This article describes how to create and use a Website and an Email Marketing List to market your business online. It’s written for those choosing to learn as they go, or choosing to hire help. If you’re hiring a freelancer such as me (Contact Me), the more you know about the process and tools, the better.
To read more about the Website creation tools and services I use, please see my article, Excellent Website Tools and Services I use.
Happily, nearly anyone can now market their ideas, products and services online inexpensively (or even for free) using the Internet. The combination of a Website, Email List and Social Media offers incredible, direct access to the public. If you’re learning to create your own Website or Marketing Campaign, or are educating yourself before hiring a Website Designer or Developer, read on!
Now Is The Time If You:
- Have a great idea for a product
- Want to offer a service
- If you’ve written a book or recorded an album
- If you have knowledge, a hobby or a message to share with everyone
- If you find a popular product to buy and sell
- Want to create a huge enterprise
Resources Needed To Market Your Business Online
This section may be of greatest immediate use, as it lists the services and skills you’ll need to create a website and email marketing campaign. Further down in this article we discuss the details of choosing these tools, services and contractors. You may find it most helpful to use this list as your general guide and refer to the rest of the article when addressing each item.
- A Website
- WordPress is recommended for its affordability, ease of use, and ecommerce abilities
- A Web Hosting Provider
- WordPress Managed Hosting is recommended (Free and Shared Hosting are not)
- An Email Marketing Provider
- Remember to back up your email list in case you move to another email marketing host
- MailChimp.com is easy to use and offers good features on its free plans, better features for paid plans
- Remember to back up your email list in case you move to another email marketing host
- An Email Marketing Campaign
- Developed using your Email Marketing Provider (you can create accounts at several to test them)
- Social Media Accounts
- Different services are better for different purposes
- X (Twitter.com)
- Facebook.com (you can create a page under your existing or a new account)
- Instagram.com
- YouTube.com
- Different services are better for different purposes
- Skills, Time And Labor
- Contact me for your Free Consultation!
- Have your website professionally created
- Help you create your Website as you go along
- Web Design
- WordPress Development assistance
- Copywriting
- Contact me for your Free Consultation!
Getting A Free WordPress Website
You can get a WordPress Website at WordPress.com and upgrade it later if you like. You can see if you like using WordPress.
I’m not aware of any email marketing service that remains free when your list grows large. But MailChimp.com has a free account with good features.
Can I Create My Own Website And Email Marketing Campaign?
Sure! If you choose to do the whole thing yourself, you’ll have to learn all the applicable skills. That should take some weeks or months. You can also hire someone help you as you learn. I find that’s a good tradeoff between Free and Hiring Help.
Choosing Your Hosts and Services
Please refer to What Is Needed To Market My Business Online above for a brief discussion of hosts. Hosting is a big topic and if you’re unsure, it’s best to consult me or another experienced person.
What Is Your Budget?
If you must recoup investment capital through your marketing efforts, or otherwise have much riding on your effort, pull out all the stops and create a top-drawer Website and Marketing Campaign. Creating advertising and promotional material is an exact and well-documented art and science. Please be encouraged to find the Primo work you need for your important project, as discussed under Tight Budget below.
Tight Budget
High quality materials can absolutely be created on a small budget; it will just take you longer than if you hired proven experts. The number of aspiring Marketing Professionals on the Internet means you can find tutorials and articles showing what a high-end effort looks like. So educate yourself and then seek Marketing Professionals who will help you for free or at low cost. When hiring contractors, choose those who are studying hard to become experts, and are intent upon building their track record of successes.
Well Budgeted
If you’re well-financed and must have results, hire Designers, Developers and Marketers with full portfolios of past work, and proven track records. Many professionals have achieved high sales, gained vast numbers of impressions, built audiences, and designed brilliant graphic presentations. Those who know they can reliably earn the Big Bucks for their clients will show you their portfolios and track records to prove they’re worth the money. Consider having someone experienced such as a Consultant help you verify their claims.
Create Your Brand
Create a brand for your organization to present a consistent, easily recognizable image the public will recognize for generations hence. This comprehensive market research and design task will take into account your customer demographic, your competitors’ branding, etc. When in doubt, do a trademark and copyright search.
You’ll need a logo, product packaging if applicable, a color palette, font choices, a design layout, and some guidelines conveying what mood or design paradigm your organization projects.
Your Brand Specifications are kept in your written Brand Brief, so you can create your Website, Social Media account graphics, business cards and letterhead according to your brand. If your brand takes off, your trademarked material is valuable.
If you’re not ready to define your brand, you should at minimum choose your color palette and design your logo. This can be done when you create your Website.
Get A Great Website
Your Marketing Website will present, discuss and link to your product, service or material you’re sharing. It should be quick and easy to read, have large, high-quality images, and easy-to-find links to buy your products. If you create a breathtaking, cinematic Website, your visitors will still want to find your phone number and read what you have to say. You’ll also want your message to be positive, distinct, and memorable.
If you run a local business, it may be that neither you nor your customers care if your presentation’s appearance is sophisticated. Experienced businesspeople know to start with your phone number and as many positive points as we can list at the top of your website. Yet I suggest aiming high in terms of appearance. A good-looking Website may make your existing customers amenable to paying more and accepting price increases.
