Can you run a business in 2016 without a website or control over a website? In order to have a really good digital marketing campaign, you have to have a home base or a hub. In this episode of the Social Media Marketing Happy Hour, Dawn and Traci talk about the importance of owning and utilizing your own website. We picked this topic because lately, Traci has been seeing this recurring theme among her new and potential clients and even friends who have businesses. She noticed that a lot of them had an issue with control over or lack of a website.
If you're an entrepreneur or business owner who doesn't have your own website, you MUST join the bandwagon NOW!
Reasons why entrepreneurs STILL DON'T HAVE a website
There are lots of reasons why entrepreneurs don't have their own websites until now. It all boils down to simply not knowing any better.
For those who are involved in network marketing, they are provided by their company with a replicated website that looks nice and professional, and they send it around to people. But the problem is, they don't have control over search engine optimization of it, they can't install any kind of tracking pixels, they couldn't look at the analytics, or do other awesome things that websites can do.
Some people have a web designer build their website and it's on on the web designer's server. So they don't actually own the internet space. That rug can be pulled out from under you so fast. Many people also think that marketing on Facebook is enough, because almost anything and everything can be done on Facebook nowadays. But that's just not true! Remember, it's not yours, and if anything happens to the company, it will also go POOF!
Reasons why entrepreneurs SHOULD HAVE their own website
Have a web property that You control. Even if you don't have the resources to build your own website, at the very least, have some kind of web property that you can call your own and you can control. For example, you can get Leadpages since it has templates and you can have like a mini site where you can put tracking pixels. We've recommended this a while back as a short term solution. But of course, this should be temporary. You should aim to have your own website as soon as possible.
A web property will help give credibility to your brand. People will look at your website and see what you're all about. They'll also feel secure knowing that you are a legitimate business. If you're on Facebook only and people can't verify that your company truly exists, they'll have a hard time trusting you.
Here are some of the amazing things you can do on your self-hosted website:
- tracking pixels
- Google analytics
- lead generation
- inbound content marketing
Going back to basics and doing things really well can make a huge difference. So to get you started, here are some of our favorite resources and we'd like to share them with you, our dear listeners, so that you too can benefit and create the most amazing website for your business. You'll want to check out WordPress.org and for the themes, Thrive Themes and Divi by Elegant Themes are great!
So head on over to www.HappyHourHangouts.com/resources to get a hold of the awesome resources we mentioned on this podcast!
