You are planning your new website for your business. Where do you place your priority? Should you invest in building your marketing strategy which includes positioning, crafting the message and creating an irresistible call to action? Or should invest in creating a knock your socks off design that will make your visitors jaw drop?Without question it is the marketing strategy that will put cash in your pocket. It is marketing strategy that gets your visitor to fill out that form and ask for a quote.Don’t get me wrong a great design establishes trust and creates a professional image. Design should never outweigh strategy.
How do you create a marketing strategy?
- It starts with figuring out what you want. Should your website generate leads in the form of quote requests? If you are a medical office than you may want to get new patients to call for their first appointment or maybe even book an appointment online. In any case it starts with what you want.
- Next you have to understand your best buyer, the one you most want to reach. What do they want? They come to your website searching for a solution or an answer. You want to understand why are they searching and how you can connect with them. This is marketing strategy.
- Next you want to tempt them to act. This could be to call, sign-up, request a quote or even sign up for your mailing list. Your offer must be clear and compelling. It must be the next reasonable step in their buying or decision process.
- You need to make your web presence visible and reach your best buyers. You need to create strategies to promote and publicize. This could be organic SEO, advertising on the search engines (Adwords) or engaging on social media.
So in the end marketing strategy trumps design. A good design should be an important part of your marketing strategy.