For many people, a website is little more than a billboard.
This mentality can not only hurt your overall brand, but also makes growing your business much more difficult.
Whether you are doing email marketing, social media marketing, paid ads or any other form of marketing for your business, you need to take another look at your website and see if it is built to be able to truly help your business grow.
Think of your business like a bicycle
A bicycle, without wheels won’t go anywhere. For many of us, that is where we exist every day.
We focus on working the business. Among everything else, we need to get customers and we do some things right… some things not so right. We get really good at what we do, but often lack focus.
We feel like business should be like this
This is more like what it really looks like
It’s like trying to drive a bicycle that has no wheels on it.
Think of your marketing like a bicycle wheel
The wheel has 3 parts:
- The rim/tire
- The spokes
- The hub
The Rim/Tire Is Your Customers and Prospects
Your customers and prospects are like the tire.
You can have some of them and still not really be getting anywhere. Your bicycle, without the rest of the wheel is still sitting on the ground.
Just because you have customers doesn’t mean your business is really growing.
One of the ways you know this is when you still feel like you are having struggles to get not only more, but more of the right kinds of customers and prospects.
The Spokes Are Your Marketing Strategies
Your marketing strategies connect you to your customers and prospects.
In the same way you have to have spokes for a bike, you must have marketing strategies for your business. That’s plural…strategies.
A bike with only one spoke will not be able to support itself. A business with only one marketing strategy won’t either. Not forever anyway.
Things change. Times change. What used to work stops working and new strategies come on the scene.
If you know much about bicycles, each spoke has a little nut that connects it to the rim. That adjustment nut helps you make modifications in the spoke when the bicycle starts to get a little off.
The same happens in your business. Sometimes your marketing strategies get a little off and need adjustment. Sometimes they break altogether and need to be replaced.
The key idea is that you have to have strategies.
The Bicycle Hub Is Your Website
The hub is the most important part of a wheel. Without it, the wheel cannot support itself, nor can it connect to the bike.
The same happens with your website. Your website should be the hub of your marketing efforts.
All “spokes” or marketing strategies that connect to your customers and prospects should point back to your website.
The hub on the bicycle wheel is the only part of the wheel that gets pressure all the time. As different parts of the tire hit the ground, pressure is taken off of other parts. As different spokes support that, others get a little relief.
The hub, however, ALWAYS has the pressure.
The hub connects the wheel to the rest of the business. Your website connects your marketing, customers and prospects to your business.
You have control over your website.
It is essentially the only thing you have complete control over.
- Facebook could shut your page down at any point for any reason they choose. There went all of your followers. It happens. Remember Vine? If so, you know what happened. If not, that proves my point…
- You could hit too many spam filters and get blacklisted for email marketing. It happens.
- Websites where we advertise may shut down.
- Television ads, radio ads, print ads may stop working as people’s interests change.
Essentially, everything else is a spoke and sometimes those need to be replaced. You have limited control. You have full control over your site, however.
Your Website Should Never Be Just A Billboard
Your website should be thought out. It’s not something you should skimp on or say “I’ll get to it later.”
If done correctly, it can make driving your business easier.
It can get overwhelming with all of the marketing agencies out there telling you the ridiculous amounts of things you can do to your website to “get more traffic”, “increase your search rankings”, “improve your SEO” or any other myriad of things.
None of that is as important as one simple question:
Does it help you connect?
That’s what a website should do. Connect.
