5 important ways your website impacts your online marketing efforts

Most companies today do some form of emarketing, made up of: paid media (like Google Adwords and online banner advertising), search media, social media, email marketing and SMS campaigns.

The one thing these various channels have in common? Content – which is all situated on your website, the heart of any emarketing campaign.

1. Your homepage is the glue that holds your emarketing strategies together

As emarketing relies on various channels, this will see different sectors of your target market clicking on various links and banners to your content. Some of these “click-throughs” might result in people going to a specific landing page – but often, the person goes directly to your homepage, choosing not to click on the URL provided.

Even if you’ve got a brilliant landing or campaign-specific page, your website plays a role in every single campaign that you run because of this. It’s therefore your priority to guide people to the various sections of your website that relate to the content they’re looking for, should they arrive on your homepage.

It’s vital that you have easily-noticeable “quick links” on your homepage to make it as easy as possible for visitors to find what they’re looking for.

For example, if you’re simultaneously running a competition on Facebook and an SMS promotion (ie: two different campaigns on two different platforms), upon landing on your homepage, visitors should be able to find the relevant pages in an instant.

2. The use of SEO and optimised content is a tried and tested emarketing strategy

Search media, or organic traffic, is a very effective method of emarketing. This is achieved when your site ranks for strategic keywords (i.e.: keywords you’ve identified as those most used by your market).

Many choose to use the “black hat” SEO method — which involves back-linking in order to build the keywords that you will rank for. This is frowned upon by search engines like Google and in the long-term it will only damage your brand. The best way to go about this then is through the production of strategic content that is posted on your web pages, in your blog, and on your various social media channels.

3. If your website doesn’t have the relevant calls to action, you’ll never convert any leads

Bear in mind that most people who arrive on your website are not ready to buy – so your website needs to contain ways to capture their details in order for your emarketing to be successful.

First your emarketing gets the visitors to your website, then with relevant calls to action you get their details. Once you’ve got their details, you’ll be able to send them relevant communications that will nurture them until they’re ready to buy.

On the other hand, the people who arrive on your site who are ready to make a purchase also need to see a relevant call to action to get them to buy immediately or make an enquiry. These will differ from those aimed at the rest of your market, so be sure to include calls to action that every single aspect of your market identifies with.

4. Every single one of your campaigns requires a dedicated landing page

Many companies fail to do this — resulting in fewer leads and lower conversion rates, simply because their visitors end up on a homepage, instead of a page specifically relating to emarketing message they have come from.

It’s therefore vital that your website is built on a platform that allows you to easily and quickly create landing pages as you need. Every time you roll out a new campaign, you should be able to choose a pre-designed landing page template, edit it accordingly and add it to your site. Don’t forget to include forms on every single one of your pages — it’s useless driving traffic to your site if you don’t have a way to convert them to known contacts.

5. Successful emarketing relies on the use of geo-tagging and personalisation

Digital properties are becoming increasingly relevant by providing localised results to their audiences. This means that your content needs to be relevant for each local market that it’s targeting.

For example, if you’re running a marketing campaign in West Africa, the language of the website that people responding to your emarketing campaign visit should be French, while the East African version of the exact same campaign will need to be in English. Remember that people respond to content that’s in accordance with their cultural denominators.