So, you are thinking about how to make your web design business thrive? Given the ever-increasing market and the growing competition, this can truly be a winding road.
But, fear not, because you are on the right track of reaching success with the right guidance and set goals. How you may ask?
We’ve decided to share a few actionable tips that should help you grow your own web design business.
This article will help you overcome the obstacles and get ahead of the curve in no time!
So, here’s a sneak peek into how to level up your web design business.
1. Know Your Target Persona
The first step is to get to know the person you are talking to. We like to call this person a Buyer Persona – an imaginary character you create as a representative of your target audience.
The purpose of building this character is to add as much information about the target as possible. This will help you identify the target's typical behavior towards the service or the product you are selling.
The easiest way to do so is to create a template with all the crucial info you can gather. So, here are a few questions you need to ask yourself to create a template that works.
Who is your buyer persona?
You’ll find this out by asking the following questions:
- Where does he/she live?
- Where are his/her hobbies?
- What’s his/her typical day like?
- What are his/her hobbies?
Don’t forget to give your character life by adding a photo and a name.
What are your persona’s goals and objectives?
First, you need to make a clear distinction between goals and objectives.
Goals are statements that you make about your business future. For example: “Become a profitable business”
Objectives are the steps your buyer persona should take to achieve their goals, and they are measurable. For example: “Increase sales by 10% by the end of Q2 in 2020”
By knowing your buyer persona’s goals and objectives, you will discover their pain points and then tailor a message that should resonate with your audience.
Why would your imaginary friend want to buy your service or a product?
There are two ways you can do this – by being a good and a bad cop.
As a good cop, you need to get some testimonials from your customers. If you're just starting out, make a website for a friend or offer to make someone's website for free in exchange for a testimonial.
As a bad cop, discover the things that might be holding back your buyer persona. For example – the price, your competitors etc.
This is super useful as it will give you plenty of insight and come with prepared answers.
And, finally:
What road will your persona take to decide to purchase your web design services from you?
Here, you need to consider the steps your persona will take to become your client.
From reading a blog to following social media, there are many ways people can reach you and join the circle of your loyal customers. We call this a path of purchase. And this is what you discover to create a stronger bond between you and your customers.
Here’s an awesome template created by Lemlist you can steal:
2. Leverage the Word of Mouth Marketing
Word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool – it can make or break your business. Do it right, and you’ll reap excellent benefits without even having to do ad marketing. The quality of your product will speak for itself. Keep in mind that it’s not a magic philosopher’s stone that will help you reach success overnight. You need to dedicate some time to it and then just keep walking.
Here are a few steps to take to triumph on this journey:
Exceed The Client's Expectations
Give people a reason to rave about your product. Word of mouth marketing makes sense only if it is followed by amazing service. The truth is, people usually get excited about positive human interactions – this is what they seem to appreciate truly.
Even if you have a super-powerful product at an affordable price, all your efforts can fall flat if your interaction with customers is not top-notch. So, make sure you give people what they want – great service is half the job done.
Build an active, engaged community
The best brands on the market make sure to convince their consumers that they'll join special ranks if they buy their product. Some die-hard fans even like to refer to their top favorite brand as their family. Achieving such loyalty is the ultimate marketing goal you should be striving for. It’s a one-way ticket to success. How do you do that?
Build a community by:
- Hosting contests
- Organizing events
- Developing loyalty programs
- Encouraging dialogues
But make sure you include some kind of exclusivity. Your group should not appeal to everyone – you should focus on a niche group.
Focus on referral marketing
Referral marketing lets you become personal with your customers.
It all comes down to motivating your customers to share your product or service with others.
This type of marketing does not only help you build customer loyalty, but also establish long-term relationships. The best thing about referral marketing is that you can monitor conversion rates and measure all the metrics.
Take Evernote, for example. They leveraged referral marketing to develop more than a billion users over the last decade. How? When a customer refers to their friends or colleagues to Evernote, the new customer gets the opportunity to try the trial version.
On the other hand, a referral party receives points they can then spend to use premium tools for free.
Your customers are already spreading the word about you – so, make their word count.
3. Grow Your Website Conversion Rates by 20%
Did you know that many sites only have 0.1 to 0.2 conversion rate? This means that you need to have 1000 visitors to get one paying customer. Not so encouraging stats, wouldn’t you say?
But how do we improve our conversion rates and make more people buy our product?
I’ll give you a few best ways you can do that:
Add a pop up to your site
Probably, the most effective way to get more leads to your site is exit intent pop up. This will catapult your conversion rate. In a nutshell, exit-intent technology tracks your website visitors' mouse movements and detects when they want to leave your site without making a purchase. This is when a popup shows up.
