Web design agencies are struggling just like other businesses in the time of the pandemic. Luckily, there are ways to improve your marketing strategies and make the best of the situation. The following strategies can be applied to the context of Web design agencies. Revamp how you market your business and build your brand and see your business bounce back from COVID-19.

1. Ramp up Customer Education with Content

Content has always been king. The entire World Wide Web is a massive library of content. Websites with no content will ultimately be left in the dust because they don’t offer solutions to problems. When a person searches online, he/she is looking for information. The essential question is: are you providing solutions to customers on your website? If not, there’s something wrong with your overall approach.

Even Web design companies need to engage their public with useful and relevant information. The landscape of B2B marketing was changed forever by content marketing, plus Google’s requirements for relevant content. A massive chunk of successful marketers (77%) use content regularly for marketing purposes. If you are at a loss as to what kind of content you should be using, there is an endless array of Web content formats at your disposal.

Social media posts

Social media platforms are powerful for spreading marketing messages. With the pandemic still in full swing, people are relying more and more on social media for information and interacting with brands that they need. Keep in mind that you need to be on the same platforms that your customers frequent. This means you have to determine first where your customers are usually logged in, and then you can establish your social media presence.

Articles and blogposts

Blogs and articles remain as essential resources on the Web. What’s great about blogs is you can add images, videos, and other rich multimedia to your posts to complete the experience. Textual content should remain informative and relevant to your readers at all times. Don’t sacrifice quality for quantity. Always plan your content to provide 100% value to your readers. You should also have an editorial calendar so you can plan what kind of content you can offer to your readers.

Downloads

Businesses like Web design agencies are more specialized because of tech. You can engage your audience of Web developers and site owners by providing freebie downloads that can showcase your skills. You can take a look at your competition to see what they’re offering for free to generate leads. Of course, gated content is essential for generating B2B leads, especially Web design leads. Provide the free download, but make sure you’re able to capture their email addresses. You can also offer the free download on every page on your website, including blog posts, by using exit-intent popups and well-timed popups while the user is reading. Just make sure that the downloads you will be offering will be 100% relevant to your uses. Otherwise, they will feel that you’re spammy by offering something that is only partially useful or not useful at all.

Newsletters

Newsletters remain central to any email marketing strategy. These are great resources that can be flexible when it comes to relaying different kinds of information to different segments. Get people to sign up for your newsletter by offering something of value (again). It’s the value that genuinely gets people to stay engaged with your brand. Master the ability to provide value each time, and your marketing messages will land all the time.

2. Throw Away “One Size Fits All”

The concept of “one size fits all” faded into oblivion some decades ago. Ever since consumer Internet came to be, online experiences became more and more personalized. By personalized, people now expect to tailor-fit experiences that correspond to their search behavior and general Web behavior. Of course, you can’t remove the participation of the marketer as well. Your knowledge of your market can either dilute or amplify your marketing messages. How well do you know your general audience?

You can rely on your analytics to find out how you should be communicating with your audience. Digging into all available analytics can help improve your overall marketing strategy for marketing your Web design services and products.

Admittedly, not all brands employ this technique – which may also explain why a lot of businesses are struggling to connect with their online audiences. The personalized message technique requires a closer look at how your customers find and initiate contact with your brand. You have to look at customer touchpoints, find out which ones are most effective, and find out how you can enhance customer experience the moment customers begin their journeys.

Does personalization end with merely knowing the names of your leads? Not at all. You have to get into the mind of your prospects truly. You have to discover three things: their fears, their needs, and their wants. Know these three classical aspects of the customer mind, and you can see where personalization can come into play.

What does the ideal marketing message look like?

It would help if you looked at branding and marketing messages from a broader perspective. For instance, you have to be more sensitive about making offers outright because of the pandemic. People don’t want to be bombarded with explicit, sales-y offers. These can quickly turn off a lot of people. They will look away from your message no matter how good your Web design services are.

The question now is how you can create a powerful marketing message without looking like you are just trying to turn a profit? This so far has been the biggest challenge in the time of the pandemic.

