addresses of individuals who are interested in your product or service, allowing you to follow up with them using targeted email marketing journeys which will build trust and credibility in your company so that you remain top of mind as these individuals move closer towards their buying decision
• You have the ability to create sub-groups within your target audience to ensure these individuals receive the most relevant information for their needs

Digital marketing allows you to compile data that will help you better understand your buyer personas and refine your marketing strategy to address their needs more effectively. Over time, these refinements should improve the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, allowing you to improve your ability to connect with your audience and convert leads.

You Can Engage Your Audience at Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

Most people don’t make purchases on impulse. Instead, it’s common for them to engage in a lengthy process where they research their options to understand what they need. Part of this research will involve learning more about specific products and services, but it will also give them an opportunity to learn more about the companies which provide these products and services.

When you’re able to engage your audience in the early stages of this buyer’s journey, it gives you a greater opportunity to capture their attention and move them through your sales funnel. Digital marketing allows you to accomplish this at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

With digital marketing, you have the ability to create content that targets every stage of this journey. Therefore, you can meet your audience where they are at the moment. In addition, you can track your audience through the journey to better understand their buying process. As you gain a deeper understanding of their behavior, you’ll be able to refine your marketing efforts to convert more leads.

Results Are Easily Measured

One of the greatest limitations associated with traditional marketing strategies involves the ability to accurately measure the results of your efforts. It’s virtually impossible to identify how many people contacted you after watching your TV commercial or viewing your print ad. Digital marketing, on the other hand, delivers a wealth of data that allows you to accurately measure the success of your efforts.

You can use analytics data to gain a comprehensive understanding of your website traffic, including:

• How many people visit your website
• Which pages they visit
• How many pages they view while visiting your website
• What type of device (desktop, tablet, mobile) was used
• Where these visitors are from
• Where your website traffic is coming from (organic search, paid search, social media, etc.)

This data can help you prioritize which marketing channels to invest most heavily in. For example, if you’re getting most of your traffic from paid search, you may want to increase your budget for your most important PPC campaigns.

You can also use this data to track all your sales back to an individual’s first digital interaction with your company. This process, called attribution modeling, enables you to identify trends in the way your audience is engaging with your online content. This information can be used to refine your efforts at every stage of the buyer’s journey to keep your audience more engaged and increase the likelihood of converting them into a new customer.

Find Answers with our Marketing Strategy FAQs.

You’ll Maximize the ROI of Your Marketing Efforts

When you develop a digital marketing strategy, you’ll have a framework in place that allows you to track the ROI of each tactic used in your strategy. An effective digital marketing strategy will always outline the:

• Specific goals you’re trying to achieve
• The marketing tactics you’ll use to achieve these goals
• The success metrics necessary to track the effectiveness of your efforts
• The benchmarks that must be hit in order to achieve your desired outcome

Your analytics data allows you to track the day-to-day and month-to-month performance of every campaign. Over time, this will provide you with a detailed understanding of which tactics are performing well and which are struggling to deliver your desired results. You can use this data to refine your campaign, focusing on the tactics that generate the best results. You can also reallocate your budget so that you dedicate more resources to the channels that are contributing the most to your overall success. This will allow you to maximize the ROI of your marketing efforts.

It Becomes Easier to Compete with Bigger Companies

If you’re a small business, you most likely lack the deep resources possessed by the largest companies in your industry. With limited resources, it’s extremely challenging to compete in traditional marketing methods which require a tremendous investment of money to deliver results. Digital marketing creates an ability to target your efforts in a way that allows you to compete with these larger brands more effectively.

With some savvy SEO work, you can identify specific search queries and long-tail keywords which are being used by your target audience. By creating high quality content around these terms, you have an opportunity to outrank larger businesses who may not be focused on these valuable search terms. Creating content that resonates better with your audience than what is being produced by bigger brands gives you the ability to reach a larger number of people than is possible with a limited marketing budget that is focused on traditional methods.

Read our article: Current Marketing Trends – Getting Your Content Marketing Strategy Started

You Can Improve Your Conversion Rate and Generate Higher Quality Leads

Perhaps the most important benefit you’ll experience from all the data generated by your digital marketing efforts is the ability to improve your conversion rate. You can review data associated with the various CTAs on your website and run A/B testing to see which are most effective. You can also identify which of your marketing methods typically result in the most conversions, allowing you to invest a larger percentage of your resources in the strategies which have proven to be most effective.

In addition, you have a greater ability to target specific audiences with digital marketing. This allows you to focus your efforts on the segments of your audience which yield the highest quality leads – both in terms of their likelihood of becoming customers and the amount of money they’re likely to spend with your business once they convert. This not only helps improve your conversion rate, but also can boost the revenue generated by each new lead.

Getting Started Building Your Digital Marketing Strategy

If you already have a robust digital marketing strategy, congratulations. You are way ahead of many of your competitors. For those businesses that have been struggling with creating and implementing a strategy, here are some tips to help you get started:

• Identify your marketing goals – Less is more. If you establish 10 or more goals, you will struggle to create a cohesive strategy that achieves each of them. Pick the 3-5 goals that will move your business forward the most and focus on those.
• Identify KPIs for each goal – How will you measure whether you’ve successfully achieved each of your goals? What metrics are most effective at measuring this success?
• Understand your target audience – Create a series of personas that provide detailed information about each segment of your target audience. Include demographic information, pain points, what types of messages resonate with them, and what will motivate them to take action.
• Determine which tactics will most effectively achieve your goals – Are you focused mainly on organic search? Paid search? Does your audience engage with you most on social media? Make sure you’re implementing the proper strategies to achieve the goals you’ve established.
• Continuously monitor and refine – After implementing your digital marketing strategy, make sure you regularly review your data to measure the success of your efforts. When necessary, make adjustments to your strategy to improve the outcomes.

Read our other Marketing Strategy Articles full of Helpful Information.

Webolutions Can Help You Develop and Implement a Digital Marketing Strategy

Developing an effective digital marketing strategy is a complex process that takes considerable experience and expertise to get right. Unless your business has the resources to employ a team of in-house marketing specialists, it’s generally more effective to work with a seasoned digital marketing agency who can help you craft and implement a strategy that aligns with your goals. With nearly three decades of experience, Webolutions can set you up for success.

Webolutions is the only strategic digital marketing agency in the United States delivering a transformational Intrinsic Multiplier™ Approach to grow your business faster, smarter and easier. We lead you on a collaborative journey to identify what is special about you as a company. Our team will then conduct thorough market research to clearly understand what your competitors are doing and saying.

As part of this process, we’ll create a Market Positioning Action Plan™ that clearly differentiates you and makes you stand out from the competitors in your industry. This plan will be used to develop your Brand Platform™, which creates a cohesive story and brand messaging that will be used throughout every aspect of your marketing efforts. Based on this information, we’ll develop a detailed digital marketing strategy that brings your story to life and achieves your goals for the upcoming year.

Our team provides comprehensive digital marketing services, and we will recommend the right mix of methods to convey your brand story most effectively to your target audience. We’ll implement the right communications and tracking systems necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of your strategy. Over time, we’ll make any adjustments and refinements necessary to achieve your marketing goals.

This exclusive approach results in faster, easier company growth that allows you to thrive for years to come.

Contact us today to schedule a free consultation.

The post 10 Reasons You Need a Digital Marketing Strategy appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

While it’s true that you can reach your audience through a variety of mediums – social media, paid Google ads, review sites such as Yelp, radio or TV commercials, email marketing, and print materials (to name a few) – you need a place for your audience to go to learn more about your business and the products/services you offer. This place is your website.

All of these other mediums are intended to drive traffic to your website. This is because no matter how and where someone discovers your business, they will always reference your website to dig deeper if you’ve piqued their interest. As a result, your website becomes an extremely powerful tool that has a greater ability to impact the success of your business than all your other marketing efforts combined.

Regardless of the industry you’re in, your website presence can be your biggest lead and revenue generator. When you make your business website your primary marketing tool, you will exponentially expand your ability to grow your company. However, for this to occur, it must be designed well and provide a great user experience. Otherwise, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to connect with your audience, build your brand, and provide them with the ability to take your desired action(s), such as:

• Scheduling a consultation
• Requesting a demo
• Signing up for your newsletter
• Purchasing your products

The following reasons will explain why your business website is so important, and why it should always be your primary marketing tool.

Your Website Is an Ambassador for Your Brand

Establishing a strong brand is one of the most important components to growing your business. Your brand creates a series of positive associations between your company and the moments of happiness in people’s lives. It defines what you stand for, creates expectations in the minds of individuals who hear your name, and builds an emotional connection that helps you convert your audience into customers/clients. It’s also an important way to differentiate your business from your competitors.

