See Our Blogs

Authors Adrienne Wilkerson and Jennifer Christensen, adapted to blog by Sara Jokela

In this series, we have been discussing best practices for websites, and what website pages you should include. This installment will discuss the blog page, the FAQ page, and the contact page.

For more information on website best practices, see The Beacon Way Episode 12, Episode 13, and Episode 14.

To Blog or Not To Blog: Is It an Effective Use of Your Time?

Blogs have evolved significantly over the years and they absolutely can be effective and important to your website.

Providing dense, relevant content to your website pages along with search engine optimization helps your website rank higher with Google which is why blogs can now be seen featuring 2,000 words instead of the previous 1,000-1,200 words.

Clients and your target audience want to learn about your company and the services you offer prior to engaging you in further conversation. This is also where page titles can be a huge asset in initial engagement — as creating a blog page is a valuable tool to providing in-depth information on your website.

Blog subjects can range from how-to guides, pricing strategies, your origin story, and even a highlight of your vendors. Above all, the blog page should be a resource center for those you’re trying to reach.

At Beacon Media + Marketing, we prioritize the categorization and organization of our blog page based on the subject. We want to remove any barrier to a client or potential client finding the information they are looking for.

As mentioned above, this is also advantageous for SEO! Google loves blogs, and Google loves to favorably rank blogs that specifically address the search terms your client and potential client are using.

By providing information on a blog page, you are answering what we call “top of funnel” questions. These are questions that are at the beginning of the research phase of the buyer’s journey and lend to the credibility of your business.

For more information about the Buyer’s Journey, visit The Beacon Way Episode 6: The Customer Buying Process, and Episode 7: How Does The Beacon Way Help The Customer Through The Buying Process.

Should Your Service Pages Cover Sales Questions?

No, not in our opinion and experience. Utilizing web pages such as a blog page that is set up for providing information will be a more authentic user experience that develops the trust of potential customers.

Having a lot of articles available that are answering the questions of your target audience is a great pathway to moving them further down your sales funnel. Some potential customers will take a while to contact you — but if even a fraction of those who visit your blog book an appointment, that is still something we consider a win.

Why Make the Time Investment in Blogs?

Blogs not only provide answers to potential customers and clients, but they offer the flexibility to be adapted into social media assets as well. Blog posts are a great marketing tool to pull quotes for posting and linking back to your small business website.

Blogs also offer a low-pressure approach to your sales process that introduces people to your company and your services without the pushy hard sell of “BUY NOW”.

Just the FAQs For an Effective FAQ Page

Our best advice is to not allow the FAQ page to be an excuse for not answering client questions. Nothing can be more frustrating to website visitors who would like to use a chatbot, make a phone call, or send an email to get more information, only to be sent back repeatedly to the FAQ page.

Just like a testimonials page, FAQ pages can be very effective if used correctly. However, they can also create the impression of your business that it is cold, unapproachable, and seem as if you have no desire to answer more complex or nuanced questions.

Tips and Tricks to Effectively Build Your FAQ Page

1. Prioritize user-friendliness:
   Users won’t stay in your FAQ section or on your website if they have to hunt for the answer they’re looking for.
2. Optimize visual appeal and accessibility:
   The font and styling of the FAQ should draw the eye and be easy to read.
3. Utilize video links:
   Many services can be complex, or they may be new, and a video to explain your product or service process may be the best way to answer potential questions your clients may have.
4. Organize FAQs by category:
   Questions about billing should be separate from questions about shipping. It just makes sense!
5. Reinforce your brand by leveraging your FAQ page:
   Your website pages need to feel consistent so that no matter which of the sections the visitor encounters, it feels authentic to your brand messaging.
6. Use the FAQs as a starting point for further engagement:
   CTAs, chat forms, videos, and blogs are all good options to redirect to or help enhance the information that is being addressed in the FAQ.
7. Level up by including a personal touch:
   Some answers may be just too complex or nuanced to answer in a FAQ so add a personal touch by owning that and providing an avenue for contact that will allow that question to be answered properly and thoroughly.
8. Understand and strategize FAQs as a customer service tool:
   Here at Beacon, we are all for using technology to enhance your client and potential customer experience. We advise that when using a FAQ list, do your best to ensure that it is a benefit and not a deterrent.

Contact Us! How to Leverage the Contact Page as an Effective Marketing Tool

We’ve seen it time and time again, the contact page looks empty and neglected. Your contact page is one of your most important pages and should contain more than just your phone number. In fact, there is a huge opportunity to leverage this page to help meet your marketing goals.

What Should You Consider When Writing Your Contact Page?

