Building a beautiful and functional website is essential for any business to be successful. However, just because your website isn’t ready to launch yet, doesn’t mean that you have to put off launching your business and marketing your products and services.
Social media is an invaluable tool that helps businesses to grow and reach their target audience, and setting up and gaining a social media presence is the first step to marketing your business – plus it can be done before your website even launches!
Here are our top tips on how you can build a following without a website.
Coming Soon Page
Whilst your website is under construction, it’s a good idea to have a holding page (also known as a coming soon page), that users will see when they land on your website URL.
Holding pages allow you to increase brand awareness, generate leads and boost your search engine visibility – before your website is even live! It also allows users to build trust, as they can contact you and link through to social profiles.
This page should have a feel for how your website and branding will look once complete, and can include the following:
- Logo
- Small description of who you are
- Social media buttons and links
- Contact information
- Newsletter sign up
Set Goals & Objectives
Your initial goals will likely include growing your following and building excitement and anticipation for your website launch. Setting SMART goals will help you to have a purpose and will help you to avoid posting aimlessly.
Identify Your Audience
First and foremost, you need to identify who your audience is and which platforms they will be using. Then, you need to focus your efforts on posting to these platforms, and creating content that your audience will enjoy or find valuable.
Optimise Your Social Profiles
First impressions count. Once you’ve set up your social media accounts, ensure that your profile picture, cover photo and business information is up-to-date and correct. You need to be easily recognisable across your social profiles – especially as you don’t have a website to fall back on.
Deliver Value with Good Copy
Your business needs to give people a reason to follow you, so you need to show them how your business will improve their lives. Especially as you may not be able to sell yet (waiting for your website to be finished), you will want to offer value to your customers and audience. Aim to entertain, educate and inspire – making relatable content that people can connect with. The images that you use need to represent your audience.
Use Hashtags
When you’re first starting out on social media, you want users to be able to find you easily to build up a following and an audience. Boost your visibility and discoverability by using hashtags that your ideal audience would use to find you. Even if you haven’t launched your product or service yet, you can still post about them and use relevant hashtags, with CTAs aiming to get users to save posts for later, contact you or come back on your website launch day.
On platforms such as Instagram, you can also create countdowns and reminders that will send notifications to users when your website launches, reminding them and driving website traffic.
Create a Launch Schedule
Once you know when your website will launch, you can start to create content around building excitement among your audience for your website launch. Create a schedule for the weeks leading up to your website launch – starting early will help to build awareness and reach your audience. Post sneak peaks and information on your products or services that you’ll offer.
Analyse Analytics
As with all marketing, using analytics will help you to grow. Identify what works and what doesn’t work, and go from there. Have a look at your insights for each platform to identify which content works best on different platforms, and tailor this to your future posts.
A Final Word
A good website is essential to your business succeeding – without a good website, users will go elsewhere. Whilst a website build may put your product launch on hold for a short time, you can still work on your marketing and launch with a bang – helping your business to prosper and grow.
Want a new website but not sure where to start? We are specialist website designers and developers that can make your dream website come to life. Contact us now to have a chat about your requirements.
