Every year, multiple start-ups are launched all over the world. Over 90 percent of them fail within the first two years. If you are thinking of starting a business, know that while the odds might be against you, you can still succeed if you know what to focus on. And one thing you should not overlook is your online presence.

Some people tend to think that having an online presence translates into having a website. Let’s just say; this is just the start. Your site is the platform you have. You must then use the platform effectively to boost your start up’s brand image.

To do so, you must employ creative website marketing strategies. Here are some ideas for you to use.

1. Analyze your competition

You don’t just need to market your startup business. You need to market it better than all your rivals. But, how can you do so, unless you know what you are up against? In the world of marketing, whether you do it online or offline, you can’t go in unprepared. If you do, you will be blindsided by your rivals and fail to achieve your marketing goals.

So, what do you need to do? You must first begin your website marketing strategy by conducting a thorough analysis of all your major competitors. Look at their websites and online communications. See what strategies they are employing and whether they have succeeded in creating engagement and buzz through it.

An excellent way to analyze your competition is by conducting a SWOT analysis. Find out about their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Their opportunities and threats will let you know about the macro environment things you need to consider. Their strengths showcase what you have to beat, and their weaknesses are what you can exploit to get better mindshare in consumers

2. Invest in SEO

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One of the most critical strategies has to be SEO. What is SEO? It refers to search engine optimization. Think of it this way. Apart from your website, there are millions of other websites operating from all over the world. Even within your industry, there will be quite a few sites. For instance, let’s say you open a leather skin shop. There are various others already operating. So, how do you guarantee that your website can attract the audience amongst all other competing sites?

Simple. You have to achieve a high ranking on search engines. Most people click on one of the first three organic pages they see online. Only a few look past the first page. This showcases that getting a high SERP is a must for your business, regardless of which niche it caters to.

And SEO is what helps in doing so. Search Engine Optimization uses various techniques, ranging from keyword addition to content and code optimization to improve your visibility and ranking. SEO must be a part of your marketing strategy mainly because you need people to visit your website in the first place to ensure conversion. And due to higher ranking, this is precisely what SEO works to deliver.

You might think that this is a costly method. However, quality SEO consultants succeed in identifying high-performing keywords and optimizing your content for them rather than including anything and everything in your strategy. So, make sure you gain a strong position in the online world by having a sound SEO strategy in place. Keep revisiting it and changing it when need be. Why so? This is because Google alone changes its algorithm at least seven times a year (it did so in 2017!). You must alter your SEO marketing strategy to incorporate these changes.

3. Create a brand

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Branding has to be one of the most crucial aspects of marketing. Some people tend to think that branding is only viable in conventional marketing. It is something you focus on through your advertisements and taglines. Well, there is much more to branding that this. Think of your business as one single brand. It doesn’t matter how many services it provides, at the end of the day, there has to be a single promise that your company delivers to customers. And you must communicate this promise through all touch points, including your website. 

A great way to do so is by having a unique yet simple logo that is reflected in critical areas of your website. Use custom logo design services to create the perfect logo for your company. It is essential that the logo is memorable, distinguishable, meaningful and simple. Why? This is because you need to achieve high brand recall and recognition and logos help you do so. By placing such a logo on different parts of your website, you will help increase brand awareness. The next time, people see your start-up’s communication, regardless of where they do, they will automatically recognize it. And this is the first step to developing brand loyalty.

4. Content marketing is the new thing

There was a time when long-form blog posts were considered a waste of money. Marketers focused on creating attention-grabbing ad copies to attract the masses. However, the customers of today are not as receptive of promotional content as those of the past.

Instead, they prefer finding brands that are credible and well-reputed in the industry. For them, this is better evidence of quality than self-proclaimed guarantees of satisfaction. This is where content marketing comes in.

Content marketing refers to subtle marketing of the brand by delivering material like white papers, eBooks and blog posts. This helps in multiple ways. Firstly. Google recognizes websites with blogs to be more credible than ones without it and hence rank them highly. Since you infuse your content with the right keywords, it automatically pops up during relevant searches. This, in turn, translates to customers thinking highly of your service and considering you to be an expert.

Moreover, content can also be used for helping in case of troubleshooting of your service. Here, your content becomes a part of your after-sale support service. Since it is bringing value to customers, it is bound to be appreciated by them.