Contact pages will have less content than other pages on your website, but they also offer a tremendous opportunity to add relevant information — and incorporate search engine optimization (SEO).

When you are strategizing your contact page, some things to consider adding are the various ways to contact you, the most effective way to contact you, and whether you are going to send them to a form.

Many businesses have several forms of communication but some are more easily accessible than others. For instance, if you are sending them to a contact us form and your typical turnaround is 24-48 hours, that should be specified at the time they are sent to the form. Communicating return contact expectations build trust.

Site visitors often may want a quicker way to contact you without a wait time, so there should be several options available and detailed information on how that contact will be handled.

Extending the Investment in Building Trust Past Your Service Page and into the Contact Us Page

All of these considerations should focus on keeping the trust that you have built up until this point. Your contact details are just as important to search engines as your home landing page, blog, services page, and product page.

Each of those pages was strategically built to bring in leads but if those leads aren’t converting because the contact experience isn’t meeting expectations, you’ve lost trust.

The Contact Us Page: A Most Important Portfolio Page

Moving beyond research into conversion is all in the details for many reasons across your site. Visitors want to options so we recommend that you give as many options for contacting you as possible and explain how those options can be used best.

The contact us page is a critical web page — and a continuation of the customer experience. Customer feedback can be vital when reviewing and setting up your page.

Many customers use the contact us page to get a hold of you when something goes wrong and you certainly don’t want to leave them hanging when they need you.

Maintaining the client relationship is just as vital as gaining a new client relationship. Happy clients tend to send referrals and they won’t send a referral if they have difficulty contacting you.

Chatbots: Potential Annoyance or Asset?

Chatbots can be both a potential annoyance and an asset. We’ve all had the experience of a chatbot that isn’t working properly and that is incredibly frustrating.

In the era we are living in, AI chatbots pop up automatically on most sites your visit. When the chatbot is aggressive and it’s not easy to navigate away from it, that can be highly annoying for the user.

Ultimately, it is another option for a form of communication and people like options. We have seen that the more we call out the chatbot for what it is, the better customer responds to it and we like to communicate the expectation of when to expect the return reach out.

Best Practices for Chatbots

1. Make sure to communicate clearly whether or not a human is attached to the chatbot:
   Customers who expect to be connected to a customer service agent but are funneled to a form instead are likely to lose trust in your business.
2. Clearly communicate all the details of the return reach out:
   Removing barriers to contact are important when strategizing how your customers can contact you. Clearly communicating when you are and are not available builds trust in your business.
3. Allow the user to be able to close the chatbot and return to it if they want to:
   Chatbots that obstruct the user, particularly on mobile, from navigating your site to retrieve the information they are looking for will be more likely to bounce off your site.

Transparency Matters in the Digital Customer-Facing Landscape

No matter your industry, being transparent in your customer-facing digital landscape is crucial to building the trust with clients that we so often talk about.

The answer could be that you won’t be able to answer them for a week because you are out of the office, and that is ok as long as you clearly communicate that upfront to the customer.

Don’t shy away from being honest and transparent with your digital marketing efforts. It will really serve you well in the long run.

The Beacon Way is a Podcast and blog series with the mission to help others understand and navigate the digital marketing world. Listen to The Beacon Way on our website or wherever podcasts can be found.

Build a Website That Cultivates Connections With Clients

Digital marketing is an ever-moving entity but does contain some constants. For example, cultivating connections with clients over a digital marketing platform is more relevant than ever in our digital age.

For more information, check out Episode 12 and Episode 13 of The Beacon Way, where we discuss how a website is the cornerstone of digital marketing campaigns and how building a home and about page that people want to read will benefit your business.

Transparency in Price Listing on Your Website: A Recommended Do or a DON’T?

Prices on your web pages are a controversial subject among business owners and digital marketers. The Beacon Way highlights transparency as one of our values — so we believe this is a marketing strategy that should be considered.

Potential customers are looking for information when they visit your website; it’s part of the customer journey.

We believe that an effective digital marketing strategy should include allowing your website to prescreen visitors to funnel in your target audience and we’ll discuss that more in depth a little later in the blog.

Dig Deep: Sharing Guidelines for Service Pages

Standard logic in website design for service and product pages is, “This is what we offer and this is what we do ~ Click this widget and you’re in!” This is only the surface of what your website should offer, but have you considered going deeper?

Potential customers have already used digital channels and are visiting your site. They’re spending time on the Home page and the About page — getting to know you. We want to emphasize that you cannot overshare information on your service pages.

Digital marketing using Google Analytics and search engine optimization allows your pages to rank well and we recommend focusing those marketing efforts into content marketing on your service pages.