Your website is the most effective way to showcase your brand to your audience since it’s the easiest way for them to find reliable, high quality information about your business. It provides an avenue to convey every aspect of your brand in detail, including your:

• Colors and fonts
• Photos, videos and other visual representations of your brand
• Content and tone
• Logos

Most importantly, your business website provides you with a medium to tell your whole story to your audience. It allows you to create a more in-depth explanation of your team, history, products/services, purpose and values, and expertise. All of these parts of your story help reinforce the other elements of your brand listed above.

Showcasing your brand completely on your business website builds a powerful connection with your audience. When this brand messaging is consistent throughout all of your marketing materials, your website will reinforce the impression your audience gathers on your social media profiles, in your print ads and on your videos. The end result is a more compelling story that helps influence your audience to take your desired actions.

Your Website Establishes Your Credibility

One of the primary benefits of a well designed business website is that it will improve your credibility among your audience. You most likely have several competitors offering similar products/services to yours. When evaluating their options, your audience will typically choose the business that most effectively establishes credibility and earns their trust. Your website is a powerful tool to build this credibility among your audience.

Your business website establishes credibility in a variety of ways:

• It provides reliable, quality information that educates your audience
• It highlights your background, credentials and expertise
• It provides examples of the quality work you’ve produced for other customers/clients
• It creates a cohesive message that reinforces the impression your audience gained from other channels such as your social media profiles
• It provides a good experience that reflects what your audience can expect when they work with you
• It conveys a level of professionalism
• It links out to third-party review websites that can confirm your legitimacy and reputation

On the other hand, having a poorly designed website that provides a poor user experience – or even worse, not having a website at all – can be devastating for your credibility and drive your audience to your competitors who do a better job at building trust with their website.

Your Website Increases Your Visibility to Your Target Audience

We live in a digital age, and people have become increasingly reliant on the internet to find the information they need. Today, most people start researching the products and services they need by conducting a search on Google. Having a strong website that ranks well on search engines is critical to your ability to reach your audience when they conduct their research.

Search engine results don’t highlight social media profiles, specific tweets on a subject matter, or TV ads. They feature websites that provide the most relevant information associated with your search. Without a well designed business website that utilizes SEO best practices, you will fail to reach a large portion of your potential audience.

Moreover, traditional marketing methods such as radio ads, TV ads and direct mailers have become less impactful in the digital age. With the overwhelming majority of people consuming music on streaming platforms, radio audiences have dwindled. Similarly, the rise of streaming platforms such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime have caused many people to cut out their cable package, limiting the reach that can be achieved by TV ads.

Even other digital tools such as social media profiles provide more of a supplemental role in expanding your visibility, as people are unlikely to follow your page if they’re unable to find your website to discover your company. For these reasons, a website is critical to establishing the visibility with your target audience necessary to grow your business.

Your Website Houses All of Your Educational Content

Your business website serves as your primary source of information for your audience. It’s where you can post blogs, thought leadership pieces and other educational content that provides a valuable resource for your audience. This content is critical to your ability to establish your business as an industry leader.

You can also use your website to offer highly detailed guides, case studies, charts, research papers and other materials that can be downloaded. These pieces not only provide your audience with the information they need to make decisions on their purchases, but it helps you capture their contact information, allowing you to leverage email marketing strategies to continue nurturing a relationship with these people.

Without a good website, you won’t have a central location to showcase all of this material. This will make it much more challenging to educate your audience about your products/services and demonstrate that you’re an industry leader.

Your Website Allows You to Gather Valuable Data About Your Customers and Marketing Strategies

Your website provides a wealth of data that can help you to better understand your audience and evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. You can track a variety of important metrics, including:

• Total website visits
• Number of unique website visitors
• Number of return website visitors
• Page views
• Bounce rates
• Conversion rates
• Time on page
• How far readers typically scroll down the page
• Which call to action (CTA) buttons are being clicked most often
• Which items on your web pages are generating the greatest levels of engagement
• Top sources of your website traffic

You can use this data to learn more about your audience. You can identify the messaging that resonates with them most, the most common questions they’re asking, and what motivates them to take action. This allows you to more effectively market to them and improve conversions.

This data can also help you understand which marketing strategies are achieving the best results. This allows you to refine your approach in order to focus on the efforts that generate the best return on your investment.

No other marketing tool delivers as much actionable data as your website. While other digital tools such as social media and email marketing provide useful data, it’s much more limited in scope than what you can gather on your website. In addition, gathering data is virtually impossible with most traditional offline marketing strategies.

If you want to evaluate the performance of your marketing strategies and make highly informed decisions on how to improve these efforts, your website plays a critical role in compiling the data you need.

Webolutions Can Help You Maximize the ROI of Your Business Website

If you’re not leveraging the benefits of your website to drive leads and grow your business, it may be time to revamp it. Webolutions can help with your business website redesign, allowing you to maximize the potential of your marketing efforts.

We’ve been Denver’s leading web design agency since 1994. Our award winning websites are designed with one goal in mind – to help your business thrive. You’ll benefit from our Websites Right Methodology™ which provides a fully integrated, strategic approach to website development. This unique process has been refined over three decades based on the experience of building thousands of websites. It allows us to develop a truly customized website that conveys your brand messaging, highlights the transformation you achieve in the lives of your customers, and provides a powerful lead generation tool.

With our Websites Right Methodology™, you’ll enjoy an exceptional client experience every step of the way. But more importantly, your new business website will deliver the superior marketing performance you need to achieve your marketing goals.

Contact us today to schedule a free consultation. Webolutions serves businesses nationwide from our offices in Denver, Colorado.

The post Why a Business Website Should Be Your Primary Marketing Tool appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

There are different specialists required to ensure the visual and technical aspects of your website work properly – web designers and web developers. While these two professionals work together and have some overlapping roles, their skillsets are somewhat distinct. They play a complementary role in bringing your website to life, and both are equally critical to the success of your digital marketing efforts.

One of the benefits of working with a website design and development company is that there will be optimal levels of collaboration between your website designer and developer. This ensures proper alignment between the website design and website development aspects of the process, allowing you to have a highly performing website that conveys your brand messaging, generates leads, and grows your business.

What Does a Website Designer Do?

What Does a Website Designer Do?

The website designer creates the visual and graphical elements of your website. They focus on the overall layout, aesthetics and usability of the website. Your web designer works to make sure your website is visually appealing and provides a good user experience.

The key elements of your website that are handled by the web designer include:

• Layout and design – The overall layout and design determines how important items such as logos, navigation menus, headers, footers, text, and graphical/video elements are arranged on each page.
• Branding and colors – Your website should convey your company’s brand. This includes any logos, icons, colors and fonts associated with your branding. When these elements are addressed properly on your website, it helps you make a better connection with your audience and ensures your website will look and feel consistent with your other marketing assets.
• Graphics – The graphical elements of your website refer to any photos, illustrations, infographics and other images used. The graphical elements your website designer chooses should complement your branding and enhance the overall layout of your site.
• Hierarchy – The visual hierarchy plays an important role in your ability to make a good impression on users, attract potential leads, collect user information and generate sales. An effective hierarchy will ensure calls to action (CTAs), headers and graphical elements are placed in a way that will most effectively achieve your marketing goals.
• Navigation – One of the most important functions associated with website design is making sure users can easily move around the site to find the info they’re looking for. The navigation structure plays a critical role in accomplishing this function. An effective navigation menu should be highly visible, easily accessible and intuitive. Websites with a poor navigation structure will make it hard for users to find what they need, resulting in a poor experience that may drive visitors away from your site.

Read our Helpful Web Design and Development Articles

Types of Website Designers

Types of Website Designers

There are specializations within the web designer role. Each of these specializations is critical to the success of your website. While some designers may be able to perform all these roles, it is also common for web design and development agencies to have different designers who specialize in each niche:

• User Experience (UX) Designer – The role of the UX designer is to make sure the website is structured in an engaging way that provides a good experience for all visitors interacting with it. In order to accomplish this, they must conduct thorough research into the demographics and needs of your target audience and test a variety of options to arrive at the design that will most effectively engage your audience and keep them coming back again.
• User Interface (UI) Designer – While the UX designer creates the foundation for a strong user experience, the UI designer works to ensure the website aesthetics (the look and feel) is designed in a way that will maximize conversions. This role is responsible for creating the graphics and typography that will optimize the layout of your website. The UI designer also creates a variety of elements such as CTA buttons, dropdown menus, navigational components, data fields and message boxes that make it easier for the user to interact with your website and complete your desired actions.
• Visual Designer – The visual designer combines certain aspects of the UX and UI design roles to make sure the website is both easy to use and visually appealing. They help bring your brand’s style and tone to life in order to improve the user journey.

