In today’s online world, if you want to succeed, you know you need a website.

So you just hire a dude who lives in his mom’s basement. After all, he’ll do it for cheap, and you really just need a website right?

Hold up.

Before you hire just anyone to build a website for your company (including a distant cousin who lives in his mom’s basement), you need to have a purpose for your website by having a scalable marketing and content plan in place.

Even though it’s more fun planning a color scheme or what fun video of your company performing riverdance on your landing page, your website requires a focused purpose.

I want flash though…

Countless businesses hire a web designer to create a site without having given much thought to who their audience is or what they are looking for on their website.

Which is the most important aspect

They wonder why their website isn’t attracting the attention they thought it would (you picked that color because it represented the core values of your company, to bad your audience doesn’t give a rat’s rear end).

Designing a website without a content strategy the same as rolling up a hundred dollars and smoking it. It’s a waste of money (though the website won’t cause your lungs to bleed, we hope).

So you said something about this “content” thing

1)    Establish the goals you want your website to accomplish. Think about what you want your website to do for your business other than look pretty. Do you want to generate leads? Turn leads into sales? Or are you providing information, building your brand, or all of the above?

2)   Paint a picture of your audience. Good web content writers know everything about their target group. Their fears, concerns, and their goals. Research who you’re trying to attract and what they care about.

3)   Understand what your audience is looking for. Content is useless if it doesn’t serve it’s most basic purpose, to provide information to it’s audience.

It can be entertaining, educational, but it should always serve the purpose of informing your audience and answering their concerns.

4)    Plan your content to aid your site. Once you’ve got all the above points covered, now make your game plan.

Plan out what pages your site will have, and what pages should connect to each other. You also need to develop a list of keywords that your ideal customer and prospect are searching for.

This is done through an SEO tactic called a content audit.  Want to know how to properly ‘do’ a content audit? Click here for a great how-to article.

5)    What’s the tone supposed to be? It’ll depend on what line of work your company provides. Usually you’ll want a style and voice that will appeal to your customers. If you have a law firm you’ll probably want to have a polished more formal style over a pet store shop. Overall, it’s a good rule to avoid industry jargon on your site, keep it user friendly.

6)    Start creating! Don’t be fearful about the results, process, or what to say. Just get started.

Don’t want to go it alone?

If you’re not completely comfortable managing and creating content for your website, you should try and invest in a copywriter who will work with you to create content.

Most professional web design and online marketing companies like BNG Design offer copywriting services .

Always ask when working with your website designer, and know what services they provide.

Want to grow your content strategy?

If you want to see how your peers have solved their marketing and website problems, take a look at our portfolio , and see what others have said about the result.

And if your IT firm wants to learn more about what steps to take with your own marketing initiatives, or would like a free consultation, contact us here .