Your target audience has found you! Now it’s time to answer their questions about the services you provide. Establishing your authority on a subject is not just a marketing strategy — it’s a way to earn the trust of your reader and increase conversions.

Style Matters: Visual Appeal in a Virtual World

Content marketing strategy is an important component of your service and product pages. Certain industries need to consider more education for their services that they know won’t convert as easily as others.

Botox, for example, has done a great job in marketing itself. They have used multiple channels to educate the consumer on who they are and what their product does. This type of service won’t need as much education as a lesser-known service.

By focusing your digital marketing efforts on developing a content-rich service page, you’ll create an environment where your higher-end, lesser-known services will convert more easily by providing your visitor with a really good education.

Social proof, visuals, links, and blogs are a great way to keep the conversation going. Potential customers want to have plenty of research under their belt and see the experience of others who have used your services. The bottom line: They need reassurance before making a big purchase from you.

How to Communicate What You Know: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy

When considering your content marketing strategy, how will you get the information out there for new and current prospective customers?

You already know the knowledge base your clients are coming to you with, consider what other services may they be interested in and searching for on social media channels or anywhere online.

The Beacon Way recommends that a service page should contain about 2000 words to be successful in the search engine optimization arena.

Check out how Beacon Media + Marketing has designed our Service Pages here https://www.beaconmm.com/marketing-services/

That’s a lot of content! So, part of your digital marketing strategy should be how you will visually arrange that to keep the attention of the reader and keep them on your page.

Linking blogs and other information keeps your reader on your page — which pleases the search engines ranking algorithms and serves to educate your website visitor.

They may want to read more information from those blogs that originate from your site or they will hit your Call-To-Action button. Either way, it’s a win for you!

Digital Marketing Channels: Be Prepared to Shift Strategies

Digital marketing strategies change in the digital marketing channels and you need to be prepared to make shifts as they make these changes.

In the past, Google ads used to consider it acceptable to send the user to your general services page when pay-per-click advertising was used. That is not the case any longer, now it’s important for Google ads to have the specific information match up to the specific service on your page.

Circling back to the Botox example, PPC campaigns for an application of facial Botox, as opposed to other application places, should lead website traffic to facial Botox.

So social media advertising has become a lot more specific and picky about how it is applied as opposed to the traditional search engine marketing methods that were used in years past.

Breaking out your services can seem a little repetitive but potential customers want to learn about Botox and they are sent to the homepage, which can be very annoying. A digital marketing strategy should always consider the User’s experience.

UX and Multiple Service Pages: Why it Matters

In Episode 12 of The Beacon Way, we discussed the Homepage of your website and why that matters— it’s a digital introduction to your business. The service page act as a digital marketer (and sales agent) for those who are interested in learning more about what you do.

Using a digital marketing strategy with multiple service pages serves to break up the content and allow the user to spend more time on your site — and increase the odds of them continuing to explore what you offer.

If your site is full of pop-ups or doesn’t direct them to the subject the ad promised, the bounce rate skyrockets. Google Analytics has figured this out and they will de-rank your digital advertising and charge you more to run those ads.

In addition to a skyrocketing bounce rate and ad spend, it’s counterintuitive to what the digital marketing strategy was created for.

Other sources of social media marketing campaigns, like Facebook, may not apply these changes but instead will be initiated by the user because they want to be redirected to the subject they’re looking for, so the bounce rate will still be high in this circumstance as well.

Listing Your Pricing Online: Why The Beacon Way Encourages It

As we stated previously, this controversial subject has been a point of contention among digital marketers for a very long time. Here at Beacon, we decided the risk is worth it.

Understandably, the reasoning against this online marketing strategy is valid. It can feel like you’re giving away your secret sauce and all your competitors are going to go on the offensive to drive pricing down.

The truth is that everyone is searching for that information. In fact, one of our best-performing blogs is https://www.beaconmm.com/2020/04/30/how-much-does-cost-hire-agency/.

This blog gets so much website traffic because current and prospective customers are searching for a range of costs that they can expect for the services they want to contract.

This not only helps them plan, but it also serves a few other purposes as well.

1. It can pre-qualify or disqualify leads, saving Sales time and unproductive appointments.
2. It helps keep sticker shock at bay by outlining expense expectations for your future clients.

Potential customers will know if their budget supports more investigation into hiring us as their digital marketing partner.

At the time of the sales call, they come in prepared for the costs expected from the list of services you offer — which helps them decide on services that are the most important to them.

Staying Competitive: Offer a Range instead of Hard and Fast Numbers

Digital marketing techniques employed in your strategy are unique to you and what you want to present to the world. It’s ok to not reveal all the ingredients in your secret sauce!