What Does a Website Developer Do?

The website developer performs the behind-the-scenes coding and programming that allows your website to function properly. The developer works to bring the designer’s ideas to life by constructing the actual website. Website developers must work closely with the designer(s) in order to ensure all the design elements of the website work properly.

The key elements of your website that are handled by the web developer include:

• Programming – Front-end coding languages such as CSS, HTML and JavaScript are used to convert the design into a fully functioning website.
• Optimization – Whether they are building a custom website or working off of a website theme from a third-party platform such as WordPress, Drupal or Joomla, developers optimize the website by eliminating any unnecessary code that will cause it to be bloated and slow. In addition, the optimization process involves making sure the website will function properly and provide a great experience on all devices (desktop, tablet and mobile) by implementing best practices such as responsive design.
• Structure – Developers are responsible for making sure the coding of your website is structured properly. This improves load time, even for very large, complex websites.
• CMS operations – It’s common to build websites using a CMS (content management system) such as WordPress. When these platforms are used, developers must be able to manipulate the framework of the existing CMS to ensure your website’s design is integrated properly.

Types of Website Developers

Types of Website Developers

As with designers, there are specializations within the web developer role. Each specialization is critical to the success of your website. In general, website developers can be classified into the following roles:

• Front-end developer – Front-end developers are responsible for the coding and programming of the visual elements of the website that the user experiences and interacts with. They bring all of these elements to life in the finished website, ensuring it has the proper look and feel that will resonate with your target audience. This includes just about everything that your website users see, such as colors, text styles, images and graphics, buttons, forms and the navigation menu. In addition, the front-end developer is responsible for making sure the website works properly on all devices.
• Back-end developer – Back-end developers are responsible building the elements of the website that exist “behind the scenes.” In other words, they work on the part of the website that isn’t visible to end users. They use advanced programming languages to create the code for the servers and databases that store and arrange your website data. They’re also responsible for website testing and fixing any bugs that are identified during testing.
• Full stack developers – In some instances, you’ll have a website developer who can perform all the front-end and back-end coding. These individuals are called full stack developers.

Designers and Developers Both Help Create an Engaging User Experience

Website designers and developers work together in a complementary manner to build your website, and both are critical to the success of the project. While they perform distinct roles, they both play an important role in creating an engaging user experience that sets your website up for success.

Delivering a great user experience is one of the most important goals of the process, as this will ensure your audience has a positive reaction whenever they visit your website and are more likely to return. If your website provides a poor user experience, you’re much more likely to see visitors leave quickly and seek solutions for their pain points from one of your competitors who provide a better experience.

Both web designers and web developers contribute to your ability to create a great user experience. The designer achieves this goal by making sure your website looks engaging, is easy to navigate, and clearly directs users towards the desired actions they should take. The developer achieves this goal by making sure the website functions properly, loads quickly and looks good on any device used to view it.

What Are the Main Differences Between the Website Designer and Developer Roles?

What’s the Difference Between a Website Designer and a Website Developer?

Due to the complementary nature of these roles, there is some crossover between their skill sets. However, these are two distinct roles and while your website designer and developer work together to build a high performing website, there are many elements of their jobs that are wholly different from one another.

Website Designers Do Not Write the Code

While some designers may have a working knowledge of coding best practices, they aren’t responsible for writing the code or programming your website. Coding isn’t involved in any of the primary tasks associated with enhancing the visual experience of the website, such as developing visual assets, designing CTA buttons, creating mockups and designing layouts.

Website Developers Do Not Create Assets

Website developers, on the other hand, do not play a role in creating the visual assets that contribute to the aesthetic appeal of the website. Instead, the developer writes the code to ensure these visual elements function properly when they appear on the website.

Webolutions Can Help You Build a Website That Grows Your Business

Due to the highly specialized nature of these two roles, it’s important to work with a website company that provides both website design and development services. When you work with an agency that has both in-house designers and developers, it will allow for greater collaboration and alignment between these two important components of the process.

At Webolutions, we have the specialists needed to build a website that performs well, engages your audience, generates leads and grows your business. We’ve been building websites since 1994, when the internet was in its infancy. We’ve witnessed firsthand how website best practices have evolved over the past three decades, and our team possesses the expertise necessary to build a website that sets all your marketing efforts up for success.

You’ll benefit from our unique Websites Right Methodology™ which provides a fully integrated, strategic approach to website development. This exclusive approach has been refined over nearly 30 years and incorporates the knowledge and lessons learned from designing thousands of websites. Our Websites Right Methodology™ utilizes a meticulous process that creates a far better client experience and results in superior website marketing performance that elevates your business results.

Contact us today to schedule a free consultation. Webolutions serves businesses nationwide from our offices in Denver, Colorado.

The post What’s the Difference Between a Website Designer and a Website Developer? appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

In a recent blog post, our CEO and founder, John Vachalek, outlined the fundamental building blocks necessary to establish and maintain a strong market leadership position. If you haven’t already read this piece, we strongly recommend that you do, as it will provide you with a blueprint for how to build the infrastructure necessary to emerge as a market leader.

However, building this infrastructure isn’t enough to secure your place as a market leader. This work must also be accompanied by a product or service offering that stands above those delivered by your competitors.

If your current offering has placed you in position to attain a status as a market leader, then you’ve cleared one of the critical hurdles to achieving this goal. By following the steps outlined in our previous blog, you will be well on your way to establishing your market leadership position. But if your offering doesn’t position you to truly stand out as a market leader, the following tips will help you refine your offering so that you can deliver the transformational value that is typically associated with market leadership.

Choose a Niche

Unless you have a proprietary technology, design, intellectual property, or other solution that stands above the other businesses currently entrenched as established industry leaders, it can often be challenging to demonstrate that your offering surpasses the tried-and-true options that are already on your audience’s radar. Instead of trying to wedge your way into such intense competition, you can specialize in a specific niche of your industry.

Specializing in a niche allows you to target a much narrower market. While there may be less of a demand for your niche offering than there would be if you target a broader market, there will also be considerably less competition. This will make it much easier to establish yourself as a market leader, allowing you to capture a larger percentage of the market associated with your specific niche.

Make Sure Your Offering Is Remarkable

Even in a niche market, you will still have some competitors with a similar specialization. While you won’t have to stand out in as crowded of a field, you will still need to stand out. The best way to do this is by offering something remarkable or exceptional.

There are two components to offering something remarkable. First and foremost, your offering needs to be high quality and provide the solution your audience needs. However, this will only position your offering as a commodity, leaving you vulnerable to a competitor stealing your leadership position in the future. In order to have a truly remarkable offering, it must also provide a transformational experience for your customers/clients.

A great example of a company making their offering remarkable is Apple with the iPod. There were several other mp3 players entering the market at the same time Apple released the iPod, but Apple was able to quickly establish their product as the market leader, allowing them to dominate the competition.

How did they do this? By creating an offering that provided a transformative experience. The iPod looked slick and provided an easy to use click wheel that stood out as unique compared with the other options. The iPod also quickly became synonymous with a trendy, hip lifestyle that gave its users tremendous joy and pleasure. This transformative experience made it much more than a music player, and it helped Apple corner the market.

Don’t Wait for Perfection to Launch

You can’t be a market leader without an offering. If you wait for perfection, you’ll never launch your product or service. Instead, launch as soon as you feel your offering is quality and then iterate as needed to continuously improve.

Despite your most herculean efforts, no product or service offering will ever be perfect, especially at the time of launch. However, if you ask your customers for feedback and make changes to address their needs and concerns, you can quickly turn a good offering into a great one, albeit still an imperfect one. By launching quickly and innovating after launch, you can stay on the forefront of the needs of your customers and remain ahead of your competitors.

Prioritize Customer Satisfaction

Satisfied customers are essential to be considered a market leader. If your customers aren’t happy with your offering, they will seek these products/services from a competitor in the future.

In today’s social media driven world, customers have a greater ability than ever before to shape the narrative surrounding the quality of your offering and the experience you provide to your customers/clients. The comments people make on social media and the reviews they leave about your offering can significantly impact the way others will view your business. According to research conducted by customer service professionals at Dixa:

• 93% of individuals read online reviews before making a purchase
• 79% of individuals place as much weight on online reviews as they do on personal recommendations
• 86% of individuals are hesitant to do business with a company that has negative online reviews

Your offering must not only be high quality, but it must meet or exceed the expectations of your customers/clients. When this occurs, it will turn your customers into brand ambassadors for your business, making it much easier to elevate to the status of market leader.

