You can invest in SEO, Google Ads, social media and email campaigns, but most digital marketing activity eventually leads prospects to the same place: your website.
If that website is slow, difficult to navigate or no longer represents your business effectively, it can undermine otherwise successful marketing campaigns.
Your website is part of your marketing
Websites are sometimes treated as separate from marketing: something you redesign every few years and then leave largely untouched.
In reality, your website is central to your digital marketing infrastructure.
SEO relies on its content and technical performance. PPC campaigns need effective landing pages. Social campaigns send users there to learn more. Prospective customers visit it to validate your credibility.
That means website performance and marketing performance are closely connected.
Is poor user experience losing potential customers?
Potential customers don't necessarily have the patience to work out how your website operates.
Confusing navigation, poorly structured pages, slow loading times or a frustrating mobile experience can all create unnecessary barriers.
Even relatively small problems matter when you're paying to generate visits through advertising.
If 1,000 people click an advert but the landing page doesn't clearly communicate the offer, simply buying another 1,000 clicks won't address the underlying problem.
Does the website reflect your current business?
Businesses evolve faster than websites sometimes do.
New services are introduced, capabilities expand, markets change and customer priorities develop. Yet the website can continue presenting the company as it existed five years ago.
This can create a disconnect between the business you are today and the one prospective customers see online.
Review whether your website accurately communicates your current services, sectors, expertise and points of difference.
Can you measure what visitors are doing?
Good marketing decisions require reliable data.
Your website should allow you to understand where visitors originate, which pages they use and whether important actions such as enquiries, downloads or registrations are being completed.
Without appropriate analytics and conversion tracking, it becomes much harder to determine which marketing channels are actually delivering value.
Fix the destination, not just the campaign
When digital marketing isn't generating enough enquiries, the instinct can be to change keywords, adverts or budgets.
Sometimes that's necessary. But sometimes the marketing is successfully bringing potential customers to the website and the website is failing to convert them.
BBI Brandboost combines web development and digital marketing expertise, allowing us to look at the complete customer journey rather than individual channels in isolation.
If you're investing in marketing but aren't seeing the results you expect, it may be worth asking whether the problem is the campaign – or the website it's sending people to.