How Can You Create A High Quality Website?
Start by looking at successful Websites of the type you want to create. Those Websites with high traffic and regular readership or patronage are the ones proven to work. You can look at your competitors’ Websites as you consider what your Website will look like.
If you’re going to have someone else build your Website, you’ll need the ability to recognize when they’re doing a good job and when you need someone else. You can find freelancers to either build you a great Website or show you how. Websites and Online Marketing have a lot of moving parts, but you can take advantage of the enormous resources available for free online and for hire.
Website SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Organic Search Results are the free traffic gained by Search Engines finding your content, indexing it, and showing it in their users’ search results. Organic traffic is free except for the work you put into your SEO efforts.
To show up in Search Engine Results your Website needs On-Site SEO. Content should be formatted using headings in descending order, your site should be fast enough, plus a bunch of other specifications. A good SEO Plugin will get you started. I’m using All In One SEO at the moment because it handles Social Media Headers and is easy to use. I like it.
Actively promote your website to search engines is Off-Site SEO and involves a wide variety of activities, such as submitting your site to search engines. If it’s in your budget, you can hire an SEO Specialist to finesse your SEO.
You can also pay to advertise your Website. Not doing your best with at least on-site SEO is to leave money on the table, as the saying goes.
Create An Email List
Email Lists are an invaluable asset with a high ROI (Return on Investment). It’s far cheaper to market (or to publish) to people already willing to listen to you, than to find new customers. You can maintain your audience’s interest, make sales offers, or keep readers posted on your store’s new merchandise and sales.
Most of the well-established email list companies offer a free account with limited users and features. MailChimp.com is relatively easy to use and offers good features, some requiring a paid plan.
Choosing the optimal company for you requires research.
Remember to export your lists to a spreadsheet file and save them to your computer. You can move them to another company later.
Rules of The Email World
Choosing a qualified Email Marketing Company and following their directions will bring you into compliance with the various legal and industry requirements. They will also handle your email’s Deliverability, its ability to land in recipients’ In Boxes rather than their Spam Filter.
Beware running afoul of anyone: Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and other companies Blacklist addresses or domains they suspect of spam (unsolicited email). So Email Marketing Companies will stop your account if you offend the The Email World. Consumer Privacy and other concerns are now a big issue. You need only do a few things like record that you received permission to send people email, but you should do it.
Building Your Email List
To invite people to sign up, you may opt for a Homepage Hero with a Sign-Up Form as the centerpiece of your Homepage. The more Sign-Up Forms the better, so put them in your Sidebar, after articles, etc.
Giving away a free eBook or other incentive in exchange for an email address can encourage email sign-ups. Opening the email sign-up form should require no more than one click. Displaying the entire form with its prominent Sign Up Button, some friendly text and a promise never to share their address makes subscribing quick and easy.
Create Social Media Accounts
Your Social Media account graphics, fonts and colors should coordinate with your Webpage and other marketing material. Making your Internet Presence consistent across media and platforms gives you credibility as a well-organized, professional person. You’d like people to recognize your logo easily wherever they see it.
Creating Your Social Media Graphics
Each Social Media account needs a banner graphic and a profile image, in the size and image format specified by each service. This is why my advice is to at least choose your color palette and create your logo, if you’re not creating an entire brand.
Each graphic will be shown on the differently-sized screens of desktop, tablet and mobile devices. Therefore, put your logo and other important information in the “Safe Area” that shows on desktop and all other sizes. The sides of your graphic will be trimmed to fit smaller devices. (This will be different from service to service, so I suggest you start with the largest one. You can also hire someone (like me) to create your Social Media graphics.
Create Regular Content
Actively promoting your Website, your email list and any other media are how you reach your public. Your content should be formatted for optimum SEO (see Website SEO above). What content depends on you and your audience.
Advertising is another option. You can boost your social media posts by paying the social media service in question, you can buy Google Ads, etc. Social media is a great way to test advertisements before buy ad space.
Blog Articles
To publicize your Website, create content such as blog articles and announce them using social media. Timely news blog posts on the topic of your blog or enterprise, discussions of your topic’s industry and products, technical or other informational articles on your topic. If you have an online store, you’ll want to announce sales and new products.
Social Media Posts
Social Media posts can alert your readers to new posts, to sales, to deals, to news events in your topic. Creating social media posts requires some graphic and SEO skill but today’s tools make these tasks far easier. You can also pay a Social Media Manager or other marketer to run your off-site Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign.
Emails
Your email list may become your most effective and valuable asset. People who already want or who don’t mind your emails don’t have to be find, persuaded and acquired. When readers subscribe to your blog, they’ll be joining the Blog Email List.
You can have more than one email list and let your subscribers choose which ones they want. Email is a great way to receive news. An email list can grow very large over time, so introducing an occasional sales offer into your list can be profitable.
Want To Bring Your Product Or Service Online?
If you’d like a Website or Blog created, or need help creating your own, just click below to drop me an email! I’ll reply as soon as possible.