Conversely, negative feedback on social media and poor online reviews can tank your reputation, making it extremely challenging to be viewed as a market leader. If you receive negative feedback via reviews or social media, make sure to address these problems directly with the customers leaving these reviews, and use their feedback to improve the experience your offering provides in the future.

Invest in a Comprehensive Marketing Strategy

Once you have a strong offering that delivers an amazing experience to your customers/clients, you need to spread the word about your offering. Building a comprehensive marketing strategy that effectively conveys your brand messaging, tells your story and lets your audience know that your offering is first rate is essential to ascending to a market leadership position.

Since we live in a digital age, the bulk of your efforts should focus on digital marketing strategies. By building a strong website that is supported by quality content, social media marketing and regular email newsletters, you can educate your audience on the benefits they’ll receive when they choose your offering over your competitors. Over time, this will help establish your business as a known entity in your market. As you become known for delivering a quality offering and amazing customer experience, you’ll begin to be viewed as a market leader.

Webolutions Can Help

As a full-spectrum management consulting and strategic growth implementation agency, Webolutions has been helping businesses across the country effectively bring their unique stories to life for nearly three decades. Our purpose is To Empower Passionate People to Thrive, and we can help your business establish the framework necessary to become a market leader.

Our transformational Intrinsic Multiplier™ Approach has been crafted to help you grow your business faster, smarter and easier. This approach helps you to clarify what is special about you as a company, allowing you to more effectively brand and market your business. Through our collaborative, expert-led journey, you’ll begin to see the world through a new lens and develop the tools necessary to establish and maintain a market leadership position within your competitive industry landscape.

To speak with one of our experts about how you can implement these strategies for your company of at least $5 million in annual sales, call us at 303-997-3465 or contact us today. During your free 60-minute market leadership consultation, we’ll help you start creating a plan for success.

The post Refine Your Offering to Become a Market Leader appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

Website Design and Development

If you’re considering building a new website for your business, you may be wondering what type of company to work with on the project. Is it better to hire a web design company that focuses all of their energy on website design and development, or is it better to hire a digital marketing agency that can also provide the comprehensive digital marketing services you need to complement your new website?

While it may seem like working with a company that specializes in web design services is the smart approach, this typically won’t set your business up for success long term. A web design company can build you a website that looks great, but it will most likely lack the other important elements necessary to ensure you end up with a high performing website that drives leads and helps you grow your business.

There are many reasons why you’ll experience better results when you have a digital marketing agency build your website.

Your Digital Marketing Strategy Should Dictate the Specifics of Your Website Design

Why Your Digital Marketing Agency Should Build Your Website

Your website is the centerpiece of your marketing strategy and therefore, it must be optimized to achieve your marketing goals. You’re much more likely to achieve a website built to convert leads, increase sales and grow your business if it is designed within the framework of your digital marketing strategy. If you don’t have your strategy dictate the specifics of your website design, you run the risk that it won’t deliver the performance necessary to deliver your desired results.

When you have a digital marketing agency build your website, you’ll benefit from working with a team of marketing professionals with years of experience creating comprehensive marketing plans to help businesses grow. This ensures your website will be designed with conversion goals in mind from the earliest stages of the project.

One of the ways a digital marketing agency will ensure your new website is built with conversions in mind is by creating a set of detailed buyer personas prior to building the website. This ensures your marketing company understands the behaviors exhibited by your target audience and the messaging that will most resonate with them.

In addition, by working with you to develop your digital marketing strategy prior to building your website, the agency will have a concrete understanding of the specific elements required on your website to achieve your desired goals. This may include:

• Creating a lead magnet piece and accompanying landing page to capture the contact information of leads who will be placed into an email marketing campaign
• Building in complex ecommerce functionality that allows you to sell your products directly to customers from your website
• Creating a series of PPC landing pages to optimize any paid search campaigns you plan to run
• Ensuring you have content to address every stage of the marketing funnel
• Aligning the content and messaging on your website with your social media marketing strategy to ensure there is consistency across all channels

A web design company won’t be working with you to develop your digital marketing strategy and as a result, they won’t have the detailed understanding of what is entailed in this plan or the goals you’re trying to achieve. Therefore, you are much less likely to end up with a website that is optimized to achieve these goals.

Your Website Will Be Designed to Accentuate Your Branding

Your website is one of the most effective tools at your disposal to convey your brand messaging to your audience. A well-crafted brand message creates a series of positive associations between your company, what you stand for, and the moments of happiness you bring to people’s lives. When done effectively, your brand will resonate with your audience on a deep level that goes well beyond simply promoting the products and services you offer. This is critical to building a successful marketing strategy.

Your brand themes should incorporate three critical elements:

• Your offering
• Your culture
• The unique experience you provide

This information should drive the creation of your brand messaging. In order to effectively convey this messaging to your audience, it must be consistently displayed throughout your website as well as in all of your supplemental marketing assets.

When you work with a digital marketing agency, they will help you craft your brand story, and this will become a key differentiator that allows you stand out from your competitors. Having the marketing professionals who craft your brand messaging build your website ensures that this messaging is highlighted throughout the website. It will also be present in your social media profiles, your paid search campaigns, your email marketing campaigns, and every other aspect of your marketing strategy.

When a web design company builds your website, certain elements of your branding, such as your brand colors, typography and imagery, will be incorporated into your website. However, the deeper elements of your brand story are less likely to be accentuated in your website, and this can hurt your ability to connect with your target audience.

Your Website Will Contain Multiple Calls to Action Optimized for Conversions

The primary goals of your website are to generate leads, increase revenue and grow your business. In order to accomplish this, you must have effective calls to action (CTAs) strategically placed throughout your website.

In addition, it’s important that your website feature CTAs that target every stage of the buyer’s journey since not everyone who visits your website will be ready to become a customer. Therefore, you need to include:

• Direct CTAs that target individuals ready to make a decision, such as:
  • Schedule a consultation
  • Buy now
  • Get started
• Transitional CTAs that target individuals who are still in the earlier phases of their decision making process, such as:
  • Subscribe to our newsletter
  • Download our free guide
  • Join our community
  • Schedule a demo
  • Request a free trial

A digital marketing agency will be judged on how effectively they generate leads and increase your revenue, so you can be confident they will make sure effective CTAs are implemented consistently throughout your website. In addition, they will know the best practices for how to utilize these CTAs, such as:

• The best colors to use to make your CTAs stand out on the page
• The ideal location to place your CTAs on the page
• Which CTAs belong on specific pages to increase the likelihood that they will convert
• The ideal landing pages and forms to create to maximize conversions

While a web design company may include some CTAs on your website, they typically lack the extensive marketing knowledge and experience to ensure your CTAs are leveraged for maximum effect.

Your Website Will Be Designed According to SEO Best Practices

Your website won’t be a powerful lead generation tool if your audience can’t find it. Therefore, designing your website with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind is critical to achieving your desired results.

Most web design companies lack the SEO knowledge and experience to build a website that will rank well. This typically requires the expertise of an SEO specialist. When your website is built by a digital marketing agency, you will benefit from having an SEO professional on the team. This will ensure that your website is build according to SEO best practices.

A digital marketing agency will utilize a variety of tactics to ensure your website is built with SEO in mind:

• Extensive keyword research will be conducted at the onset of the project to ensure your navigation outline contains the pages necessary to rank for the keywords that will be most critical to your success
• Site speed improvements will be implemented to ensure the your page loading speed is as fast as possible (this is an important factor in Google’s search ranking algorithm)
• A mobile friendly, responsive design will be used to ensure your website provides an exceptional experience on all mobile devices (another important factor in Google’s algorithm)
• Content will be written to support your target keywords to ensure these pages contain the information needed to rank well
• On-page optimization will be performed to ensure the correct title tags, meta descriptions, alt tags and links are used to help improve page rankings
• Your website will contain an effective information architecture, making it easy for users to navigate the website and providing Google with strong signals regarding which pages are most important to rank

If you don’t work with a company who has the expertise necessary to design your website with SEO best practices in mind, you’re going to miss out on a lot of traffic that can generate leads and grow your business.

