Digital Marketing : A Guide to Creating Your Own Website
If you’re starting your own digital marketing agency, you need to have a website that can attract new customers and let them know what you offer. Digital marketing involves strategies to market products or services on the internet, with the goal of making them stand out from their competitors. If you want to be successful in this industry, it’s important to understand how digital marketing works, how to communicate effectively with your customers and how to build credibility for your business. To learn more about digital marketing and get started creating your own website, read this guide on digital marketing 101: A guide to creating your own website.
Outline your ideas :
Even if you’re not creating a website from scratch, it’s important to first think through what you want to accomplish with your site. What are you hoping to do? How will your site differentiate yourself from others in your niche? Do you have a value proposition (i.e., why should anyone care about what's on your site?)? Answering these questions first is incredibly important—and yet how many of us don't bother thinking them through before we dive into design or coding? Take some time now, while the idea is still fresh in your mind, and outline everything you want on a piece of paper or using any online note-taking tools like Evernote or Google Docs.
Register a domain name :
Choosing a domain name for your website might sound like an easy task, but with so many words already claimed, finding one that fits your business’s identity can be difficult. Fortunately, there are services like Namecheap that make it cheap and easy to register new domains as well as existing ones you may want to move over from another registrar. In general, it’s best not to settle on a domain name until you’re ready to launch your site—you don’t want someone else snapping up a domain you had your eye on—but once you do have a name in mind, act fast and register it.
Get Hosting :
When you’re ready to build your website, you'll need hosting. Hosting is simply where your website lives on a server connected to the internet, so that it can be viewed by other people with an internet connection. When choosing your hosting provider, make sure they offer domain name registration—you'll need it if you decide to customize your own site (more on that later). There are lots of web hosting options out there and they range in price from $3/month all the way up to $100/month+. The more expensive packages usually come with bells and whistles like unlimited bandwidth and storage space. If you’re just getting started with digital marketing, I recommend going with one of these cheaper options or doing what I did: look for free trial offers.
Design your site, from scratch or using templates :
The first step is to decide whether you’ll be creating your website from scratch or using a template. We recommend starting with an out-of-the-box option, as these are often easier and faster to build, with ready-made layouts and easy snippets of code that you can customize as needed. Once you have your site up and running, you can always re-tool it later if you need more features or want more control over how things look. There are also pre-built themes for WordPress and Drupal platforms (among others) that make it easy for even beginners to quickly launch a professional site.
Buy an SSL certificate :
An SSL certificate is a security credential that proves your website is protected and lets you encrypt sensitive data so that it can’t be intercepted. They range in price but you can get one for as little as $10/year. The best thing to do is use a trusted, well-known provider like Namecheap or GoDaddy, who are highly regarded within their respective industries. If you buy directly from an SSL provider, make sure your purchase includes a money-back guarantee of some kind because there’s nothing worse than purchasing something and not knowing if it works!
Build your site :
Now that you’ve found a domain name, it’s time to start building your site. The first thing you need is a hosting service. Hosting can be purchased through your web host or an outside service (Google has an inexpensive plan) and there are different types of services available. You may want something like WordPress, which is a powerful content management system (CMS). Or, you may just want a simple website with basic information on it. Regardless of what kind of site you want, hosting gives it life online.
Install Google Analytics, WordPress analytics and Google Tag Manager (optional but useful) :
It's important that you know how many people are landing on your site and from what sources, so installing analytics is a big first step. Google Analytics will give you in-depth information about every single person who visits your site. It tells you which keywords they used to find you, where they came from, their operating system, their browser type and even their time of day. This will help in formulating an SEO strategy later down the line. Another useful analytics package is WordPress Analytics , but it's only available if you use WordPress as your website platform. After setting up all of these platforms, link them together using Google Tag Manager—this way they'll all report back into one place and be a lot easier to read and analyze.
Add social media buttons and share buttons :
You want to add a Facebook Like button and a Twitter Tweet This button so your readers can share your content. Ideally, you want these buttons positioned close to your headline or call-to-action. With social media buttons and share buttons, readers can easily share your content on their personal profiles without leaving your website. Plus, they keep some of their most important information right at hand in case they need it later, such as links back to past articles they may have referenced in comments that you haven't caught yet. Think of social media buttons as billboards advertising more great stuff from you! The goal is get as many eyes on your website as possible through sharing, and every click is an opportunity for someone else to like or subscribe!
Start growing your audience :
One of the most important factors in your digital marketing plan is starting out with a strong foundation of engaged and interested people. A great way to do that is by engaging with others online who are talking about similar topics, or by creating something people want and sharing it through social media. The more information you share and provide, such as useful tips, guides or how-to’s, the more you’ll be able to build an audience interested in what you have to say (and do!). If you don’t feel comfortable sharing yourself yet, consider working with another company and seeing if they would be willing to share your information with their followers—this is a great way for your audience (and potential customers) to learn about you!
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