It may come as a surprise that you are reading this from a company that is selling you web development services. Our job is to help your business do better on all fronts, not to sell you websites.
There is a lot of content out there selling people websites, such as free site builders and other tools. Or it may even be a video of me convincing you that you need a website.
You even hear that “A website will give you 80% more chance over the competition”. In my defense, there is a truth to a lot of this.
Why this post
I’m writing this article because I enjoy helping people get the best out of what they do. I also question everything, even my own actions. The one question that has changed my view on the work I do is a question a client asked me in a meeting, “Will the website actually help my business?”.
This question kept me awake and led me to write the article. Wanted to answer the question for me. It has helped me to better understand why a website is still relevant. Writing this post gave me a chance to find an obvious answer to this question. As a few months went by, and I started getting other projects, I was unable to get that question out of my mind. Will this website actually help this business?
What is it that clients want?
Clients don’t want websites, they want to reach their customers. Web-development agencies convince them that a website will achieve that goal. The actual point of this conversation is not what we or our clients want, it’s what their clients want.
How can we, as marketers, developers, and designers, help our customers do better? What are the purposes of tools like website, marketing, and other tool meant to do? Marketing sends a message, not a message about ourselves. The message is about what we can do for our customers.
To put it more clear, it is how we can make our customers feel better about themselves or how other people see them. As we go into these holidays, we can ask ourselves, how can I help a father feel like his kid’s superhero?
How will a website help my business?
A website only helps you when it’s part of a bigger digital presence. A website on its own is something you spend money on every year to keep running. It can’t help you. If you don’t understand what a digital presence is, we will be writing a lot more about this topic.
The role of copywriting in a website
You’ve heard it said that content is King and if so copy is the crown that the king wears.
Reading and writing are still one fundamental way we communicate on the internet. Copywriting is a tool that helps you communicate your message to our customers. When your company messaging is clear, customers will want to keep engaging with you.
They will enjoy buying from you. Copy sells things, that is why you need it.
Digital Presence
A digital presence is a digital representation of your business. A digital presence is not something you can put and forget; it is a part of your company. It’s dynamic. This article is going to glaze over the topic, but it will not be an in-depth discussion about a digital presence. In the upcoming paragraph, we see parts of a digital presence that you can build out into small campaigns.
Website
At the center of every digital presence, there is a website. We could view this as a wheel with spokes; if there are no spokes, the middle of the wheel lays there and goes nowhere. That is why a website only will not help you. You need the spokes to connect it with the outer parts of the wheel. Things we can add to make our wheel strong are social media, paid ads, email campaigns, and getting started.
Social Media
The platform you choose depends on your target audience. Facebook (Meta) owns two of the biggest platforms, Facebook and Instagram. LinkedIn is for a more formal audience. It would not make much sense for a clothing store to have content on LinkedIn.
Email Marketing
Some people will convince you that email is dead. The fact is that we all still open our inboxes. Email is still a corporate way of communication, and it’s going to be that way for a long while. The way we communicate using email may change, and because it still takes up a lot of our day. And for a long time, we will still be using email.
Content
Content can be so many things, like a blog, e-books, videos, spec sheets, case studies, podcasts, and much more. We use blogging, audio, and videos. Converting this blog post into audio is a breeze, and we’re also able to record a video about what we are writing.
Paid Advertising
On social networks, you share content with people who already know your business. Paid advertising is to enable you to send your message to people who don’t know your business.