Beacon Media + Marketing has a variety of packages we offer for our digital marketing services. Not all websites we design cost the same and therefore our pricing has to be different for each project.

Our web design services start at $3500 and can range to $50,000 depending on the client’s needs.

We offer a range based on the work that needs to be done and the client’s approach to services. No matter where the price point starts, be transparent and explain the why behind the pricing.

Check out our ever-evolving Web Design page here for inspiration and reach out to our top-notch sales team to discuss our web packages!

Highlight Your Values in Your Marketing Strategy

Your services may range higher than a competitor, and that’s ok! Consider what makes you different and why you charge more, using that to your advantage. We talk so much about how transparency breeds trust and this area is no different.

Wendy’s Burger King, and McDonald’s would generally be considered apples-to-apples competitors until Wendy’s decided to highlight the value that they have for serving menu items it deems as fresher than the competition.

Wendy’s digital marketing tactics were to come right out and say this is who we are, why we do what we do, and why are prices are different from our competitors.

Make your case and stand behind it, let your digital marketing work to grab the attention of those target customers.

The Price Matters

Check out Episode 10: Brand Messaging Part 3

In Episode 10, we talked about the pricing triangle: speed, price, and quality. One will always suffer, so make that part of your why.

Perhaps your business charges more for services because you have an expert in that field and your client will be receiving higher-quality services from that provider. This will either matter to the client or it won’t. But in either case, it will help vet the client before they come into your sales funnel.

If price matters over quality for that client and they pass you by, consider that a gift. It more than likely would have led to a difficult client relationship in regard to price.

Talking Money Shouldn’t Be a Taboo

One of the best examples we’ve seen of this is a digital marketing agency that said their minimum buy-in was $5000 a month.

They wrote a great blog story on their values, how they treat their staff, how long the staff retention is, how long client retention is, and how all of those things go together.

Yes, $5000 a month can be a bit much for some to start with, but the results will speak for themselves and the transparency of this agency that was laid before potential clients was evidence of that.

Oftentimes, pricing conversations are the most awkward part of the sales process. No one really likes to talk about money, so taking that guesswork out of the sales conversation provides a certain comfort level with both parties and removes a huge barrier to conversion.

You can assume that nine times out of ten, they’ve already been to your website, looked at your prices, and decided they are comfortable continuing the conversation with you.

The fewer barriers you have to overcome in the sales process, the better the experience will be for all involved.

Use a Measure of Caution: Don’t Bait and Switch

The fastest way to lose a client with internet marketing is to claim one thing on your website and tell them something different when you meet with them. People want to buy from others they know, like, and trust.

Using the bait-and-switch method is not only counterproductive but unethical as well. It may serve to get some quick business in the door — but it is not a good way to create long-term business relationships.

We’ve done it both ways at Beacon. We’ve published our prices and removed them — so we truly understand the risk in what we’re advising you to do with your pricing.

Overall, we believe that the risk is worth it because we’ve seen it pay off for business owners time and time again.

Not only will you gain a different position in the market, but you’ll also see more traffic, and people will trust you more because you’re willing to be transparent.

Don’t be afraid to tell your story and go deeper into the “why” behind your pricing structure. Believe it or not, you’re not just competing on price.

The Parable of the Dryer Ball

Have you ever looked for something silly and thought, “Oh! I’ll just pop on Amazon real quick and pick this item up.” One day as Adrienne was shopping for some plastic dryer balls, she got sucked in by the word “organic” and the story of a company selling dryer balls made of wool.

The story went on about how wool was sourced from a specific organic farm in New Zealand that detailed how they cared for the sheep and she was hooked!

Price didn’t matter at that point because of the investment and connection she felt with the farm that was being supported by this company — and the beautiful lives of the sheep they took the wool from.

When people connect to your story and align themselves with the values you communicate in that story, suddenly the investment isn’t as shocking or jarring as it could have been for them because they believe in who you are and what you’re doing.

Go Deep and Leverage the Power of Your Story

Whether you’re in digital marketing, traditional marketing, or another industry, your story has power.

Human connection in digital channels can be one of your greatest assets. Our digital society has opened a world of connectivity for your story and your business — much greater than in direct mail or offline marketing.

Ask probing questions, be transparent, live your values in your business and you’ll authentically connect to those who share those same values. We guarantee it’s worth the risk.

Join us for more episodes of The Beacon Way as we continue to talk about how to leverage your website to Grow, Scale, and Thrive!

Homepage Necessities for Success

Communications have changed so much over the years, in more recent history, newspapers and magazines were the option for printed marketing and advertising. Advertisers wanted their business name to be on the front page or above the fold because passers-by could see it at a glance without purchasing a paper. The same is true for any media site.

