So much time, effort and money goes into building a business website. Whether you do it yourself, hire a freelancer, or work with an agency, it’s a serious investment of your money and time. You make decisions on the structure, the design, the copy, the photos, the calls-to-action, the buyer journeys… and suddenly it’s done, and you hit that ‘Go Live’ button. Excitement! But, now what?

If you just sit back and wait for the traffic and the leads to come in, you might be asking yourself why isn’t your website getting hundreds of hits per day? Why isn’t your phone ringing off the hook with customers wanting to buy your stuff? Why aren’t you getting inundated with leads, and enquiries, and sales?

Building a good website is just the start of your digital journey, you now need a digital marketing plan that’ll drive the right traffic to your shiny new site. Here’s how you can get started:

First things first, has your site been optimised?

Your site might look great to you, but have you made sure it’s optimised for search engines? There are a lot of different factors that go into SEO, and if you haven’t ticked all the boxes, you’re maybe missing out on opportunities. If you’re unsure, get in touch for some advice.

Use social media

If you’re already active on social media, then get sharing! Share some of the content of your new website, ask your audience for feedback on your new site. Don’t just post once and expect that to be it, you need to be consistent and post regularly – preferably daily!

If you’re new to social media and not sure how to use it for your business, get in touch for some advice.

Take Advantage of LinkedIn

Technically LinkedIn falls under social media, but it’s such an important platform it deserves its own section. I have always been a huge fan of LinkedIn, in fact I got my very first marketing job via LinkedIn back in 2010, but I have fallen in love with it even more since becoming a business owner. LinkedIn is the platform for networking. It’s where you’re allowed to talk about your business and your achievements, and where you can make strong business connections without the need for a hard sell.

If you haven’t got a profile, create one. Particularly if you own your own business, use this as a place to sell your skills. Add a professional photo, an attention-grabbing headline, a passionate summary, a portfolio, a link to your website, some posts about your new site. Connect with everyone you know and everyone you’d like to know. Post daily, comment on other people’s posts, write articles, share your successes, request recommendations, give recommendations. The more you post and the more connections you make, the more visible you and your business will be.

You can start by connecting with me on LinkedIn.

Does your site have a blog?

If not, I totally recommend starting one. What should you write about? Write about what you know! Don’t use this as a place to sell, but rather somewhere to showcase your brand’s personality and show off your expertise. Speak to your audience directly via your blog and answer some of their most frequent questions. Think about what your target audience will want to know about you, your business, your community, your passions. Your blog content should be optimised for SEO, but it should also reflect your brand’s personality. All the content on there will help drive traffic via search engines and give you something to talk about on social media and via email.

If you’re worried about blogging and don’t know where to start, get in touch for some advice.

Use Email

If you have just launched a new website, tell everyone about it! This includes that email list you have been curating. If you don’t have an email list, well now is the time to start one. Use your website as a place to capture data (GDPR compliant, of course) and then email your audience anytime you have a new blog post, an event, a new product or anything else that’s newsworthy.

There are plenty of great tools out there that’ll manage your email marketing for you. Try Mailchimp or Hubspot to start with and see how you get on.

Look for Links

Links from other websites to yours are an important aspect of SEO. Without going into too much detail, the more links from high quality, relevant websites you have, the better. But this is about more than just ticking an SEO box. This is about building relationships and getting your brand in front of your target audience, in the places that they are already looking. So where can you start with building links?

Firstly, find out if your business has already been mentioned on any website, perhaps without a link included – contact the website owner and request a link. Secondly, what business partnerships have you formed? Can you be listed on their website? What memberships or professional associations is your business a part of? Find out if you can be listed on those websites too. Do any of your staff members have accreditations? Find out if your business can be listed on there. Can you get your business listed on client websites? Or vice-versa, if you have outsourced any work (perhaps your new website), can you get your site listed on their website as a case study?

Start there, but this is only the beginning. Next stop is to create great quality content to be featured on the websites where your audience is visiting. Any magazines, blogs, news sites that they visit. Which brings me on to my next point…

Guest Blogging

Your own blog is great, but if your website is new then chances are you haven’t yet built up a loyal following on your blog. Guest blogging is a great way to get your name out there and get those very important links to your site. Reach out to business connections, bloggers, journalists and offer them a quality piece of content that their readers will love. In exchange, you’ll not only get a link to your site, you’ll be spreading awareness of who you are and what you do among your target audience and building relationships with influencers.

Connect With Influencers

When I talk about influencers, I’m not necessarily talking about Instagram celebrities with millions of followers. It could be as simple as getting in touch with your local network and using them to help spread the word. Reaching out to someone in your community who has a loyal following and asking them to tweet about your new site. Find out who the key influencers are in your industry, and look to connect with them. This could be via your guest blogging efforts, it could be via LinkedIn, it could be face-to-face at a networking event.

This list is not exhaustive, there are so many more things you can do to shout about your new website without always needing to rely on paying for advertising. If you need help formulating your digital marketing plan, get in touch and let’s talk!