Hubspot Marketing Grader: A Tool to Help You Succeed!
Your Marketing Effort Begins With Infrastructure
The First 7 Steps to Your Marketing Effort Have Little to do with Marketing
Step 1: Building Your Website
Currently, websites across the board are falling behind in both mobile responsiveness and fluidity. There are some keys to creating or redesigning websites to catch up to today's mobile surfing expectation, along with ensuring they are able to achieve their desired result in short fashion. Complex websites are turning consumers away, potentially costing the businesses market capture and sales. Items that are important and appealing to the mobile consumer include, but aren't limited to:
- 3 click workflow- Consumers are looking to receive their information within 3 clicks of getting to their desired site. Information needs to be laid out in a manner of which the average consumer can get where they want to be in short fashion and gain the information (along with pricing) for the product or service. Websites that mask their pricing models will surely fail to gain ideal capture due to our "right now" buying and research patterns. We, as a society, want our information right now and want to be able to make a purchase just as easily.
- Mobile Responsiveness- RSS is great, but becoming a thing of the past. Mobile consumers want to view a site that translates to their mobile device seamlessly, without fail.
- Parallax Scrolling- Consumers are always going to go after what is the cool, new fashion. Parallax scrolling and full width views are in demand by the consumer of today, and your website should provide a sexy and smooth feel for your potential client.
Step 2: Make Your Website Search Engine Optimized (SEO)
Your marketing effort will fizzle and fade quickly if your website isn't search engine optimized. Here are some key items that are missed regularly in website design and SEO
- Make sure your site only has one (1) H1 tag, and your H2 tags are in place.
- Ensure you have your favicon in place for every platform, as websites vs iOS vs Android all operate on separate screen sizes and dimensions.
- Your site will need to have a title, meta description, and keywords. Companies that tell you otherwise are "ABSOLUTELY" wrong. Ensure all of these areas meet Google requirements and are not too short or long. Ensure your keywords are used in the content of your site.
Step 3: Social Media Sharing
Ensure your site has links to the following social media sites. Other sites can be used, however these are imperative:
- Google+
Step 4: Blogging
Blogging is a key to building content for your site and is one of the most failed areas for most companies. New sites require informative blogging to become a source of information to build traffic rank. Blogging should be non-predatory, and should be something relevant to your particular market verticals. Blogging should be done as often as possible, and an argument could be made for daily blogging to build web presence.
Step 5: Build your Website on a relevant platform
Let's be realistic. You need to have a website on a relevant platform to ensure you have the ability to change with the times regarding Google Algorithms, design changes, personnel changes, etc. I came across a website the other day that was built using Dreamweaver software. Dreamweaver hasn't been relevant in over a decade, and I am quite sure the company is fighting modern technology to stay competitive daily. Most likely, the company would spend less to completely redesign their website, than they are spending on payroll to compete with antiquated software technologies.
Step 6: Website Analytic Tools that are Important to Your Marketing Effort
The following Google Chrome Extensions are great tools for analyzing your website and those of your competition:
- Check My Links- Checks any page for bad links
- META SEO Inspector- Checks any page for important SEO requirements
- Alexa- Measures any site for traffic rank score
- MozBar- Gives analytics for all related Moz areas of focus
- Open SEO Stats- Gives analytics on multiple areas as a double check for other extensions
- Wappalyzer- Allows you to inspect design and marketing tools for websites
Step 7: Additional Resources that are very relevant
- Alexa subscription- This will help you achieve your traffic rank goals. Alexa's website
- Moz subscription- This will analyze your website and your competitions website to gain competitive edge. Moz's website
Conclusion
You should have a good jump on the competition for your marketing effort if you follow the seven steps listed above. If you would like more information or have questions regarding the information above, please feel free to reach out, and we will be happy to walk you through the creation steps and get you moving forward.
Related article:
Listed with explanations are the top 6 SEO areas to pay attention to for site ranking on Google
While the links below are from 2013 and 2014, the algorithms remain very similar, and should be taken into account when working on your SEO for your website. These 6 areas produce the highest return on investment.