5. Join communities and forums

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Just because you are creating a website marketing strategy for your business doesn’t mean you only need to implement it on your website. In fact, your startup can flourish if it looks beyond the online platform. The goal of any website marketing strategy is to increase traffic and conversion rates to your site.

To do so, you must be present where the customers are. And that means joining their social media groups and communities. Online forums are quite active in today’s age. And for startups, they can be an excellent source of insight as well as a part of your reputation management strategy. Anytime you see someone ask a question that you feel that your website can best answer, you can direct people to your site. However, make sure to use such communities very tactfully. The last thing you need is to come off as looking too promotional. Customers don’t prefer being advertised in their social media forums. Many such groups may even have no advertising policy. Therefore, you have to be subtle about it and only offer help when asked.

When people do ask for help, when you provide them a link to your website as part of the response, you are bound to get new traffic. Why? This is because most forum discussions have a decent search engine ranking. And by engaging, you are leveraging their presence to address a wider audience.

6. Create full-fledged systems for digital marketing

Marketing on a website is more complicated than it sounds. You need a proper digital marketing system in place to fully leverage on your site traffic. Within digital marketing, there are quite a few strategies you can employ to give your business’s website a boost.

To get the most out of digital marketing, you must begin by creating a fully-fledged and thorough system for it. For instance, let’s say you wish to focus on content marketing within your website. Beforehand, develop a plan of how you will go about creating and promoting the content. Have a schedule in place and adhere to it. You must also decide which content to promote on which platform. Also, email marketing can also be integrated into your website. All you need to do is develop a landing page which pushes site visitors to subscribe to newsletter and images. However, make sure that this tactic doesn’t come off as annoying. To avoid giving off the wrong brand image, it is advised that you avoid using pop up landing pages.

You might wonder, why is it so important to develop a system for all your marketing strategies? Well, you can say that this is a plan in itself. It helps you to monitor your performance and campaigns. You then easily alter your plan to ensure continuous improvement and consistency of your brand promise.

7. Be happy with current frameworks

When we think of providing the best experience to our visitors through our website, we imagine our sites to be complicated. Well, they don’t necessarily have to be. Instead, some of the best websites are the simplest ones.

A lot of small businesses don’t even need to invest in complex websites, to begin with. Rather than doing what everyone else in the industry is doing, a great website marketing strategy is to focus on the foundations. Before you consider email marketing or other tactics, remember that marketing begins from the moment your visitor view your website. So, you need to develop one flawlessly. And as a small business, you should work to leverage the current simple frameworks. Think about what the website will be used for when developing your site.

For example, let’s say that your website won’t be a touchpoint for actually selling your service and instead is only there for marketing it. It then serves the purpose of a digital business card. Here, you don’t need a complicated interface. Instead, all you need to do is reflect company information, have a blog section and a subscription page.

On the other hand, if you wish your website to be a way of selling your service to customers, i.e., an online store, things will be entirely different for you. Here, you will require to invest in solutions like Shopify or create your own hosted store.

Know the purpose of your website and decide on whether to utilize the current simple framework or develop a new one. Using the latter allows you to save your marketing budget for other aspects. This includes SEO, CPC ads, PPC communications, and revenue-driving plans.

8. Optimize your images

People think that marketing only pertains to content. The same misconception is also prevalent regarding SEO. Well, there is another factor that is essential in the world of marketing, and hence by extension, in SEO. And that is optimized images.

You need to focus on the quality of your images. At the same time, you don’t necessarily have to use the best resolution possible. This is because the higher the resolution of the picture, the slower your website will become. And as you might already know, slow websites are abandoned by visitors. At the same time, don’t opt for blurry images.

Find the right balance in picture quality. Optimize it further by naming the file with words that are keywords for your brand. Each of these elements will help boost the visibility of your startup website. Don’t opt for blurry images.

Conclusion

There are various website marketing strategies via which you can make your startup business stand out. Give these eight creative ideas a try and see a significant boost in the visibility and conversion rates of your site. Each of these ideas has a high ROI. Market your service well through your website and reduce your chances of failure. Sustaining a startup might not be easy. But, it is undoubtedly possible.