4 Ways You Can Improve Your Online Marketing Today

There are a lot of ways to market your organization online, but many of them require a significant amount of time, effort, and money.  There are also some simple, inexpensive things you can do right now that could have a significant impact on the effectiveness of your online marketing.  So, here are…

4 Free Ways You Can Improve Your Online Marketing Today:

1. Update your website.
Has it been a while since anything has changed on your website?  Take a few minutes to go through your website.  Look for information that is outdated or pictures that could be updated.  In my experience, for many churches simply updating your website would have a huge impact on the effectiveness of the website and your website is one of the chief components of your online marketing.  Nothing will make a visitor leave a site quicker than seeing a reference to the upcoming Christmas event…when it’s Spring.

2. Get Social.
Does your organization have a Twitter account and a Facebook Page?  If not, create them today.  It only takes a few minutes and they are both free.  Once you have the accounts, add icons to your website.  Every page should have a link for people to follow you on Twitter or Like you on Facebook.  This will give you a way to stay in touch with people on an on-going basis.  If you create pages for events, regularly add video or pictures, or blog, every one of those types of pages should also have Tweet and FB Share buttons.  This will allow people who visit these pages to easily share the page (and info) with their friends.  It’s always good to make it as easy as possible for other people to do your marketing for you.

3. Add a “call to action” to your website.
If you have a website, you probably want people to do something on that website.  Remember that It may be to buy a product, contact you, sign up for something, make a donation, etc.  Don’t assume that people will know what to do.  Tell them.  A “call to action” is simply a button or link telling people what you want them to do.  “Contact us today.”, “Signup for a free subscription.”, and “Place your order now.” are all examples of calls to action.  Not only do calls to action help visitors to know what to do, but by simply suggesting the action, they are much more likely to do it.

4. Create an online marketing strategy.
Just thinking about something can be helpful, but creating a well thought-out plan and writing it down can greatly effect whether you actually do the action.  So, as soon as you are done reading this article (and sharing it on FB and Twitter ;), take 30 minutes to really sit and think about what you want to do to market your business or organization online.  Then write out a plan, including the first several action steps of what needs to get done to accomplish the plan.  Lastly, set deadlines.  Adding reasonable deadlines to any plan of action make it much more likely to be accomplished in a timely fashion than leaving the plan open ended.  By taking a few minutes to write out a marketing plan with a schedule, you are much more likely to accomplish the future marketing of your website.

5. Bonus Item:
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What are some other quick and easy things you’ve found that website owners can do to improve their online marketing?