According to websitebuilderexpert.com, the average time spent on a web page across multiple industries is 53 seconds. Your website’s homepage has less than one minute to grab the attention of the viewer. This is why the impression on your web page above the fold is so vital.

Your Homepage is Prime Real Estate

Considering the above statistic, misunderstanding the value of your homepage is a mistake you can’t afford to make. Your goal should be for users to become engaged with you and there is a limited amount of time to make that happen before they navigate to other sites.

Statistically, about 50% of traffic will be directed to your home page from a search engine. The Beacon Way suggests three things you should focus on for a successful web page visit.

3 Tried and True Tips for Homepage Success!

1. Clear and Effective Communication of Your Unique Selling Position

Your welcome page is your main page. As such, this needs to say what you do and what services you offer. Beyond that, what makes you good at what you do, or what makes you unique at it?

Pretty pictures, sleek designs, and even your logo might draw in site visitors, but adding specific website content that tells your story is a fabulous opportunity to keep them from bouncing off your page. The story should be succinct, clear, and quickly communicated.

Additionally, pulling out what is unique to you can take some thought and it’s a worthy investment. Consider enlisting the help of friends, family, and trusted clients when crafting your home page story.

2. Establish Credibility

Secondly, The Beacon Way advises that you establish credibility. In prior episodes, we have talked a lot about how your target audience wants to know, like, and trust you. Social proof is the gateway to that trust relationship that means so much to your business.

Social proof is the content that grabs the attention of visitors when they are asking, “Do they really do what they say they do?”. Case studies, testimonials, videos, and even reviews help establish trust just by the visit to your webpage.

3. Remove Barriers

Third, we at Beacon advise that you remove any barriers, tell people what you do, and what they can expect from you when they engage you for services. Don’t make the experience complicated for your visitors.

As we talked about in Episode 12 of The Beacon Way, what your website’s homepage communicates to your audience is their first impression of you. If it’s difficult to navigate, you’ve most likely lost them and if they proceed then they must really want to buy from you.

The more you guide a potential client on your homepage, the happier they will be because they won’t have to think about where to click next, you’ve already done that for them.

For example, Apple is a prime company that thinks intuitively when it comes to the navigation of its web pages. This is because they’ve thought through where site visitors want to go and what they want to do on their site.

Again, The Beacon Way recommends that you think through a site visitor’s experience and remove as many barriers as possible from not only your main homepage but from your service pages — and from any landing page on your website.

Providing a clear navigation bar, an arrow, a CTA (Call To Action), or another pathway that shows examples of where to go next from the home screen may seem like a basic concept. But it’s extremely effective.

SEO Content: It’s Not Just About a Blog Post

Below the fold of your homepage can be a little more challenging. This is where the consideration of UX (user experience) continues. Your site visitors will vary in demographic and personality — but it is possible to appeal to these varied differences.

Visual stop points are also important for your homepage. These stopping points provide an opportunity for the next steps and CTAs but also, continue to grab and hold the attention of your visitors.

At Beacon, we use a lot of visual blocks when we are adding content. Visual blocks allow for those all-important visual stopping points that fulfill the SEO requirements of Google for your page to rank well, regardless of how many visitors scroll down to that point on your page.

Icons, videos, and infographics are all great items to display on your homepage because of their visual appeal with the added bonus of breaking up the SEO content — leading to a more pleasing user experience.

CTA | The Call-To-Action Advantage

One consistent and effective technique we believe every website should have are clear calls to action. A CTA is a prompt for your visitors to take immediate action. The CTA should be concise and appealing, spurring a connection. Whatever the next step is that you want them to take intuitively to connect with you.

CTA’s can come into play on your website in a variety of ways, such as providing links to the blog page of a website containing full articles, connecting via phone, form, or even a download. Different personalities will be prompted to use different CTAs so having many may seem repetitive. However, the goal of your website is to connect the visitors to your sales funnel, and without clear CTAs, they are more likely to bounce off than connect.

Consider CTAs like your website’s sales assistant, always available to make the process easy for your visitors and ready to capture their information so you can continue to grow your relationship with them.

You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know! CTAs Are Here to Help

Visual pathways help establish credibility with your visitors and they are more likely to contact you if they know, like, and trust you. We love the statement, “You don’t know what you don’t know.”

Don’t assume that your visitors know the information that you have to present to them or that they know how to contact you when they’re ready to learn more. Your default web page has done its job effectively when they want to reach out to you for the service you offer, make it easy on them, help them by facilitating giving them the answers to questions they came to ask, and helping them contact you.

You want to be that person who is meeting their needs so they don’t bounce to another site that will.

