Are Websites Useful in Every Industry? (Part 3 of a 3 part series)

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This is the third blog in the three-part series, Does Your Small Business Need A Website in 2022? Read the first blog here and the second here. This blog addresses the third main reason why many SMEs don’t own websites; they don’t think websites are useful for their industry.

As a professional digital marketer, I’ve met several small business owners who thought websites were unimportant.

When pressed, these enterprising folks repeat the same complaints, “it doesn’t work because our buyers don’t go online to search for our products.” Or “our clients prefer to consult friends before buying.”

Do they have a point? Are websites unnecessary in some industries?

The short answer is no. Websites can be valuable in any industry if their target buyers have internet access.

The long answer – websites bring value by providing helpful information and experience to prospects in every stage of the buyer’s journey. The buyer’s journey is a series of steps that a prospect takes from discovering your products to becoming a happy customer.

For us to appreciate websites, we need to look at how websites impact the buyer’s journey.

How A Good Website Optimizes the Buyer’s Journey

Here’s a hypothetical buyer’s journey:

Let’s say that you sell digital marketing courses to college graduates in Ohio like Therese. One day, Therese is setting up her LinkedIn account when one of your course Ads pops up. She’s intrigued by the offer, clicks on the Ad to learn more, and lands on your website.

You’re offering a free three-day session. Therese registers for it and gets a quick Thank You email from you. Days later, she attends the free training, enjoys it, enrolls in the paid classes, and becomes one of your best-performing students. Therese goes on to become an advocate for your company, referring new students to your program regularly and constantly praising you in public.

This is what marketers try to do with every website they build. Firstly, they create a plan for acquiring prospects, converting those prospects into leads (website visitors who’re highly interested in their products and might buy sooner or later), engaging those leads, converting the Leads to buyers, and retaining their clients. Then, they build a website that’ll enable them to achieve these goals.

Let’s see how you can do this in an industry with less digital penetration.

Let’s say that a B2B retailer specializing in Aluminium casement parts in Lagos, Nigeria wants to grow his business online.

His target buyers are comfortable using WhatsApp and Facebook for personal communication but rarely use Google to search for new products. They prefer visiting physical stores to shop because trust is low in the sector as many products are counterfeits, overpriced or low quality.

What can we do?

1. Audit

We can start with an audit of all the content and marketing assets the company owns. After the audit, we’ll need to collect lots of testimonials and video case studies since trust is low in the industry.

2. Use email newsletters to retain customers

We can create an account in MailChimp, collect customer emails, upload them manually to MailChimp and send them weekly newsletters. Our newsletters will teach buyers how to use our products to achieve their goals and discuss topics they love. For example, our articles can teach the fabricators how to find clients online.

3. Design a Conversion-focused Website

We can create a high-level customer acquisition plan and develop website pages specifically for this. Firstly, we can create a blog to address the needs of our prospects – if they are Aluminum fabricators, our blog can focus on helping them become highly successful fabricators. Blogging helps generate online traffic when your articles rank highly on Google.

Secondly, we can create a helpful FREE online guide and advertise it to prospects using Google Ads. Those who click the Ads and visit our website to read the Guide can be invited to submit their email addresses.

Thirdly, we can appear on the blogs that our prospects love reading by writing helpful guest articles. We can share a link to our website in those guest articles so that our target prospects can visit our site to learn more.

4. Create website sales pages

We can also create highly persuasive product pages using the testimonials and case studies previously collected. This would be very useful for fabricators who have read our guide and blog, trust our company, and are investigating all their options to buy.

Therefore, our site would need:

 1. A homepage.

 2. Product sales pages.

 3. A blog.

 4. An online guide.

 5. About Us and Contact Us pages.

The No. 1 Website Secret Every Small Business Owner Must Know

Websites are not strictly sales tools. They’re much more than that. They can help you:

1. Create additional streams of income. You can sell courses and other digital products, or add affiliate links to your blog posts. The only requirement is that the digital products or affiliate links are relevant to your industry.
2. Automatically engage prospects using chatbots while you’re busy.
3. Retain buyers through helpful email content or online guides written specifically for customers.
4. Become a thought leader in your industry by publishing great content on your blog.

Bonus Tips: If Your Previous Website Couldn’t Attract Sales

Many small business owners form their unflattering opinion of websites due to a bad experience. In many cases, they paid for a website after soliciting advice from a marketer who said they couldn’t succeed without one but even with a website, they still couldn’t make money online. So they shut it down.

But running a business without a website isn’t a smart decision. So here are a few proven tips that’ll guide you in making better decisions:

1. Get a website designer who is marketing savvy and can build conversion-focused sites. Work with her, or bring along a digital marketer, to plan an online marketing funnel that optimizes your target buyer’s journey. Your buyer’s journey will depend on the type of client and your industry. You can hire such a professional on Fiverr or iWorker.

2. Ensure that the funnel helps you achieve the right goals. Your goals must be attached to business results – 600 new customers in three months – and they must be SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely.

3. Once the website has been designed, hire a competent digital marketer to manage it and to implement the funnel. Please don’t hire a “social media manager” to do this. Look for a “digital marketer” instead.