You’ll Have a Cohesive Content Marketing Strategy to Help Grow Your Business

Content is a critical component of your website. It provides a variety of important functions:

• Helps you tell your story so that your audience can understand what your company stands for
• Provides educational information that builds trust with your audience
• Establishes your business as an industry thought leader, helping you gain credibility
• Supports SEO efforts, making it easier for your audience to find your website
• Provides information that can be reposted on social media platforms to further increase your reach and grow your audience
• Allows you to provide value to your clients in exchange for their contact information (using lead magnet pieces) in order to support your email marketing efforts

A digital marketing agency will be able to provide the content marketing services necessary to drive the results you need:

• They will be able to create the high quality content that resonates with your audience
• They will know how to construct your content in a way that supports your SEO efforts
• They will be able to craft a long-term content plan that drives every component of your digital marketing strategy
• They will make sure you have content that addresses every persona in your target audience and that hits every phase of the buyer’s journey

Most web design companies won’t have an experienced content team in-house. This means your team may be responsible for creating the quality content you need. Most businesses lack both the time to create the large quantity of content needed for a new website project and the knowledge necessary to ensure this content maximizes your marketing performance.

You’ll Generate the Right Intelligence Data to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Your Marketing Efforts

One of the benefits of digital marketing compared to traditional marketing is that you have access to a wealth of data that can help you evaluate the effectiveness of your efforts and provide insights on how to improve your results over time. When your website is built by a digital marketing agency, they will have a clear understanding of your overall marketing goals from the outset of the project. This will allow them to compile all relevant data and set up the proper testing to evaluate your performance. As they run your ongoing marketing after your website launches, your digital marketing agency will leverage this intelligence data to improve your results and help your business grow.

Webolutions Can Create a High Performing Website That Grows Your Business

Webolutions Web Design Company

If you’re in need of a new website for your business, Webolutions can help. As Denver’s leading digital marketing agency since 1994, we provide the comprehensive digital marketing services necessary to help your business grow and thrive.

We’ve been ranked among Denver’s largest web designers/developers by the Denver Business Journal every year since 2002, and our award winning websites have delivered the exceptional marketing results our clients need.

Our exclusive Websites Right Methodology™ has been developed and refined over the past three decades based on our extensive experience building thousands of websites. This fully integrated, strategic approach to website development delivers a better client experience and vastly superior marketing performance. Our Websites Right Methodology™ sets you up for success by:

• Creating a collaborative process that documents your website goals at the start of the project so that we can measure success during the development process and over time after the website goes live
• Planning your home page key elements in detail to ensure this important page of your website effectively conveys your brand story
• Creating detailed website mockups to ensure the design looks right and exceeds your expectations before we build the website
• Documenting all functional requirements before building the website to ensure everyone involved in the project is aligned on what is expected
• Creating a comprehensive project plan that details all deadlines and keeps the project moving forward
• Providing weekly status updates to keep your team aware of our progress and ensure you always know when it’s time for you to provide specific assets or complete certain tasks
• Utilizing a variety of third-party tools to enhance your website’s functionality
• Performing custom programming and development to ensure all functionality requirements are implemented properly
• Performing comprehensive pre-launch website testing to ensure the website functions properly and provides a great experience on all browsers and devices
• Providing tactical content leadership to convey your story and establish your business as a thought leader
• Utilizing SEO best practices to improve your search rankings
• Conducting post-launch testing and ongoing analysis to ensure your website delivers the exceptional results you need year after year

This meticulous approach to website design, along with the extensive digital marketing services we provide, will set your business up for greater success. We can help you build a website that maximizes the ROI on your marketing efforts, helping you generate more leads, increase your revenue and grow your business.

Contact us today to schedule a free consultation. Webolutions serves businesses nationwide from our offices in Denver, Colorado.

The post Why Your Digital Marketing Agency Should Build Your Website appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

That being said, digital marketing is a highly complex, constantly evolving field. There are so many different components to your strategy that you must get right, and it’s easy to make very costly mistakes along the way if you’re not aware of the most common pitfalls to avoid.

The following common digital marketing mistakes cost many companies a significant amount of money each year. Avoiding these will help prevent you from wasting your marketing budget and seeing very little in return for your efforts.

Not Setting Goals When Developing Your Digital Marketing Strategy

It’s virtually impossible to create an effective digital marketing strategy without first identifying the goals you’re trying to achieve from your efforts. Your goals should drive the entire process. There should be overarching goals that you’re trying to achieve from your digital marketing strategy as a whole, and each individual campaign in your strategy should also have specific goals tied to them.

Establishing your goals should always be the first step in developing your digital marketing strategy. Keep in mind that less is more when setting goals. It’s best to focus on the few items that are most important to driving your business forward. If you establish too many goals, it will be more challenging to create a cohesive marketing strategy.

Once you’ve set goals, you’ll need to identify the most effective metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate whether you’re successfully achieving them. You can then track these metrics as you run your digital marketing campaign to determine any adjustments that are necessary to more effectively hit your goals.

Targeting the Wrong Audience

One of the most common digital marketing mistakes made by companies is targeting too broad of an audience. It’s easy to understand the logic behind this error – by expanding your audience, you have the ability to reach more people. While there is truth to this, there is a qualifying criterion associated with it. Expanding your audience only helps generate more leads if these additional people need the product/service you offer.

Simply targeting a larger audience without accounting for whether they are likely to become a customer has the opposite effect – it waters down the ROI of your marketing efforts and results in wasting a lot of money targeting individuals who will most likely never become a customer.

Instead, you should conduct thorough market research to clearly define a target audience that will generate more relevant and high quality leads. Once you’ve narrowed down your target audience, you can build detailed buyer personas for them which include important information regarding their:

• Age
• Gender
• Education level
• Income
• Interests
• Purchasing habits
• Internet consumption practices (i.e., which internet channels they are most likely to become exposed to your messaging)
• Pain points and the messaging that will most likely resonate with them

This information will help you to understand your target audience much better, allowing you to develop marketing strategies that will more effectively connect with them and address their needs. You’ll have the ability to engage your audience at every stage of the marketing funnel, allowing you to create an irresistible journey that drives more leads and helps you grow your business. By focusing on a more specific target audience, you can significantly improve the ROI of your digital marketing efforts.

Neglecting Social Media in Your Digital Marketing Strategy

In order for your digital marketing strategy to be successful, you must connect with your audience in the online place(s) where they spend most of their time. For most people, that is on social media. The following statistics underscore the prevalence of social media consumption today:

• There are 4.48 billion social media users worldwide
• The average person engages with 6.6 different social media platforms
• 33% of internet users are on social media
• The average social media user spends almost two and a half hours a day on these platforms
• 3% of Americans (240 million people) are active social media users

If you’re not allocating a portion of your digital marketing budget to social media marketing, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to reach your target audience, grow your brand and drive leads. However, it’s important to focus on the social media platforms where your target audience spends the most time. This will ensure you maximize the ROI of your efforts. The market research you conduct to identify your target audience can also help you determine the right social media platforms to include in your digital marketing strategy.

Not Prioritizing Mobile Users

By the end of 2022, 59.16% of all website traffic worldwide came from mobile devices, and this figure is expected to keep rising over time. The majority of people visiting your website are most likely doing so on a mobile device, and approximately 80% of mobile users will leave a website that provides a poor user experience. If you don’t provide this large segment of your audience with a good mobile browsing experience, they will leave and seek their desired information elsewhere.

The best way to ensure your website provides a great experience for mobile users is to build it using responsive design. A responsive website automatically adjusts its formatting to fit the dimensions of the screen being used to view it. Without a responsive website, you risk losing a lot of traffic that can potentially become quality leads.

You can elevate your mobile marketing results even further by creating a mobile app that will engage your users and provide a great experience.

Neglecting Customer Retention in Your Marketing Efforts

Acquiring new customers is critical to your ability to grow your business. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that many businesses focus an overwhelming percentage of their digital marketing budget on customer acquisition initiatives. However, this approach is often not the best way to maximize your revenue. In fact, you may be leaving a lot of money on the table when your digital marketing strategy neglects customer retention initiatives in favor of simply trying to capture new customers.

The likelihood of converting a new customer is roughly 5-20%, while the likelihood of upselling an existing customer is 60-70%. In other words, you’re much more likely to make a future sale to an existing customer than you are to someone who has never done business with your company.

As a result, dedicating a portion of your marketing efforts to customer retention initiatives that seek to make additional sales to existing customers represents low hanging fruit that can significantly boost your revenue. Neglecting this segment of your marketing can be very costly to your bottom line and reduce the ROI of your marketing efforts.