The About Page | Web-Based Relationship Building

The About page is a good example of a page that can be confusing to many people. How personal should you get, should your staff be featured, and how to effectively tell your story in a captivating and more in-depth way, are all questions we address with The Beacon Way.

The About page will vary from industry to industry. No matter your industry, the About page is your relationship-building page.

Often, this is the second stop by your website visitors, because they want to know who they’re doing business with. In this day and age where electronic introductions happen all day long, the About page is your virtual handshake. It’s another opportunity to show your visitor what type of relationship you will have outside of the services you provide.

Your About page opens the conversation to who you are and how you’ll conduct yourself with potential clients. Whether consciously or subconsciously, we make a lot of decisions based on if we feel comfortable with someone or not. That decision drives whether we’ll let them in or walk away.

In many industries, comfortability and trust are all you have to open the door for services, like therapy, for example. Your site visitor may have had a friend or current client refer them to you and if you don’t strike them as someone they can let in, they will find someone else who does.

Transactional About pages will go through the history of the company and staff and stop there. The Beacon Way encourages you to be ultra-transparent with the people who are interacting with you on your website.

For Beacon, we chose to share our backstory and even talk on our other pages about why we’ve chosen certain industries to niche into. Being transparent is more than a buzzword to us, it’s one of our values and we strive to live it authentically.

The mental health industry is also one of our favorite niche markets and we are very proud to work within it. We love to communicate why this industry matters to us on top of who we are as a company in an endeavor to create a more transparent relationship with our clients.

This goes back to your brand, who you are, and what you want to represent to the world. For more information on brand messaging, check out episodes 8 -11 of The Beacon Way podcast on Brand Messaging.

Your Story Has Value and Makes Connections

One of the joys of The Beacon Way is to encourage our clients to share information on who they are with their target market. In our sales meetings, they share with us who they are and they tell us their story, it connects us to them and provides tremendous insight into how we can best serve them.

Hearing our clients tell us about how proud they are and of their accomplishments, helps us craft, not only a solid marketing strategy but share who they are as a brand and what they want to represent to the world.

Leadership, Staff, and Transparency: It’s All Connected

The Beacon Way also encourages clients to showcase the founders and owners as well as their staff. By keeping your staff shrouded or in the dark, it can unconsciously communicate that you aren’t comfortable with them.

We recommend that you showcase your staff, within reason, through pictures and testimonials on your website pages to support your company culture. Positive experiences by your staff with you as an owner really go a long way to client trust. Remember, as we keep quoting BNI’s Ivan Misner, your clients want to know, like, and trust you.

The more you put out there, the more you’re going to attract the right people.

Introducing your staff to your visitors on your About page can help ease anxiety and nervousness that some may have when approaching your industry. Dentistry, for example, is an industry that causes a lot of anxiety for people. If they can connect on a personal level with some members of the staff, the anxiety starts to fade and they are more likely to connect with you.

In addition, the virtual introduction to your staff serves to connect visitors with a familiar face. Thus, they’ve connected with their story, and recognize who to look for when they come into the office, which begins instant trust. And trust can be the trigger to picking you over another business just by creating an avenue of connection through transparency.

Communicate Confidence: Advantages to Staff on Your Web Pages

Do you believe in your staff and do you want to inspire confidence in them with your clients? We, at Beacon, believe that by introducing them on your site, you will do just that. This personalizes them on a whole new level. Visitors will not only learn who they are but you can use it as a pathway to their client journey.

The new Beacon Media + Marketing site not only shows who are staff are, but it also helps our clients know who will be helping them along the way. From the Sales team to Account Management, even all the way to Accounting — if there is a possible client touchpoint within Beacon, we want you to know who you are interacting with.

Breaking barriers to conflict can be a benefit as well. We cannot deny that collections and billing disputes are a part of every industry. And believe it or not, humanizing your bookkeeper can go a long way in both client relations and getting paid on time.

No matter what your decision is on your About page, your website has to communicate clearly who you are and what you do. Trust starts on your homepage! Reach out to Beacon Media + Marketing today to learn more.

The following four podcasts in our series will center around building your brand through website pages and strategy. Your marketing goals should cultivate connections with your clients and remove barriers. Website strategy should be a foundational piece of your business and an extensive consideration for building your brand messaging.

Creating a Powerful Marketing Hub through Website Development

Marketing happens through many channels but no matter where it happens, if your visitors aren’t being funneled back to a website that is effective, you’ve already lost money.

It is essential to build a website that represents your brand’s personality and begins to help you develop authority with your target audience who wants to know, like, and trust you. It’s most common in this time we live in, that people are using search engines as their starting place to begin researching their needs and begin planning on who and what they need. Removing barriers to connection and creating an easy user experience should be at the top of the list of your marketing goals.

