We’re all interested in learning the things we can do to be successful. But often, it’s equally important to learn what NOT to do. Avoiding mistakes plays a critical role in achieving success.
One mistake I see many of my clients make consistently is failing to follow through on their marketing plan. When I see a client’s website underperforming, I ask them if I can get together with them to figure out why. This usually results in sitting down and going over what the numbers show, what steps they’ve been taking, and reassessing their goals for the website. Then we brainstorm some ways we can improve the success of their website. What kind of business or contacts do they want more of? Who can they connect with to make that happen? And where do their ideal visitors hang out?
The result of this conversation is a customized marketing plan. This all sounds great, but more often than not nothing changes. Why? Because the client never executes the plan – they don’t do the things we talked about. Bottom line? If we keep doing the same thing as before (which is nothing) we are going to get the same results.
There’s a great quote in Donald Miller’s book, Marketing Made Simple, “…You only make money on what you execute.” Often, what you do is less important than the fact that you actually do something. Why is this? Because there’s no perfect marketing plan. A lot of people think of their marketing plan as a static entity. But in reality, to work, your marketing plan has to be able to evolve and change. Those changes may sometimes be big, but more often than not the changes you make will be small tweaks. You come up with a plan and executing that plan improves your website’s results. Over time, as you gain experience, you learn that some aspects of your plan are more effective than others. As a result, you make changes to capitalize on what works. But you actually have to start doing something before you can learn what those “more effective” things are. If you never start, you’ll never get to the point where you’re tweaking what you do.
I have been amazed at the little amount of effort it takes in dramatically increase the success of a website. As an example, I developed and maintain the website for the church I attend. Historically, our monthly pageviews were around 400 per month. About two years ago we started posting blog articles on the website, motivated not so much to generate traffic but as a way to help our visitors spiritually. But there were traffic benefits that resulted from this effort: our monthly pageview count now runs around 1,500 per month. That’s a 275% increase in traffic! The blog page is the second most visited page on the site (after the Home page). In fact, the first blog article posted two years ago has been read over 1,800 times. But there’s another piece to this puzzle. We also “advertise” (that is post a link) to these articles on the church’s Facebook page, on Instagram, and on the website’s Home page. We let people know these articles are available. If we didn’t, few people would know they exist. Not knowing about them prevents visitors from accessing them.
Do you have a great, compelling website that isn’t doing what you’d hoped it’d do? If so, we at Drake Web Development would be happy to help you develop a custom marketing plan. Just go ahead and schedule a free consultation on our website. We’ll take a look at your current website, review your goals, and ask about your visitors’ goals. Then we’ll be happy to discuss with you how we can help you move forward.
P.S. Our own marketing plan includes generating traffic for our website by sharing valuable insights and tips through our blog articles. We have a constantly growing library of articles that, as a website owner, you will be interested in. And while you’re there, please subscribe to our blog. That way, you will receive these great insights and tips automatically in your inbox whenever they are published.
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