Not Creating and Publishing Content on a Regular Basis

Content is a critical component to any digital marketing strategy. It accomplishes a variety of important goals:

• Establishes your business as an industry expert and thought leader
• Conveys your brand messaging to your audience
• Educates your audience, building trust with them and providing them with valuable information as they research solutions for their pain points
• Drives traffic to your website
• Helps you expand your social media audience (valuable content is often shared by your social media followers)

Keep in mind that simply creating content isn’t sufficient to drive an effective digital marketing strategy. Your content must be relevant and engaging to your target audience, and it should provide them with value. Creating content that addresses their most common questions and pain points is critical to a successful content marketing strategy. You can accomplish this in several ways:

• Reach out to your sales team to learn the most common issues raised by prospects and the questions they’re regularly asked during the sales process
• Conduct keyword research to identify the long tail search queries which garner the highest search volume

Make these topics a primary focus of your content marketing strategy. You can create blogs to address these topics and then repost them on your social media profiles to maximize the number of people you reach. It’s also important to create larger content pieces (eBooks, white papers, guides, etc.) that can be used as lead magnets on your website. These items can be offered for free on your most commonly viewed web pages and blogs in exchange for a person’s email contact information. This allows you to instantly add this person into your email marketing lists so that you can nurture these new leads until they’re ready to become a customer.

Not Tracking Your Leads

One benefit of digital marketing is that you have the ability to track the source of each lead. This is much more challenging with traditional marketing methods since you lack the granular data necessary to identify the traffic source for each lead you generate.

Your digital marketing leads can come from a variety of places, including:

• Organic search (SEO)
• Paid search
• Social media
• Email newsletters
• Referring links from external websites

By tracking the traffic source of each lead, you can determine which sources tend to generate higher quality leads that are more likely to become customers. This allows you to focus your efforts (and your marketing budget) on the sources that deliver the best quality leads, while de-emphasizing sources that aren’t as fruitful. When you track your leads, you will be able to significantly improve the ROI of your digital marketing efforts.

Not Implementing Effective A/B Testing

Even the most carefully thought out digital marketing strategies will need to be revised over time. It’s virtually impossible to predict the exact right moves to make in every circumstance. Fortunately, digital marketing makes it very easy to perform A/B testing that will allow you to improve the effectiveness of your tactics over time.

To get meaningful data from your A/B testing, make sure to adhere to the following best practices:

• Test the right items – Test the items that will make the biggest difference to your lead generation results. This may involve testing items on your website pages with the highest traffic volume, or conversion items on your key lead generation pages.
• Pay attention to sample size – If you don’t have a large enough sample size when you conduct your testing, you won’t be able to generate results that provide actionable, reliable data.
• Make sure your data is reliable – One important way to ensure your data is reliable is to calculate the statistical significance. This will help you determine whether your results are likely to be caused by the changes you’re testing and not by random chance. You can use this online tool to calculate the statistical significance of your A/B tests.
• Test one element at a time – The only way to determine the actual impact that changing an element will have on your conversions is to test one element at a time. If you test changes to your headline and your call to action at the same time, you won’t be able to identify which one is causing the change in your results. Keep your tests focused on one thing at all times.
• Run all A/B tests for comparable time periods – The only way to get accurate and reliable results is to conduct all tests for comparable time periods. However, it’s also important to factor in seasonal peaks and plateaus when running A/B tests. If you run one test during your highest sales volume period of the year, it may not provide the most accurate or reliable results compared to a test run during a typical month of business.
• Don’t make mid-test changes – Wait until the testing period is complete before you introduce any new elements to your testing. Otherwise, you won’t generate enough data to achieve reliable results.

Failing to Track Your Data

Digital marketing provides you with a treasure trove of data to evaluate the success of your efforts. This is one of the greatest benefits of digital strategies compared with traditional marketing methods. However, this data is only valuable if you track it and use it to inform your future actions.

There are a variety of performance intelligence tools available to help you track the success of your digital marketing efforts. Whether you use Google Analytics, Hubspot, or some other platform, make sure to track data regarding all of your success metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). The more data you compile, the better. In addition, make sure you have a dedicated person in charge of analyzing the data and making actionable recommendations based on the results being generated.

Webolutions Can Help You Avoid these Common Digital Marketing Mistakes

The best way to ensure you avoid these costly mistakes is to work with an experienced digital marketing agency that leverages the most up-to-date industry best practices. At Webolutions, we have you covered.

Webolutions has been Denver’s top digital marketing agency since 1994. We provide a wide range of services to address just about any need you may have, and our team possesses the extensive experience necessary to deliver the exceptional results that will generate the quality leads you need to thrive.

Our transformational Intrinsic Multiplier™ Approach will help you grow your business faster, smarter and easier. We accomplish this by leading your team on a collaborative journey to identify what is special about your company. This allows us to clarify the unique way you do business, the benefits your customers experience, and the culture you’ve created.

We also perform comprehensive market research to determine what your competitors are doing well, the messages they’re conveying to their audience, and any opportunities to create an industry leading market positioning that clearly differentiates you from them. This market positioning will form the basis for the Brand Platform™ we develop, which will be used throughout your key brand communications elements and integrated into your company culture.

After laying this foundation, we’ll develop a comprehensive digital marketing strategy that will achieve your goals. Our Real-Time Performance Intelligence Dashboards™ provide the data necessary to evaluate the success of your campaign, allowing us to make recommendations to continuously improve the ROI on your digital marketing efforts over time.

Contact us today to schedule a consultation. Webolutions provides digital marketing services to clients nationwide from our offices in Denver, Colorado.

The post Top Digital Marketing Mistakes That Are Costing You Money appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

In a recent post, our CEO and founder, John Vachalek, outlined the fundamental building blocks necessary to create a strong culture that will position your business for greater success. But creating a strong culture is only part of the equation. It’s also important to ensure your entire team is aligned with your culture.

Developing cultural alignment takes time and hard work, but it will pay huge dividends to your business. When your entire team is aligned with your culture, values and mission, you’ll experience greater buy-in from your employees and be able to elevate the success of your organization.

Why Is Cultural Alignment Important?

Your company culture defines the values, practices and expectations that guide your business. It establishes the attitudes and behaviors that are adopted by your team. When your company culture aligns with the personal values of your team, and when your team is fully aligned on the norms established as part of your culture, it can have a powerful impact on your business. When all your employees are aligned on a shared purpose and devoting all their energy towards this purpose, it significantly elevates your company’s ability to thrive.

Unfortunately, very few businesses are able to achieve this cultural alignment. According to a study by Gartner, only 24% of employees believe their company culture impacts their work. In addition, only 31% of company leaders feel that their organization’s culture positively impacts business performance.

The reason these numbers are so low has to do with a lack of cultural alignment in most companies. The same Gartner study found that when a company’s employees are aligned with the culture, it has a significant impact on business success, including:

• 9% improvement in performance against revenue goals
• 22% improvement in employee performance
• 16% better reputation outcomes

The reason for this is simple. When your employees are aligned with your culture, it creates a common understanding of what your business is trying to achieve, and everyone becomes focused on finding the best ways to achieve this purpose.

How to Create Cultural Alignment Among Your Team

You can invest a great deal of time and energy into creating an amazing culture at your company, but that doesn’t guarantee your team will be aligned with these attitudes and beliefs. Achieving this level of cultural alignment requires additional steps. While this involves a lot of effort, the benefits will be well worth it for your business, as it will set you up for long term success.

Recognize the Desired Behaviors You Want Your Team to Exhibit

Praise and recognition are powerful motivators. Not only does it provide the individual being recognized with an incentive to replicate this behavior in the future, but it shows other team members the types of actions which are valued and will bring them similar recognition. In fact, 92% of employees indicate they’re more likely to repeat an action after they’ve been recognized for it. Therefore, showing praise for behaviors that are aligned with your company culture is a powerful way to ensure those behaviors continue.

In order for this recognition to impact your culture, it must become embedded into the way your business operates. Showing appreciation for actions and behaviors that align with the company culture should occur on a regular basis. To make sure this happens, build it into the weekly work rhythm for your managers and team members.

Make Sure Your Management Team Lives Your Company Values

Your company values are a key component of your culture. They serve as the guiding principles and beliefs that every team member should possess. These values should shape just about every action associated with your business – from long range strategic planning to day-to-day items such as how your team interacts with your customers.

When you have a strong set of company values, it will be easy for your team to get behind them. However, it’s important for your team to see that these values are authentic to your management team. Otherwise, they will be dismissed as lip service. Therefore, it’s critical that your management team live these values every day and establish them as part of your culture in a top-down way.

Establish a Culture of Trust and Safety

Trust and safety are core tenets of any strong company culture. If your team doesn’t trust you to treat them fairly and provide a safe space for them to be themselves, it’s virtually impossible to achieve true cultural alignment. It’s critical that your team knows they are able to express their opinions freely without fear of punishment or other repercussions. Your management team must do more than pay lip service to this philosophy – they must live it every day and demonstrate by their actions that your business truly provides a safe environment for your team.

