Welcome to our Founders Series, where we aim to give advice, answer questions and provide solutions for people starting their own businesses. If this sounds like you, read on! We've got plenty of content on a wide range of topics, all to help you grow and succeed as a founder.

When was the last time you applied some deep strategic thinking to your online presence? For growing businesses, this should be an everyday exercise as you evolve, adapt and scale. But for many founders, this is treated simply as a box to tick.

The fact is, no founder has ever successfully scaled their business overnight – it takes constant digital optimisation and teamwork. Which is why hiring and collaborating with the right support is so invaluable.

In this blog you’ll learn what to prioritise when building your marketing team, and how to lay the key foundations for consistent online optimisation throughout your scaling journey.

Define goals and objectives

Revisit your mission, vision and values – remind yourself what your business stands for and what online success looks like to you. These fundamentals will play an important role when bringing support on board to help you – whether that be in-house marketers, freelancers or an outsourced agency. 

First things first, think about what you want to achieve. Ask yourself, do you want to…  

  • Boost brand visibility? Less about driving conversions, more about building trust
  • Increase website visits? Think organic SEO, link-building strategies, and pay-per-click marketing
  • Generate more leads? Through newsletters, product demos, email marketing and the like
  • Maximise customer engagement? Build your personal brand alongside active business social profiles
  • Build a community? Going beyond engagement with direct, consistent customer collaboration

Once you’ve got a better understanding of your growth goals, it’s time to mobilise your people and lay the vital groundwork for your online optimisation journey. 

Step 1 – Analyse the competition

Nobody knows the market like you do. You understand who you're competing against, and you know exactly how your business differentiates itself. This is why you need to set out the foundations for competitor analysis yourself, communicating your USPs and your market position to your team. 

Conduct a mini-analysis yourself to fuel those important planning conversations, so your team can take them forward and expand on them: 

  • Identify direct and indirect competitors – Select 5-10 competitors to look at. 
  • Review competitor online activity – What social platforms are they on? What is their tone of voice like? How does their website support the customer journey? 
  • Analyse their user engagement – It’s not just about followers – engagement matters. Identify the activities getting the most interaction for your own content inspiration.
  • Conduct a SWOT analysis – Identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in your competitor’s online presence.

Don’t have time for all that? Then provide your team with a clear run down of your USPs and key competitors, and leave them to do the rest. If you’ve hired or outsourced well, you can trust their expertise. 

Step 2 – Prepare for changes in your website

You may be proud of the website you created at the start of your founder journey, but be aware that your marketing support may want to make strategic changes based on their own experience and expertise.

Make sure you approach any suggestions with an open mind – but if you really don’t agree with proposed changes, dig deeper into their rationale, question what KPIs guided them and collaborate rather than dictate. 

Here’s a few core questions your marketing team might be asking when analysing your website for optimisation:

  • Is it easy to navigate?
  • Does it load quickly? 
  • Is it optimised for mobile users?
  • Are branding and messaging consistent across your website? 
  • Is it visually appealing?
  • Are your plugins set up correctly and functioning well?
  • Is your contact information easily accessible and up-to-date?

Hired an internal team? We recommend investing in the following tools that will empower your experts to really get under the skin of your website and how it performs online:

Step 3 – Audit your content

Content creation is a high priority for marketers for good reason. Consistent, quality content inspires brand loyalty, improves customer retention, increases social media impressions, and gets you closer to that coveted Google top spot. 

Which is why churning out content for content’s sake will just complicate the customer journey, as well as slowing down your website and wasting your resources. Instead, a content audit will help you understand the content you already have, its performance, and how you might reuse it on other platforms. Here’s how your team might conduct one:

  1. Remove any irrelevant/unsuitable content from your website.
  2. Identify content that can be repurposed and find gaps where new content will actually add value.
  3. Create an achievable content plan tailored to your goals, e.g. 1 weekly SEO blog, 1 monthly evergreen blog, 2 weekly social content pieces split into ‘topical’ and ‘thought leader’.

Now you’re ready to optimise

We get it. As a busy founder you’re probably already struggling for hours in the day. But if your online presence isn’t equipped to evolve as you grow, expect to spend more time and money playing catch-up in future. 

By engaging the right marketing assistance now, built on strong, adaptable foundations, you can accelerate your growth goals. Just remember to empower your team with the right tools to support this.

Look out for our next blog in this series, focused on how personal branding can support the credibility of your business.