One thing that all business owners need to master in 2020 is marketing their business effectively. With that in mind, read on for a connection of tips that can help you to excel throughout the year…

User-Friendly Web Design

When it comes to web design, your site needs to be impressive on the eye, but it also needs to be easy to use, quick to load, and follow a logical and effective structure.

A lot of people become so consumed with fancy graphics and such like that they forget about the fundamentals. A long loading time, for example, is assured to increase your bounce rate.

Outsource

Today, more people are outsourcing SEO and website design services to aid their digital marketing efforts. If you lack the skillset and the experience to make your website look professional and ready for marketing, consider outsourcing to an expert.

Luckily, there are loads of expert SEO and website design professionals out there charging affordable prices for their services. Research well to find the right company or team of experts to work with.

Web Designers Who Think About Online Marketing

Web designers play an increasingly important role in helping organisations to achieve the optimal online presence. This isn't just through web design on its own, but also because good designers understand the importance of online marketing when building and maintaining a website.

With billions now routinely making the internet their first stop for information, purchases and more, it's critical to be able to tap into this market effectively. Online lead generation has become one of the most important tools in the arsenal of successful organisations. 

But what is a lead? In short, it’s someone who has shown some interest in your products or services. They may sign up for your newsletter; interact with you in the comments section of your blog; or download a copy of your eBook.

That interest represents a potential future sale. Often, companies fail to recognise the importance of their website in generating such ‘warm’ leads. 

Your web design must attract visitors, engage with them and then encourage them to take the next step with an effective call to action. So when it comes to contracting a web designer, you need to ask two basic questions. 

Firstly, how will the designer raise the profile of your website, to attract increased traffic? Secondly, what steps will they take to improve the conversion rate of visitors to leads? This is all done through optimising your website.

A great web design company will address aspects such as SEO, social media marketing, email marketing, and blogging, to name a few areas, to ensure your website not only attracts more interest, but converts that into potential sales.

5 Must-Ask Sets Of Questions

Choosing an agency to take care of your online presence, or even to get you started needs to be undertaken with care. Knowing what questions to ask the design agency is a great place to start when searching for the right search engine optimisation or website design agency for you.

One of the most important questions to ask the web designer is how they price their services.

While their website may give you a basic overview you need to ask for a more detailed explanation of costs Check whether there are hourly rates to consider, how many people will be working on your project and how much time they will dedicate to your needs. 

Next, you need to know about their track record. Find out who they have worked with previously and what type of results they have delivered for previous clients. Also, ask about their client retention; don’t be afraid to ask for data to back up any claims that the web design agency makes.

In terms of your project you are going to need to find out how the SEO agency measure their results. How will you know that the work they are undertaking is making a difference and providing you with a good return on your investment?

Find out about their core services. What are their specific areas of expertise? Do they do all the work themselves, or do they outsource parts of your project? There is no wrong answer here, but you should be aware of who has access to your data. Finally, ask to see their credentials and qualifications.

Go Eco-Friendly

Another trend and tip when it comes to marketing success in 2020 is to go eco-friendly. You can check out these eco promotional items to get an understanding of the different sorts of eco-friendly marketing products that are available. 

We all know that we have a responsibility to do our bit for the planet today. This is something that customers are aware of. If they find out that a business is not acting ethically in this sense, they will move onto the next.

This is why it certainly pays to go for a business that has an eco-friendly approach to marketing, and there are a lot of different products on the market today that can help you to illustrate this. 

Creating Excellent Web Copy

Web copywriting can be the most important tool in your arsenal of sales and marketing information. Your website is where many people will find out most about you and your product and it needs to be informative and interesting. It also needs to sell. Your website needs excellent content. 

One thing that most freelance copywriters will do is use the active voice when writing web content. Using the active voice makes the message being put across much more powerful and much more urgent.

It entices people to act, inspires them to take the next step. And that includes buying from you. A copywriter will also attempt to answer ‘who, what, where, why and why’ when writing your copy.

These questions lead to all the information that is usually needed – and you will be able to discuss the answers with your copywriter to ensure the correct information is being used. 

Another technique that copywriters use is to make the copy ‘skimmable’. Many times, online readers don’t read a website word for word, especially when they are searching for something specific. They will instead skim the copy to pick out certain words or phrases.

Knowing this, content writers can make the copy easy to skim. This includes using headers and bullet points, numbered lists, breaking up the copy with images and video, using different text formats (such as bold, italic and colours) and varying the length of the sentence or paragraph.

Although it may sound strange, readers will stay longer on a site that they can skim. 

What Can You Learn From Black Friday?

Though originating in the USA, both Black Friday and Cyber Week have firmly ensconced themselves in the UK markets and buyer behaviour over the last few years. Recently, we saw a pivotal change in buyer behaviour, as consumers started their Christmas shopping early taking advantage of early bargains. What can you learn from this new pattern? 

Today consumers are always on the lookout for a deal and with the development of social networking, they are also always ready to quickly share these deals with friends.

Lowering prices or running special offers and deals which don’t harm your core business or cannibalise sales. Try leading with a percentage saving as this gets consumer attention. Brand loyalty is not as strong in 2020 as it was in previous years. 

The only way to keep customers is to make sure your products are right there when customers are looking for them and that they address most of, if not all of your customers’ needs. Keep quality up and don’t cut corners to save on budget.

At the same time keep up with your market and its landscape. Ensure you keep up with what your competitors and others in your market are doing. If they are making offers try to keep up and compete, else lose customers to them. 

Partner with a high-quality digital agency to make sure your website is as modern and slick as possible. If your site takes too long to load on different devices shoppers will abandon you. Make sure your mobile site load time is under two seconds.

An unreliable website makes people think your company is unreliable. Have the commercial side of your website reviewed by a digital agency, are you making it needlessly difficult for customers to make a purchase? Eliminate any unnecessary steps between seeing a product and completing the purchase.

So there you have it: some top tips to make sure that you master the world of marketing in 2020. No matter what sort of business you operate, there is no denying that this is critical if you are to reign supreme throughout the year. Good luck!