Make Cultural Fit Part of Your Hiring Criteria

You’ll never be able to achieve cultural alignment if you don’t hire employees who share your company’s values. In order to ensure you’re hiring people who will buy into your culture, you must invest time during the interview process to determine each candidate’s cultural fit. This is just as important as making sure they possess the proper skill set to be successful at the position.

In addition to prioritizing cultural fit during the hiring process, you must then reinforce this during the onboarding process. New employees should be learning about your core values and company culture throughout the onboarding period, and this information should be connected to their role in a meaningful way. When this occurs, you’re much more likely to have new employees internalize your culture and values, and this will improve overall alignment throughout your team.

Webolutions Can Help You Create Better Cultural Alignment

Webolutions is a full-spectrum management consulting and strategic growth implementation agency. For almost three decades, we’ve worked with hundreds of businesses across a wide range of industries to help them create better cultural alignment throughout their company.

We’ll work closely with your company’s leaders to help you define your company vision, purpose and core values. As part of this process, we’ll provide you with a framework for how to integrate this into your day-to-day actions in order to cultivate a strong culture that your team can get behind. We’ll also provide strategies and coaching to help you improve cultural alignment across your entire team, allowing your business the thrive.

Contact us today to schedule a consultation. Webolutions serves clients nationwide from our offices in Denver, Colorado.

The post The Critical Steps to Build Cultural Alignment with Your Team appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

There are a variety of common website mistakes that significantly hurt your conversion rates and sales. These errors can be costing your business a lot of money. Below is a list of common website mistakes to be aware of.

Your Site Speed Is too Slow

A fast-loading website doesn’t just provide a better user experience, it’s also critical to growing your business. A slow site speed can be devastating to your website’s ability to generate revenue.

According to a joint study by Google and Bing, a website load speed that is 2 seconds slower than average results in:

• 8% reduction in user satisfaction
• 3% lost revenue per user
• 4% reduction in clicks

These losses are compounded by the fact that Google uses website speed as a primary factor in their ranking algorithms. Therefore, a slow website will make it much more difficult to get found by your audience when they’re searching for your products and services.

This can be devastating to your business. A slow website will cost you sales in multiple ways – it will drive frustrated and impatient users to your competitors when they don’t want to wait for your website to load, and it will significantly reduce your website traffic, making it harder to reach your target audience in the first place.

You Don’t Have a Clear Message or Call to Action Above the Fold

It only takes 0.05 seconds for users to develop their first impression of your website. This means you have precious little time to capture your audience’s attention before they exit your website to keep searching for the information they need. Therefore, the images and text people see above the fold is often critical to your ability to capture their attention and get them to take action.

“Above the fold” refers to the portion of the web page that is visible without scrolling down. It’s the area of the page your audience will see when they first come to your website.

When people visit your website, they expect to find the information they’re looking for right away. If your web page doesn’t offer them what they need, they’ll leave. Therefore, it’s important to include clear, compelling messaging that is relevant to the user’s needs above the fold. This will significantly increase the chances they will remain on your website, scroll further down the page to learn more, and explore other pages on your website.

The longer your audience remains on your website and the more engaged they are with your content, the more likely you are to convert them into a lead. This starts with providing compelling information and clear messaging at the top of your web pages to ensure your audience decides to stay and learn more.

You can increase your conversion rate even more by combining this clear, compelling and relevant above the fold messaging with a call to action (CTA) in this area of the page. Keep in mind that most people who have just arrived on your website for the first time won’t be ready to become a customer right away. Therefore, any call to action above the fold should be a transitional CTA.

A transitional CTA provides your audience with additional useful information in exchange for their email address, allowing you to cultivate a deeper relationship with them over time with your email marketing efforts. A good example of an above the fold CTA would be an invitation to download a free PDF, eBook, or other content that will provide value to them. Just make sure the content you’re providing is relevant to the subject matter of the page. Otherwise, your audience will be less likely to click on your transitional CTA and continue their journey down your marketing funnel.

Your Website Isn’t Optimized for Mobile Viewing

Currently, mobile devices make up over 60% of all website traffic, and this figure continues to rise each year. Therefore, your website must be mobile friendly, or you’ll risk alienating over half of your audience. When websites provide a poor user experience on mobile devices, these users typically leave right away in order to find a website is easier to view. This means that without a mobile friendly website, you may be losing over 60% of your potential website revenue!

The best way to ensure your website looks good and provides a great experience on all devices is to implement a responsive design. Responsive design automatically adjusts the appearance of your website based on the screen size and orientation of the device being used. This will eliminate the risk of losing a large percentage of your website traffic simply due to a bad visual experience.

You Don’t Leverage Variations in Color to Create a Visual Hierarchy

You’ll be hard pressed to find studies demonstrating a consensus regarding which colors generate the most conversions. What’s more important than the specific colors you use is how you use them. You can significantly increase conversions by using color variations strategically in order to make your CTAs stand out.

There is a cognitive psychology theory called the Von Restorff effect (also known as the isolation effect). This theory states that the more an item stands out from its surroundings, the more likely it is to be seen. According to this theory, using your primary website colors on your CTA buttons will reduce conversions because these buttons are more likely to get lost in the background of the page. On the other hand, using an entirely different color for your CTAs will help them stand out and improve your conversion rate.

There is extensive A/B testing to support this theory. One of the most famous examples comes from a Hubspot test where they were able to increase conversions by 21% simply by changing the color of the CTA button from green, which blended in with the website’s colors, to red, which stood out in stark contrast from the greens used on the rest of the page.

Your Website Navigation Menu Is Confusing or Hard to Use

Your navigation menu is one of the most important components of your website. It provides your audience with a roadmap that helps them move around your website to find the information they’re looking for and learn more about your business. It’s critical that your navigation menu is clear, easy to use and provides a good user experience. Navigation menus that are confusing will significantly increase your bounce rates, as your audience will simply look for a different website that makes it easier to find the information they’re seeking.

To avoid this issue, make sure to adhere to the following navigation menu best practices:

• Keep your navigation menu in a conventional location – It should either be at the top of the page or on the left side of the page.
• Don’t include too many top navigation menu items – Having more than 4-5 items in your top navigation menu can overwhelm your audience.
• Use dropdown menus judiciously – Providing additional pages in dropdown menus off of your top navigation items is an effective way to help users move around your website, but don’t overdo it. Stick to one level of dropdown items, and focus on the next tier of pages based on your website’s information architecture.
• Make your navigation menu items clear – Your audience should be able to easily identify where each item in the menu will take them. The same is true of internal links in the body of your content.
• Optimize your navigation for mobile users – Your navigation menu must work properly on mobile devices, otherwise these users are likely to leave your website.

You Fail to Break Up Content on Long Pages

Long web pages are effective for a variety of reasons. They provide comprehensive information on a subject, which helps to establish your business as an authoritative source and an industry expert. This builds trust with your audience and increases the chances they’ll come to you for additional information in the future. The more often users visit your website, the more likely they are to eventually become a lead.

In addition, Google’s recent algorithm updates have placed an increasing value on quality content, especially longer, more comprehensive content. The reason for this is that in Google’s eyes, a web page that provides a reader with all the information they need delivers a better experience than a page which only contains some of this information and requires the reader to keep searching for the rest. Therefore, creating comprehensive, long form content that provides your audience with all the information they need will typically improve your search rankings, making it easier for people to find your website.

However, you can negate the benefits of these long pages by failing to structure your content properly. Most readers scan a web page rather than reading every word. Therefore, they are more likely to stay on a long page and read through all the content if it’s broken up in a way that makes it easy to scan.

To achieve this, avoid long blocks of text. Instead, make sure your pages are easily scannable by using the following techniques to break up the content into easily digestible chunks:

• Include relevant subheads
• Vary the length of your paragraphs and avoiding using consecutive paragraphs that are very long
• Use bullet lists whenever possible
• Include relevant, engaging images to break up the text

You Don’t Include Clear Calls to Action

In order for your website to become a revenue generating tool, it must get your audience to take an action that will lead them on a path to becoming a customer. This is accomplished by placing calls to action on each page.

Without a clear call to action on the page, your audience won’t know what you want them to do. Therefore, having a clear and compelling call to action on all of your highly visited pages is critical to your ability to drive leads and increase sales.

