Coexist

It’s finally here. After months of strategizing, designing, programming, development and testing—it’s time to go live with your new website. Your new online experience pops off the screen with engaging content, stunning visuals, intuitive navigation and everything else you had hoped for. Now there’s only issue left to address…how do I get users to come to my new website?

There’s a plethora of customers out there anxiously waiting for your products/services and they can’t wait to visit your site, yet they don’t know you exist yet. These potential customers can’t search for something they have never heard of and they can’t tell their friends about something they haven’t experienced yet.

Even though you launched your new website last week, it may take popular search engines like Google and Yahoo, up to 2 or 3 months to fully index your new website—meaning that it will only then be listed and “searchable” using popular key words/search terms related to your new website.

From start-ups launching new brands to established industry leaders unveiling new online seasonal promotions—the secret to their success is a marketing plan/budget that allows for the creation and implementation of new digital tools in addition to a mix of traditional and non-traditional marketing tools to announce the new offering across multiple brand touch-points.

It’s so easy to get wrapped up in all the nuances and opportunities a new online experience presents that it’s easy to forget to protect the appropriate sales/marketing budget to drive traffic to your new website once it has been launched. You don’t have to devote an enormous budget to TV, radio, billboards and newspaper advertising, but at Coexist, it’s our job to make sure that our clients are always considering all the tools available to create awareness around a new website.

Some simple, cost effective tactics to think about as you plan your new website launch should start with getting to know all of the related online and offline directories and listings that relate to your core product/service offer. By submitting your company to these multiple directories and listings, you are priming the pump to enhance future “findability” issues. The cost to submit your company name to local papers and related trade publications is usually free as it provides a valuable service to these publication’s readers.

Another highly beneficial and surprisingly cost effective awareness tactic to consider during the launch phase of your new online experience is a targeted “Public Relations” campaign. At Coexist, we often partner with individual public relations experts to collaboratively craft interesting angles to promote to the media as to why “Client X’s” new product or service is truly unique and provides a value/benefit unlike anything currently in the marketplace. This early public relations push and the related media articles and third party endorsements that follow, can really help peek interest and drive initial traffic to a new site.