Statistics show that 93% of people are heading to Google or Bing to determine first what they need and where to find it, showing that data-driven decisions are more prevalent now than ever before.

Check out our blog on Episode 4 to find more information on how The Beacon Way helps companies navigate the landscape of this digital world.

Representation of Your Brand Image Through Visuals

Consumers who dive into research and identification of their needs online have decided that they could be your target audience because the information you presented online built interest and trust. Once they decide to then visit your website, that site acts as your digital salesperson ahead of you. It is important to have a solid visual experience and a clear call to action to increase leads.

The look and feel of your brand image online is just as critical as the technical side of your website. The experience that visitors to your website have will influence how they experience your brand. If your website is cold and unfeeling, the perception of your brand will also be cold and unfeeling. If your website is warm and inviting, your brand will be perceived in the same light.

The visual elements you choose, such as colors, fonts, and imagery you use, just to name a few, play a crucial role in user experience and should also be on top of your list when considering branding strategy.

One of the first things we suggest you start analyzing is, “How will new leads experience your brand’s personality on the first visit to your website?” Have you taken the time to determine who your brand is and what you want to portray to your target audience?

To read more about branding strategy, check out our blog series on Brand Messaging, Episode 8, Episode 9, Episode 10, and Episode 11.

Unlocking the Power of Content: Creating Content Tailored for Your Target Audience

When building your website strategy, another priority should be a content strategy. Content strategy is the development and publication of content that your users want to know. What service do you market and can your users find solid information on your website that answers their questions?

A great example of tailoring content is dental veneers. A dentist may create an ad from keyword research showing that people are searching for dental veneers and add those keywords for dental veneers to his website to drive more traffic. Website visitors are going to click that site expecting to learn more about dental veneers.

The content strategy could be: Let’s grab that search attention to drive traffic. But, without any content to back up the ad, the bounce rate skyrockets. You may have increased your views but the trust of that visitor is not gained and they have no reason to stay on your site or convert.

Google Analytics for SEO: Web Crawlers at the Ready

Your website may be on point technically, but if your content is lacking in depth based on Google’s analytics of it, your score will be in danger of being lowered.

Google uses web crawlers to analyze hundreds of billions of web pages looking for a multitude of points. Google wants to see that your content is relevant to what your customers are searching for, and does it have authority and usefulness.

If the search engines see that your pages aren’t relevant, your SEO will decline and they may actually penalize you. If you’re doing ads like the dentist is with the veneers but the page the ad sends the client to is about general dentistry, Google Analytics will decide that isn’t relevant and your ranking will drop. They will continue to take your money and allow the ads, but the SEO effect of that ad will significantly decrease and the price for that ad will significantly increase.

Understanding Your Target Audience: Answer Their Key Questions.

Where good website strategy comes into play, is determining your target audience and then brainstorming their specific questions based on their needs. Buyer personas can help with this tremendously. Utilizing buyer personas helps you narrow down the exact needs of the demographic you are desiring to serve and can help to bring clarity to what they are searching for and why, out of your service.

Your target audience will have specific questions and concerns and there will be specific keywords that they will search for, you want your content pages to be there to answer those questions and concerns for them.

We, at Beacon, want to assure you that even though this seems extremely overwhelming, there are many tools out there to assist you in the discovery of those buyer personas and a good marketing partner can help you reach them, turning them into measurable conversions!

Shifting Focus from Content to Conversion

Once your website strategy has you on the path to clear and relevant content, you can shift your efforts to ensure your website is effectively functioning as your digital salesperson.

If your website is set up properly, meaning your website has all the keyword research, search engine optimization, and critical pages for good ranking it will begin driving more traffic your way.

If this is the case, conversions should come easily. Industries like mental health, dentistry, med spa, and others have clients converting online all the time. The website has done its job, the barriers to booking are removed, and new clients can easily set an appointment at their convenience without ever making a phone call.

What Exactly is a Conversion?

Conversions mean different things to different industries and sometimes even vary depending on your goals. The success of conversion is based on defined goals that you have for your business and what your visitors accomplish on your website.

Considering the mental health space, for these clients, conversion is considered for someone who has potentially gone all the way through the online process to book an appointment. Perhaps the time isn’t booked yet but they have given you their information, shared with you their availability, what service they are looking for from your business, or possibly become a phone call, booking an appointment time.

This is a prime example of a target audience who was just interested but now decided that they are interested in becoming a client of your business. This is the cleanest example of conversion.

Functional medicine, as another example, has a little more depth to create a successful conversion. Ads can send hundreds of interested visitors to them but what the functional medicine space can offer them may not be what they are looking for.

