Website Marketing Consultant

What Does A Website Marketing Consultant Do?

1. Strategic Marketing

A marketing strategy serves as a roadmap for all the marketing and sales campaigns you will implement, this will make sure these online campaigns have the maximum opportunity for success.

Your marketing strategy should include

• The specific business goals you want to achieve – how many prospects / enquiries, what number of new customers, what level of turnover and profitability etc
• Your available resources, time, people, budget
• Timeline for analysis and results – we would always suggest that as a minimum a strategic plan should be based on a minimum of a12 month period. If you are at the point where you desperately need sales for survival. Deciding to invest in detailed strategic thinking that might be an activity that is happening to late.
• The marketing channels and approaches, that you will use to attract prospects and encourage customers to repeat purchase
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) the elements you will measure to identify if you are on target to achieve your business goals.

The strategy will include details on the target audience segments. Details of the key messages and calls to action to be used and importantly how you are differentiated and positioned against the competition. Along with details of the mix of channels and tactics to work alongside the website.

Your website / digital marketing consultant will typically be responsible for working with you to

• Develop a suitable strategic marketing approach for your company, based on your industry, target audience, and current offline and digital marketing effectiveness and activities.
• Identifying the companies priority objectives (e.g. getting more search traffic to your website, generating more enquiries, increasing goal conversions).
• Explore and select the online marketing channels and platforms to be used (e.g. Search engine optimisation, Email, Adwords, Social Media, etc).
• Regularly measuring performance and analysing data to evaluate performance
• Updating online campaigns for retargeting and optimizing leads to increase conversions.

2. Branding

Branding goes beyond your logo, fonts, colour schemes, tagline or slogan. Some would say that the mot important part of branding is your brand identity. This incorporates your unique selling proposition, personality, and importantly the feelings you want your target customers to feel about your products / services and you as a business.

The website an digital marketing consultant aims to develop and improve the overall brand image with creative online marketing campaigns. These creative digital campaigns will, hopefully, result in conversions and leads.

To achieve this, you and your digital marketing consultant should follow and align on the points below:

• Target audience: Define your customer ( or customer types ) and additionally understand them through their digital footprint and behaviour.
• Brand purpose: Know your products and services in detail and the ‘why’ behind them. This is a major piece of work and is something that should be conducted as a matter of course for all businesses. We have found that conducting this work often leads to companies discontinuing product ranges or reposition core products
• Unique selling points (USP’s): Understand what makes your brand, products, or services or unique.
• Competitor positioning: Research in detail the most important players (competitors) in your industry. You need to dig below the surface identifying what they actually do differently. Note this isn’t just about what the competitors say they do on their websites, its how they actually behave and respond. A detailed understanding will help you establish your brand positioning
• Market landscape: Think of this as market research. How is the market developing, is it developing rapidly, is the market declining
• Brand voice: Establishing how to best communicate with your target audience ensuring that you use a consistent and cohesive voice so your brand will be ‘seen’ consistently across different platforms.
• Brand recognition: digitally engaging with your customers in multiple and consistent manners.

Following the development of a detailed digital brand strategy with the above points, your company should be able to implement successfully a coherent brand strategy

3. Content Planning

The website marketing consultants starting point is to create a content calendar to guide and document and guide activities based on the company’s overall content marketing strategy.

This content calendar provides focus, cornerstones and direction for your company’s content creation that will prove invaluable and relevant as your business grows.

There are a number of different content calendar templates that are suitable, such as a simple Google Sheet, Excel or Trello

The content calendar provides an efficient process of identifying the right type of content to produce, website cornerstone content, topics and subtopics to be covered, the frequency that content should be uploaded and timeline of publishing.

A website marketing consultant should help develop the systems and processes to manage your workflow process and answer the following questions about the content strategy:

• Who’s the target audience for your content?
  • Is it a new user
  • A share shifter – someone who is using but is looking to change
  • The end user
  • The person with budgetary control
  • etc
• How does your content answer your target audience’s specific problems?
  • a how to guide
  • FAQ’s
  • infographic
  • thought provoking article
• What to highlight to differentiate your products and services from competitors?
  • This is information that will come out of your PUV analysis
  • The question “Why should I buy from you” is one that needs answering. If you have nothing that differentiates you from competitors its time to go go back to the drawing board
• Which content types work best to achieve your digital marketing priorities?
  • This can only be identified by trial and measurement
  • Do your customers respond to thought provoking articles, Technical briefing documents, case studies etc
• Which marketing channels work best for your content?
  • Again this can only be identified by trial and measurement
  • For some businesses email marketing might provide the highest ROI, for others a content strategy to achieve high organic rankings might be best

4. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Website marketing consultants stay up-to-date on the latest SEO best practices and website trends.

With over three billion  searches worldwide made on Google every day, optimizing content for search engines has never been more critical.

SEO, or search engine optimisation, is a primary online marketing method aimed at increasing quality traffic to your website through organic search results.

When your content’s optimised, your rank in search engine results will be higher and more visible to your target audience.