Your marketing messages should also be as concise as possible, with a focus on driving home the message while maximizing the value of your services in the eyes of your customers. Here are some tips for personalizing CX (customer experience):

– Opt-in advertisements and popups can change based on what content is viewed or was viewed beforehand. This applies to exit-intent popups as well

– Create relatable promotions that are associated with the pain points of your customers

– Allow your users to have vast control of the type of content that they would like to receive through email

– Use behavioral segmentation (at least) to help in your personalization strategy. Also, keep in mind that behavioral segmentation takes into account the differences in how people behave after they’ve made a purchase. These differences in how people respond are doubly crucial in determining how we can interact with our B2B leads.

– Find out what makes more sense in triggering interaction between customers and your brand. In addition to analytics, there has to be a much deeper understanding of your customers and your audience in general on the Web.

3. Generate Powerful Backlinks with HARO

HARO or Help a Reporter Out is a website where journalists and other media practitioners seek answers from resource people from all sorts of backgrounds, markets, and industries. HARO connects experts with authors, journalists, bloggers, and every kind of writer that needs specific information and quotes.

HARO queries can be answered quickly through the website, and you can gain access to primary emails. In exchange, your website’s link can appear on top, authoritative websites. HARO is excellent for all kinds of websites because by answering the queries of media practitioners and bloggers, you earn an organic and rightful spot on websites that already have high authority.

This helps improve the rank of your website. You won’t even have to even think of doing it artificially, which can get your website a severe penalty from Google, Bing, and other search engines, so if you have been thinking of just paying for a PBN or private blog network, scratch that idea and instead subscribe to HARO.

4. Keep Guest-Blogging in Mind

Guest-blogging has been around for years, and this is the mother concept that gave birth to HARO. The difference is you have to seek out the websites that allow guest-blogging and make a pitch to them. How can you maximize the benefits of guest-blogging? Here are some excellent ideas:

– If you think you don’t have sufficient authority about a topic or niche, you can always pitch that you are going to interview a well-known expert. You can then pitch this to different websites. The great thing about this technique is you can use the same recorded interview (the details of the interview) in different articles that have different types of content but belong to the same vertical or niche.

– Develop hyper-focus when creating the pitch. Focus on a group of people (audience) that is super specific, before moving on to a well-known problem that is just begging to be solved. Provide solutions and recommendations that are actionable, and then boost the value that your guest blog will provide to the website. Also, don’t hesitate to link back to relevant resources from your site as well. It’s going to be a win-win situation for you and the other site.

– Pitch a topic that will have a deeply emotional impact on people. The emotional impact can be anything from happiness, sadness, or even fear. The point here is that the guest blog has to connect with people on a deep level. Pure information won’t cut it – there are dozens or even hundreds of the same type of information on the Web. But if you can connect to people on a deeper level, that’s going to make your pitch even more attractive, and it is likelier that the other site will approve your pitch.

– The needs of the host site are just as equally important as your needs. What we’re pointing at here is you should take the time to craft a message and think of a topic that will serve the fundamental interests of your site and the host site/s. Think as if the host site was yours – what kind of topic would best benefit that site?

– Find sites that are as close as possible to your site. Yes, this may be your competition in some cases, but you can be sure that they speak the same language. This removes the most significant obstacle, which is getting website owners or moderators to like your pitch. If you are targeting a successful website that is raking in millions of hits per month, you can be sure that other people are already pitching to it daily to get the benefit of an organic backlink from a successful and authoritative site.

5. Ramp Up Video Publication

Video is the hottest and most potent form of messaging on the Web. The amount of video that people are consuming on their phones and computers has risen unbelievably in recent years. Streaming videos have long left traditional cable TV programming in the dust. YouTube is a search engine because people are using it to find information about products and services, too. Bing Search and, of course, Google are optimized long ago to retrieve video results from video platforms and websites. Your brand has to have the same edge as those businesses that are already pressing videos regularly.

Whether it’s using YouTube videos to drive home a point or something else, you need to add more videos to your blog posts. If you can also release a podcast (video podcasts are fantastic) and publish them on your website and social media platforms, you are going to get a lot more organic shares and engagement than before. Think long and hard on how to do this, and we’re sure your Web design company is going to get a lot more attention this year.