Conversions, again, vary depending on the industry and defined goals. In this particular case, it may be necessary to determine what new leads actually qualify as conversions. It has been necessary for us in the past, to change that definition in order to measure the data accurately to measure the success of the campaign.

For one of our functional medicine clients, we changed the definition of conversion for them and then created a funnel on their website that took people searching for services through a step-by-step process to determine if this business was a good fit for them.

This website strategy was well received by the business because they are no longer being inundated with unqualified leads and they have been able to save so much time and develop good relationships with the ones who are good potential clients. The volume of conversion came down, however, those that remain have a higher rate of conversion by becoming actual closing clients.

Start Creating Success by Defining It for Your Business

At Beacon Media + Marketing, we call conversions leads, and from those conversions about half are good potential clients. You decide what you will call a conversion for your business, we advise that you be thoughtful and strategic about that decision. Only you will know what works best for your business and inflated data isn’t helpful to your success.

The bottom line here is that our websites can do a lot of the pre-qualification for us saving our businesses time, money, and staff power to focus on the things that will make your business a success.

Evolution of the Website and the Need for Strategy

Websites are a fun thing and they really have evolved since they became a thing. In the early 2000s, websites were still very awkward and clunky. Internet sites were secondary to brick and mortar, which still signified you were a legitimate established business.

In the beginning, when websites were first being utilized, no one really thought past the first page because that simply was not the consumer’s first stop. As the consumer landscape changed and evolved, the website changed and evolved with it. Website pages became prettier brochures, then some content started showing up and became useful to the audience.

Web pages for services started becoming part of the digital landscape as well, then introductions to founders and staff. Owners began to say, “Hey, our staff are getting the same questions over and over again, let’s put the answers to those up on our website so people can get their questions answered first before calling.”

The website evolution has been an interesting trend to watch, even as recent as 2019, if there wasn’t a website, we would assume they were closed. From the inception of the internet, websites have shifted and changed with society and their access to information has increased dramatically.

Gone are the days when the preference was for a brick-and-mortar storefront now the preference is website-based sales and information, we see more and more need for solid website strategy and content. You simply can no longer slap together a few pictures with your phone number and think you have a great website.

Every industry has exceptions, for instance, a small “Mom and Pop” store that may just be utilizing a Facebook page. This type of small business isn’t looking to grow or scale and they don’t have an audience who needs answers to questions before they come in to buy. They may use the online presence just to communicate hours and specials or product highlights which works very well for them.

About You | Reviews and Social Proof: Genius or Crazy?

We recommend always adding two controversial items to your website, reviews and social proof. Why do these two items cause so many issues for businesses?

Reviews are maybe the most controversial item to add to your website strategy, however, customers want to know who and what they will be encountering when they decide to do business with you.

The About Us Page is one of the first pages that customers will visit when they are looking at your website. They want to know, like, and trust you which is where reviews and social proof come into play.

The web is full of scams and scammy businesses looking to sell you anything to separate you from your money. This is the reason that the About page, Reviews, and social proof are critical pages on your website.

Reviews can be tricky, which we know, but they can be such an asset to you. In recent years we have seen the rise of negative reviews as scams, as well, as attempts to get free stuff in exchange for removing reviews. It is truly unfortunate, in fact, Amazon has begun suing fake review sites on Facebook.

A negative comment in a review is not as important as how you respond to it. Consumers want to know that you did your best to rectify the situation and your response to a negative review is an opportunity to build trust with your audience through your site. Perspective on reviews, and making a plan, should play a role when considering your website strategy. Don’t shy away from them but instead be prepared to handle a negative review and always respond to all the reviews you receive. Having Google reviews also help with SEO ranking for your website.

Service Pages and Blogs: Reaching Website Visitors With What They Are Looking For

Blog content should be another page your website strategy should consider as well. Blogs can be time-consuming to maintain which you may or may not have the capacity for. Hiring a writer to get your message out is another powerful tool to leverage on your website.

A skilled content writer will help you develop a blogging strategy and research keywords for the blogs to rank for. Keywords are the words people search for when they are looking for information on a subject and your blog can rank higher or lower in those searches depending on how keywords are used. Keyword research is worth the time it takes to find a way to connect to unique visitors that are looking for the services and expertise you offer.

In the next three blogs, we will continue to talk about the pages that your website should contain and how to best utilize them. Stay tuned for more in-depth information through this series of The Beacon Way Podcasts in Episodes 13 “Build a Home & About Page People Want to Read”, Episode 14 “Your Service or Product Pages: Should You Put Your Prices on Your Site?”, Episode 15 “Don’t Forget About Your Support Pages!”

You won’t want to miss this valuable information!