SEO requires some patience to see results, and your website marketing consultant must ensure you achieve the results you want to achieve. The following SEO articles may be of interest What is Technical SEO  , Web Marketing SEO   , The Top 19 Benefits of SEO

Some of the ways that your digital marketing consultant can do are:

• Publishing relevant content that stays true to your brand story while providing industry-related news to give your audience an update.
• Building an SEO strategy around topics that are relevant to your industry and company and make sure to update the content regularly.
• Doing keyword research to optimise relevant SEO keywords with high traffic potential on your content.
• Building links across your content to make it worthy of sharing.
• Familiarizing how the ranking algorithm goes and maximise click-through rate (CTR) with your titles, URLs, and descriptions.

5. Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising

Website marketing consultants should be aware about the different PPC ad programs offered on Google, Facebook and other social media channels. For some businesses PPC can be a very effective way of generating new leads quickly. For other businesses ad words can be ineffective and a way of burning through budget.

The dynamics and return on adwords have changed significantly over the years and campaigns that were set up and provided good return are now no longer viable or could be significantly improved. Aa digital marketing consultant and their team should know how to maximize your ad spend in promoting your products or services to your target customers.

6. Analytics and Evaluation

By reviewing and analyzing your Google data analytics, and other digital measurement criteria a website marketing consultant can determine quantitatively the types of content and the specific topics which bring in more traffic to your website, and other digital channels.

Detailed evaluation of the data analytics allows you to understand your target audience’s behaviour and preferences. What content are they interested in, what engages, what causes them to take action. What content takes hours, days , weeks to create but doesn’t gain any traction or interest.

Knowing this information helps you leverage these insights to create campaigns that’ll help you build more trusting relationships with your customers, get more leads, and generate sales.

When to Hire a Website Marketing Consultant and What To Expect

The following factors can serve as signals that it’s time to hire a website marketing consultant. These include:

• The exiting website is no longer fit for purpose and you have low confidence in your existing provider to make a difference
• Even though you have tried implementing different marketing activities, you’re not experiencing a positive change in your leads and sales.
• Within the business there is no spare capacity to take on board professionally website and digital activities.
• As a business your team lacks the expertise and knowledge of developing online and offline marketing campaigns.

Now you know what a website marketing consultant does and why you should consider hiring one, you’re likely wondering what’ll it be like working with one.

With website marketing, you are dealing with a lot of unknown areas and constantly changing paradigms. This is one of the factors that many businesses struggle to grasp. They see a website project a bit like the old school process of creating a brochure, i.e. get the content together, print and done. When in fact website and digital projects are dynamic and essentially never completed, as things are always changing.

Website marketing consultants will give you pretty good calculated estimates and forecasts based on best practices and tried techniques that have recently worked. But it depends is a very true statement as often you wont know exactly , you can have  best estimate. With this in mind it important that from the very beginning you must set your expectations, and give clear directions regarding the role of the website marketing consultant against your business objectives and goals.

Feedback, regular communication and updates are important to help identify tactics that work compared to those that do not. There must be transparency for the partnership to be clear of doubts and guesses. These will help both parties move forward in addressing issues and reflect the professionalism and adaptability of the consultant to your specific needs. Just to reiterate, website / digital marketing is a movable dynamic feast, things change rapidly, competitors can make dramatic short term changes that can have major impact on your activities

Website / Digital marketing is not a short-term commitment

Website and digital marketing takes time to see the desired results. When you create new content or post an ad, don’t expect immediately to see a boost in sales and engagement. It is not a hard or fast rule, but in our experience it takes at least six months before you see results, and longer from pure organic campaigns. Though once you have developed your organic content you have it for life, as opposed to advertising which is a pure cost.

Reasons to employ a website marketing consultant

In today’s digital age, having a website is essential for businesses of all sizes. However, creating and maintaining an effective website requires a certain level of expertise, which many business owners may not possess. This is where a website marketing consultant can be a valuable asset. A website marketing consultant can provide the knowledge and expertise needed to create and maintain a website that is effective in driving traffic and generating leads. Here are some of the reasons why you should consider using a website marketing consultant:

1. Expertise: A website marketing consultant has the expertise to design and develop a website that is optimized for search engines and user experience. They are up-to-date with the latest trends and techniques in website design and can provide valuable insights into how to make your website more effective.
2. Time-saving: Building and maintaining a website can be time-consuming. By working with a website marketing consultant, you can free up your time to focus on other important aspects of your business.
3. Cost-effective: While hiring a website marketing consultant may seem like an added expense, it can actually be a cost-effective solution in the long run. A well-designed website can help generate more leads and sales, leading to a higher return on investment.
4. Personalised approach: A website marketing consultant can provide a personalised approach to website design and development. They can work with you to understand your business goals and create a website that is tailored to your specific needs.
5. Analytics: A website marketing consultant can help you track and analyse website performance metrics, such as traffic, bounce rates, and conversion rates. This information can be used to continually improve and optimize your website over time.

Working with a website marketing consultant can provide the expertise, time-saving benefits, cost-effectiveness, personalised approach, and analytics needed to create and maintain an effective website for your business. Looking for a professional and experienced website marketing consultant click here