Stop treating your website like a red headed step child.
Do we have your attention now? Good. Hope so. If you’re like the companies and organizations we work with, you’ve invested a lot of time and money into the design and development of your website. For what? So it looks cool? So it’s responsive?
Really, why did you do it? The answer should include things like: We redesigned our website…
- to be more user focused
- to provide specific paths for our target audiences
- to help us meet our lead generation goals
- to impact the bottom line.
Really, we hope that these are some of the reasons why you updated your website. But wait… now what? You invested all that time and money… when was the last time you looked at your website? When was the last time you updated your website?
It happens all the time – you sprint to the finish line to get the website done. And when the website is “done” then you’ll do all these great things to optimize it, keep it relevant and continue to use it to build the business. Heck, you may even start blogging. But then, you get busy – and the website is “done” – so you focus on all those other things you didn’t do when you were working so hard on the website.
That website of yours is a living, breathing marketing tool. It is a hub for ALL of your marketing activity. It generates leads while you’re sleeping, sipping coffee or even at the work Christmas party. It’s there when people are looking for what you do, whether they know who you are or not.
You’ve heard it all before:
- You should be blogging.
- You should be reviewing your website weekly.
- You should be keeping your website fresh.
- You should be working out more (oops, that’s for a New Year’s blog. Yeah. That’s coming too).
The bottom line is that developing a website is a big investment in time, money and knowledge from your company. It is not a place where content goes to die to never be seen again. Your website is where content should start, then it can be repurposed and used in other mediums – direct mail, print ads, email marketing, social media content and more. Whether you keep your website fresh through a blog, case studies, portfolio, ebooks or your news updates – you need to do something. And, you need to do it consistently.
Caution: Lame House to Website Reference Below Proceed with Caution
Building a beautiful new website as one of your most valuable strategic marketing tools is like investing in a beautiful new landscape for your home. Then, when you don’t update your website or do anything for it again… it’s like never mowing, pruning or weeding that landscape again. It gets old, brown and people wonder if anyone lives there anymore. Except in your websites case, people wonder if you’re company is still around, if you still offer those same products or services, and if you do, how savvy are you anyway?
So take this redhead’s word for it. Make sure your company website is treated fairly, like all of your other marketing and communications tools. Give it the love and attention it deserves; in turn it will repay you in leads, sales and success.
Header Image Credit: http://memegenerator.net/instance/61184065
