Clients often tell us they know their company needs a website, but they question their website as a marketing tool. To them, having a website feels more like an obligation than a meaningful tool — it’s just another box to be ticked off. They could not be more wrong.
A website may be the most essential tool in branding and marketing efforts. With solid planning and strategy, your company’s website can be a powerful marketing tool that brings in consistent, qualified leads that convert to new business monthly.
This article will explore how a well-designed website can drive business growth.
The Website’s Place in Modern Marketing, an Analogy
Imagine your digital marketing efforts as the wheel of a bike. All bicycle wheels are comprised of, essentially, the same components. They consist of:
The Hub
At the center of the wheel, there is a hub. This small circular disc provides foundational support for the rest of the wheel. It contains a series of connectors that support the wheel’s main structural elements, the spokes.
Your website serves as your digital marketing strategy’s hub (or center). All other online marketing efforts point back, or should point back, to this resource.
Your website’s primary role is to educate — to take customers through on a narrative journey in which they start out not knowing much about your brand, your services, or how you can help them solve their problems. Yet, through their interactions with your website content, they come to know what it is your brand promises and how it will help them to survive and thrive.
The Spokes
The wheel’s spokes radiate out from the center of the hub at equal distances. These metal bars provide structure and strength to the wheel, making it rigid enough to support not only the weight of the bike frame but also the rider.
The spokes of your marketing strategy are all the ways you promote your brand to people online. You might have one spoke that is Instagram, one that is Facebook or LinkedIn, another that is your organic SEO, your paid SEO, any digital ads or paid placement, etc.
Your central hub, a well-chosen page on your website (e.g., a homepage, a service page, or a landing page), should be the destination for all of these efforts. Redirecting traffic to these specific spaces is the best way to educate your audience strategically.
This strategy also transforms your website from a static, underutilized asset into a powerful, dynamic marketing tool that attracts a constant flow of newly interested people. There is nothing passive about this marketing method.
The Rim and the Tire
The spokes connect to a metal rim that provides solid support for the rubber tire to sit on.
The rim and tire are like all the messaging your brand puts out into the world. It’s the messaging, the images, the graphics, the video, the blog posts — everything you put into the world to support your brand’s narrative.
A Well Built Wheel Provides Momentum
Each component works together to give the bike wheel a solid support structure. When the two wheels and the frame are combined, the overall machine can create and sustain its own inertia and movement.
We want the same things from our digital marketing efforts. Marketing is about building momentum. In this case, that momentum is consistent interest in our brand, leading to income and revenue.
If we don’t have the proper support structure for our digital marketing efforts, our wheel won’t work. We may have all the right elements, but none of them fits together, and as a result, we generate little to no movement. As we mentioned at the outset of the article, this is when we start to hear comments from clients.
They don’t understand that your digital marketing strategy needs a focal or gathering point, which should be your website. When used correctly, it is your most powerful marketing tool, but you must let it be.
Let’s build the wheel of our digital marketing strategy with the right components from the start. We get people moving around the rim and tire (hearing our messages), down the spokes (interacting with our online channels), and across to the central hub (interacting with our website), and THAT is the momentum we need.
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Are you starting a business and stressing about having a website that properly represents it? Rebel Agency has an end-to-end solution that provides a powerful website without the large upfront price. Please read over our FAQ page to see if our model is a good fit.