Keep in mind that not every call to action has to directly ask your audience to make a purchase or schedule a consultation. Your website visitors will all be at varying stages of the buyer’s journey. While some people may be ready to make a decision right now, others may still be in the research phase of their process. Therefore, it’s important to include a variety of CTAs which target people at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

Some examples of transitional CTAs geared towards individuals who aren’t ready to become a customer include:

• Sign up for our newsletter
• Download our eBook
• Join our community
• Sign up for a free trial
• Sign up for our webinar

As we discussed earlier, these transitional CTAs are important because they allow you to capture the user’s contact information and begin building a relationship with them through your email marketing campaigns.

Webolutions Can Help You Generate More Revenue with Your Website

The good news is that if you’re making these common website mistakes, they can easily be corrected to provide a significant boost in the revenue generated by your website. However, correcting them properly typically requires the expertise of an experienced web design agency. Correcting these website mistakes requires a fair amount of technical knowledge as well as an understanding of web design best practices. At Webolutions, we can make sure your website is designed properly and helps you maximize the leads generated from your digital marketing efforts.

As Denver’s leading web design company since 1994, Webolutions has the experience to create a website that delivers superior performance and maximizes your ROI. Our exclusive Websites Right Methodology™ has been developed over 28 years and leverages the knowledge acquired from building thousands of custom websites for businesses in a multitude of industries. This distinctive, fully integrated, strategic approach to website design and development ensures an exceptional client experience while providing website marketing performance that far exceeds industry standards.

Our Websites Right Methodology™ creates a truly collaborative process to ensure we’re aligned with your team’s goals every step of the way. It provides a comprehensive framework that guarantees every aspect of your website is completed according to best practices and addresses the specific needs of your business. We achieve this by:

• Scheduling a series of discovery sessions with your team to establish your website goals, ensuring the design process is completed with these goals in mind
• Outlining the key elements to be used on your home page, optimizing our ability to convey your brand messaging, define your story and help your audience find the areas of your website that will deliver the valuable information they’re seeking
• Creating detailed website mockups to ensure the design aligns with your expectations prior to building the website
• Detailing all functional requirements necessary to deliver the best user experience for your target audience and increase your ability to convert leads
• Implementing custom programming and development to create the advanced functionality you need in a manner that ensures optimal website performance
• Implementing a tactical content strategy that communicates your story, establishes your business as a trusted industry thought leader and connects with your audience
• Utilizing proven SEO best practices that will achieve the best possible search engine rankings
• Conducting thorough website testing prior to launch to ensure your website works properly and delivers the best possible experience on all devices and browsers
• Providing real time performance intelligence dashboards that make it easy for you to see how well your website is achieving your goals and that allow us to provide recommendations for adjustments that will help improve results over time

Contact us to schedule a free website development consultation. Webolutions serves clients nationwide from our offices in Denver, Colorado.

The post Top 7 Website Mistakes That Cost You Money appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

Our CEO, John Vachalek, recently shared his insights on the characteristics and routines followed by the most successful companies. These are high level traits which will set you up for success as you plan and implement your strategy for 2023 and beyond. But there are also specific actions you can take to set your business up for success while you incorporate these higher level characteristics and routines into your company culture.

Establish or Revisit Your Business Goals

If you haven’t established a clear set of business goals, this should be the first action you take. It’s extremely challenging to achieve meaningful growth without first establishing what this growth looks like. Setting goals will give you targets to shoot for and help you outline the actions necessary to achieve them.

Even if you’ve established these goals, it’s important to revisit them each year. Factors impacting your business and your industry are constantly changing, and the goals you set a year or two ago may no longer reflect your current growth trajectory. You may be offering new products or services now, and your target audience may have shifted. If you’ve achieved significant growth over the past couple of years, your financial goals have most likely shifted to reflect this growth. It’s important that you reevaluate your goals on a regular basis to make sure they are still appropriate and accurate.

Take Steps to Boost Productivity

All businesses can benefit from making adjustments that will improve their efficiency and productivity. The most successful companies are constantly taking these actions, since increases in efficiency and productivity will boost your profitability and help your business grow.

There are more software tools than ever before to help you streamline your processes and make your business more efficient. These platforms will also help your team manage their time in a way that will allow them to operate at optimal levels of productivity. If you don’t already use a project management platform, consider implementing one this year.

While project management software is most commonly associated with tracking work associated with client projects, it can actually be used to organize a wide range of in-house processes. You can leverage this software to:

• Manage all tasks associated with client projects
• Track time for client projects
• Help employees organize their workflow
• Receive updates on internal projects
• Assign important administrative tasks to your team

It’s a lot easier to boost your team’s productivity when everyone knows what needs to be done and has deadlines for all the tasks assigned to them.

Organize and Manage Your Inventory

If you sell physical products, it’s critical to stay on top of your inventory. When your inventory is properly organized and managed, you’ll be able to maintain optimal production schedules to meet customer demand. In addition, you’ll be able to track changes in in sales trends, allowing you to ensure you always have an ample supply of your best selling items while avoiding overstocking slower moving products. You’ll also be able to plan ahead for peak sales seasons to ensure you’re able to effectively capitalize on these opportunities.

The most effective way to accomplish this is to implement an inventory management system. In addition to tracking the items discussed above, you’ll be able to generate a wide range of reports and data that will help your business grow and thrive. As a business owner, you should be aware of the business expenses you can claim for to minimize your tax burden.

Expand Your Digital Marketing Presence

Traditional marketing solutions are no longer the most effective way to reach your audience and grow your business. Today, an effective digital marketing strategy is essential to set your business up for success.

The key component of your digital marketing efforts should be a well designed website that is optimized for lead generation. However, you will also need to explore other avenues to reach your audience online, such as paid search campaigns, social media marketing and email marketing. In addition, you’ll need to implement analytics tools to provide you with the data necessary to track the effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts. This performance intelligence will help you identify the important adjustments you need to make to maximize your marketing ROI.

Make Continuous Learning Part of Your Culture

Continuous learning is critical to your ability to remain an industry leader. As technologies, methodologies and trends in your industry evolve, you must be on the forefront of adapting. This requires an emphasis on constantly expanding the knowledge base of your staff. Therefore, it’s critical to provide professional development opportunities that will allow your employees to grow their skills and remain industry experts. This can take on a variety of forms, including attending in-person conferences and seminars, completing virtual workshops, enrolling in training courses, or reading books written by other industry leaders.

While the continued professional growth of your team is critical to your ongoing success, there’s another aspect of continuous learning that must be emphasized. It’s also important to conduct extensive competitor research to stay current on what other businesses in your industry are doing and how they’re performing. You can gain a great deal of knowledge from this competitor research, and it can help you develop innovative solutions which may drive the growth of your business.

Develop a Contingency Plan

Perhaps the biggest takeaway businesses had from the pandemic is the fact that life as we know it can be turned upside down at a moment’s notice. While this was spurred by a public health crisis in 2020, there are other factors that can achieve the same result. An economic crisis can dramatically impact the outlook for many businesses, forcing an abrupt change of course. With the threat of a recession looming in 2023, it’s possible that an economic crisis may alter the landscape of your industry this year.

Therefore, it’s important to develop a contingency plan that will help you navigate this economic uncertainty if it comes to fruition. Having a contingency plan in place will help avoid a state of panic if things don’t go as planned this year, and it will help you pivot quickly in order to stay afloat while you adjust to the impact of an economic downturn.

As part of this contingency plan, you should evaluate areas where you can reduce expenses without negatively impacting your company’s success, as well areas where maintaining your budget will be critical. In addition, it’s a good idea to identify alternative ways of generating revenue so that your business can rebound quickly and remain profitable if your primary revenue stream dries up as part of a recession.

Webolutions Can Set Your Business Up for Success in 2023

While the most successful companies have a framework in place that sets them on a growth trajectory, these internal actions are often bolstered by the help of a third-party professional who can offer objective insights regarding ways to streamline processes and implement a data-driven plan for success. At Webolutions, we have you covered.

Our transformational Intrinsic Multiplier™ Approach was designed to help you grow your business faster, smarter and easier. As part of this approach, we’ll collaborate with your team to establish your core business goals necessary to drive both short- and long-term success. These goals will be used to help you develop and implement your plan to achieve your desired growth. We’ll provide recommendations on the tools and platforms necessary to improve your efficiency and track your results to ensure you stay on track to achieve your goals.

Our Intrinsic Multiplier™ Approach has helped hundreds of businesses achieve sustained growth and success. Talk to us about how we can help you take your business to the next level this year.

Contact us today to schedule a free 2023 success planning consultation. During this 60-minute introduction, we’ll help you start creating a plan for success.

The post 6 Tips to Set Your Business Up for a Successful 2023 appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.