Do you have digital marketing goals for this year? Many business owners hit roadblocks when it comes to creating defined digital marketing goals for their business. In this first of three-part series, we are helping you to define digital marketing goals for your website. Follow along for future posts discussing digital marketing goals for social media and digital marketing goals for email marketing.
Evaluate Your Current Site and Stats
To create quality digital marketing goals for your website, you must first have an honest evaluation of your site. Visit your site from a desktop or laptop and try to imagine you are a first-time visitor. Does your site load quickly? Is the information clear and easy to navigate? Are there any questions that your site does not easily answer? Are the images clear and do they load quickly? Are there clear calls to action for your visitors? Then repeat the process on your mobile device. Note anything that needs to be adjusted or ideas you have.
Then look at the analytics portion of your site. How many new visitors are you seeing each month? Do most visitors find you via social media, search engines, or paid ads? When they visit your site how long do they stay? What search terms are they using to find your site? Which pages perform better than others?
Look at your notes. Do you see any themes emerge in the traffic on your site? It might be helpful to get constructive criticism from a neutral party not affiliated with your business. If possible choose someone who is most like your target customer.
Examples of Digital Marketing Goals for Your Website
Some examples of digital marketing goals created by business owners or digital marketing agencies for clients are: increase organic traffic by X amount within X amount of time, improve mobile responsiveness on the site, increase the click-through rate (CTR) for visitors, have X number of new visitors each month, rank higher on search engine results pages, streamline the purchasing process, and build brand awareness.
Many of these are broad goals. You would want to create more detailed goals for your business. Make sure they are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely.
How to Achieve Your Digital Marketing Goals for Your Website
Refresh or Rebuild Your Site
If it has been 2 years or more since you have made any updates to your site then we recommend at least a website refresh. Refresh the content and images and perhaps some functionality features on your site. If you are working with older site technology a rebuild might be what you need. You will want your site to be functional on computers and mobile devices and create a great user experience for your visitors. You might enjoy our blog posts Discover 3 Elements Every Modern Website Needs and 10 “Must Haves” for a Great Website.
Photography and videography play a key role in a great user experience on your website. Consider earmarking your budget for improved photography and/or videography on your site.
You might find the following blog posts helpful in this area: Communicating Through Videos, Q&A with an Audio/Video Strategist, Professional Videography: What’s it all about? And our series on iPhone photography: Headshots and Portraits Using iPhone Portrait Mode, Product Photography Using Your iPhone, and More Tips and Tricks for iPhone Photography.
Implement SEM and SEO Strategies
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search engine marketing is paid ads that send visitors directly to your website. If your goal is to increase traffic to your site then this is one way to make that happen. The key to making the most of search engine marketing is to use targeted keywords and identify your target audience. There are so many factors that you can choose that determine who sees your ads and who does not. This ensures that the people who are most likely to be your customers will see the ads you set up.
Dogwood recently used search engine marketing to create targeted digital ads for a local church. We set up a landing page on their website and had a clear target audience. The results paid off. You can read all the details in our case study Case Study: Targeted Digital Marketing
Budgeting for SEM is completely up to you. You can spend as little as $5 a day or incorporate a pay-per-click ad campaign where you pay for only those that click on your ads.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is the long game for increasing organic traffic to your website. This is accomplished through identifying keywords in your content that signal to search engines what your content is about. This along with other factors such as having a well-functioning website, make them more likely to show your website higher in search results.
If increasing your organic traffic through SEO is one of the digital marketing goals for your website, know that it does not produce instant results. SEO efforts are best evaluated at the 3-6 month mark. While implementing an SEO strategy takes more time, it can yield long-lasting results and cost less than search engine marketing. You can read all the details in our blog post Dogwood’s Guide to SEO.
If you have a brick-and-mortar store, we recommend implementing local SEO to further your digital marketing strategies also!
Add a Blog or Create a Consistent Blogging Plan
At Dogwood, we are huge fans of blogging. Not only does a blog position you as an expert in your field, but it also creates content to share on social media, creates a great user experience on your website, can improve your SEO rankings, and adds fresh content to your website regularly. Adding a blog to your site or committing to consistently blogging this year can be valuable assets to achieving your digital marketing goals for your website.
Many business owners may struggle with what content to share on their blog. If this is you, be inspired by our blog posts Content Creation Using Topic Clusters, Blog Writing with SEO, and 4 Reasons Your Business Should Have A Blog.
Dogwood Can Help With Your Digital Marketing Goals for Your Website
We realize the above information can be a little overwhelming. Start slow and see what works and what doesn’t but know that nothing will ever work if you don’t do something! The crew at Dogwood would love to help you identify your digital marketing goals for your website and put them in place. We succeed when you succeed. If you are ready to achieve your goals, reach out and let’s work together!