They work amazingly well on landing pages, commercial websites, and online eCommerce stores. Hire the best front-end web developers using this front end developer online test to design optimized user interfaces.
Here are a few ways you can retain your visitors with an exit-intent popup.
- Offer help via phone – Sometimes, visitors may leave your site because they could not find a way to contact you. Here, a popup comes to the scene offering your visitor to help him or her and guide them through your website.
- Offer a discount – There is nothing more appealing to a visitor than when they are being offered a discount on some product. It is seen as a privilege, and with a great copy, it can have a great impact.
- Use the human element – in this time of uncertainty, having a human element on your site is vital. And this is where a popup can play a major role as well. It can help you build better relationships with your customers as they will trust people more than robots or bots.
This popup comes from Userpilot, and it’s a perfect example of using a human element to drive engagement and conversions.
Add testimonials and reviews
No one wants to be the first person to buy a particular service or a product. Everyone wants to know other people’s experiences with that product to know whether they are on the right track. Put their mind at ease by giving a chance to read testimonials and reviews from previous customers.
If you can also add in logos of the brands that you worked with or a photo of the person who gave the testimonial, this will help it to appear more trustworthy.
According to a marketing expert Angie Schottmuller, quality testimonials can bring you remarkable conversion impact – in some cases, up to 400% improvement.
Strengthen your CTA
If you still haven’t worked on your CTA, you’d better roll up your sleeves and start making them even more actionable. Avoid generic CTAs like “Start trial” or “Sign up” not only because they are everywhere but also because people need more specific reason to make a move.
Start your CTA with Yes – it makes your message sound more positive and enthusiastic. Or try a formula: Yes, I want (your offer)
Implement these strategies and start making conversions today!
4. Use the Power of Content Marketing
According to recent research from the Content Marketing Institute, 63 % of businesses do not have a marketing strategy. And, without a marketing strategy, all of your efforts to grow business might fall flat.
If you are in that group, we’re here to help.
While we might still say that the content is king, it’s also a fact that the web is awash in content. To stand out and make your visitors want to hear what you have to say and then reach out for more, you need to always be ahead of your competition.
Here are a few ways you can leverage content to grow exponentially:
Use the Skyscraper technique
According to Brian Dean, you can accomplish this technique in three steps: find a good content piece, create a better piece, and reach out to the right people.
After using this technique, Brian Dean’s traffic to the site doubled in 14 days, which you can see in the graph below. He called this the “Skyscraper Technique”.
Make the most of your content
Turn a webinar into an infographic, a presentation, package quotes, series of blogs but make sure the content is useful on its own and not just a straight copy.
Create serialized content
Surprisingly, Lengthier content tends to generate much more interest. Also, serialization makes this kind of content more digestible, allowing you to present users with a call-to-action or other conversion point. One of the successful examples is Segment with their Analytics Academy, which, in a nutshell, is a six-week email campaign organized and packaged in a way that makes you feel like you are attending an online class.
There are many tools, such as SemRush for example, that will make the process of doing research for your content much easier.
Convert leads through various types of content
The content's ultimate goal is to convince the visitors to make the final move and make a purchase. To do that, you need to focus your efforts on creating content that assures people that they are about to make the right choice. Here are the types of content that will help you achieve this goal:
- Reviews – content that shows the real value of the product you are planning to buy can be just what it takes to persuade your potential customer to make that purchase.
- Infographics – This type of content makes all the details about the product much more visually appealing and encourages the visitor to make the right move.
- Quizzes – the great thing about the quiz is that it can narrow down your visitor’s options and point them towards the best choice.
- Case studies – like reviews, case studies provide all the info your visitor needs to commit to your brand.
Distribute Content
Keep in mind that you won’t get the results unless you handle them correctly. And there are a few steps you need to take to do it successfully:
- Follow a social media sharing calendar. You can either choose a tool like Facebook marketing tools, Twitter marketing tools or a DIY calendar.
- Leverage social media channels to make your content visible to a wide audience as possible. Plus, you should pin your posts to your profiles on different social media channels like Twitter and Linkedin. Here’s an example from Buffer’s Twitter account:
- Submit to social bookmarking sites for your blog niche like Reddit, inbound.org, and GrowthHackers because they can bring massive traffic, act as a great brand builder, and build authority and community.
- Email interested readers. Instead of contacting influential strangers, contact the readers who have already shared your content on similar topics.
What's Your Next Step?
Let’s sum up what you need to focus on when trying to help your web design business grow:
- Know your target persona
- Leverage the word of mouth marketing
- Grow your website conversion rates
- Use the power of content marketing
It’s important to have a clear picture of what you want to start expanding your business. But it’s even more important to have clearly defined techniques that will help you achieve that goal. With these steps, you’ll make your journey to success smooth.
