Has your business run comfortably on referrals but now those leads are starting to dry up?
If you’re running most of your marketing through social media and a few landing pages, you’ll find it difficult to build credibility with people that don’t know you as well.
You can’t capture those cold leads when they don’t have anywhere to go and learn more about you and your business – in a single easy place. They don’t want to hunt for that information through your Instagram feed.
Even your referrals will have a hard time finding and trusting you when you don’t have a foundation for your marketing.
You Need a Marketing Foundation
When you run your business only online, it needs a home online.
Think of that foundational marketing piece as your office space. You’re inviting customers into your business. In that office space, you might have some pictures of the team, artwork to showcase your personality, and maybe even some client work showcased throughout the space.
Mostly though, your office space showcases your brand’s personality and allows people to know that you’re a real business. There’s a lot of trust that is built when someone can invite you to their office.
It’s the same with your marketing foundation. It provides that social proof that you are a real business. It allows you to showcase the work you’ve done, the personality your brand has, and even lets your customers get to know your team (if you have one).
For about 99.999% of online businesses, their marketing foundation is their website. It is quite literally their office online.
You Need a Foundation You Own
Why can’t Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, or LinkedIn be your marketing foundation?
Because you don’t actually own it.
Social media and other channels are fantastic to bring in new people to your orbit. They get to know you in a different way, get to follow along, and yes, they can even buy from you.
But we learned last October that those sites can disappear in an instant. The Facebook and Instagram outage had millions of online business owners scrambling to continue to push sales and launches with no way to communicate to their audience.
Twitter just got sold to Elon Musk. Who only knows what will happen with that transition.
You cannot build a house on land you do not own. Your marketing is the same. You need to start with the piece that you yourself actually own (your website, your email list) and firm up that foundation and build your business on that instead.
All Your Marketing Leads Back to the Foundation
Think about how you post on social media now. You can’t do a whole lot on Instagram to get a sale, right? You have to lead a potential customer into your DMs or off to your bio so they can click a link and talk to you.
If you have to send someone somewhere online to work with you further, it needs to be a foundation that you own, control the branding, and know everything will match up exactly how you want it to.
Marketing Foundations Bring in Leads and Revenue
Let me tell you a story about a customer who operated mostly off of Facebook for their first 6 months in business.
They did well, they were able to communicate through DMs and get people to their actual business (a local gym).
When we launched their full website to showcase their unique class format – boxing fitness – and their private training options, we saw an immediate revenue increase.
In fact, their website brought in leads that led to $4,272 in revenue, in just their first 10 days live.
Their Facebook continues to help them, but their website consistently brings in multiple lead forms each week for classes, private training, and nutrition support.
Plus, the customers coming through the website are far more ready to sign up (some even ask to immediately sign a contract) because they’ve had that trust built through the website.
A Marketing Foundation Can’t Do It All
Your business needs its home – its office space – online so that your prospective customers can find you and will want to work with you.
I’m about to say something a little controversial though.
A foundation is just that – the foundation. It takes far more than a kick-ass, lead-generating website to keep that cold and warm traffic flowing in.
You need a strategy that your marketing foundation supports, that leads back to your office, and gets people where they are already spending their time.
Which is why I’m launching my beta program – The Online Business Accelerator.
You’ll not only get the foundation you need to make your marketing successful, you’ll get the strategies and outbound support required to keep new people coming back and help them get to know you. Plus, I’m offering it for 30% off to the first 5 people who sign up.
Want to know more about this? Let’s jump on a quick 15 minute call and see if The Online Business Accelerator is the right fit for your online business.
