How To Set High-Value Goals For Your Website Strategy

In my last post, we went over what a website strategy is and why having one is so important.

As a quick recap, a website strategy is a detailed plan of action for your blog, website, and business. This blueprint includes a main goal and at least three supporting goals. Those goals translate into different features of your website which can turn into increased sales and conversions!

Having a detailed plan is important in leading your readers. Since it’s unlikely for a reader to make a purchase the first time they land on your site, you need to help them come to know and trust you.

This can trust is built through things like:

•  Reading blog posts
• Following on social media
• Subscribing to newsletters, and
• Purchasing smaller products and services

Choosing High-Value Goals

In case you struggled to define effective and high-value goals, I want to come back and give you a bit more guidance. If you’re going through all this work to create a solid strategy you want to make sure it’ll be effective, right?

That’s why high-value goals are so important.

Here are three traits of a high-value goal:

1. It keeps your audience engaged
2. It builds trust between you and your audience
3. It moves you toward your biggest business goal

Now let’s go over why each of those traits are so important as well as a few tips! If you run into any questions feel free to ask in the comments, I’d be more than happy to help you out!

For the following examples, I’ll be using this as the main goal:

Generate enough income through my website strategy services to match 75% of my full-time income, allowing me to quit my 9-5
(Note: I’m totally not recommending that you use 75% as any type of threshold for quitting your 9-5, I just chose a number)

1. A goal should keep your audience engaged

Audience engagement is a key factor in building a successful blog and business. Look at the small businesses you buy from. I bet you’re tweeting those people, commenting on their blog, sharing their content on social media, and who knows what else.

Why do we do this?

Because when we find awesome content, we want the world to know. Aaaand maybe we secretly want to get a little attention from the super awesome creator!

You want your audience to feel just as excited about you and what you create, so choose goals that encourage that engagement.

Here’s an example of a goal that lacks audience engagement:

Get my readers to view my “Work With Me” page

Why it doesn’t work:

“What?! My audience needs to know how they can work with me so they start thinking about what I have to offer!”

Yep, that’s true. But there’s no audience engagement there until they’re ready to actually buy. Interested readers will check out your products and services pretty early on, so it’s not worth time and website space giving it extra advertisement.

How to fix it:

Your purpose with that goal would have been to make your readers familiar with your services. Instead, your goal could be to make them more familiar with you through a free email course or your Start Here page. Either option would expose them to your content and services. That will begin building the trust they’ll need to feel before making a purchase.

2. A goal should build trust between you and your audience

Building trust and proving your knowledge is an important part of turning readers into customers. You can accomplish this by writing value-packed posts while still showing that you’re a real person and taking the time to communicate authentically with your audience.

Here’s an example of a goal that fails to build trust or prove your knowledge:

Get my readers to click side-bar ads

Why it doesn’t work:

You might be saying, “but generating income through ads can get me to my ultimate income goal!”

I hear ya.

However, I’ll go out on a limb and say your sidebar ads aren’t making you more than a few bucks per month. Meaning they aren’t effective income generators. What they are good at is distracting from the value of your actual content.

Instead of a reader seeing a nice opt-in for your free, value-packed email course, their eye is drawn to an ad and they move on without opting-in to your list or learning anything about you.

How to fix it:

I understand that making a few quick bucks seems like a good idea at first. But in the long run, it’s not doing you any favors. Instead, include a widget showing off your free email course or link to your most popular and value-packed posts.

3. A goal should bring you closer to your ultimate business goal

I’m sure you see why this is important, but I want to show you a practical example of where a goal could go wrong.

Of course, you want each supporting goal to move you closer to your ultimate goal. Setting a random goal that doesn’t move you closer to your dreams is simply wasted time and energy.

Here’s an example of a goal that doesn’t bring you (the website strategist, remember?) closer to your most important goal:

Sign up for my free branding course

Why it doesn’t work:

Sure, that goal shows you know a thing or two about branding, but it has nothing to do with your main service. I know it seems obvious, but it happens more often than you’d expect.

Make sure your goals are super focused and don’t have extra offerings just to have them. It’s an easy trap to fall into, one I’ve been guilty of myself. Establish yourself with one type of offering and everything will come together more quickly and clearly.

How to fix it:

Get super focused. If you want readers to hire you for your website strategy services, offer a free course on a small part of the overall idea (hint: I might be doing just that!). In that course, you’d have the opportunity to show your value and let them know that you’re available to help them the rest of the way.

How Do I Know Where To Start

Now that we’ve defined our goals and made some tweaks, we need to take action based on those goals.

But where do I start?

Maybe you’d like a blog header created to advertise your free email course, but you don’t want to hire a developer. Or you want to make changes to encourage more social media followers, but don’t know where to even begin.

1. Make a list

To start, list out your main goal along with your supporting goals. Then list the top 3 actions you’d like to take for each goal.

Example:

Supporting goal: Encourage readers to opt-in to my free email course
Action 1: New blog header with nice image and opt-in button
Action 2: Opt-in button in sidebar
Action 3: Quick course pitch and opt-in link on Start Here Page

2. Add ratings

Next, rate each change on a scale from 1-10, based on how much effect it would have. 1 being least effective and 10 being the most effective.

3. Estimate investments (time and/or money)

Are you able to make any of the changes yourself? If so, take note of the amount of time each change would take you. For this step, remember that there are many great tutorials out there. Something that you might initially think you need a developer for could turn out to be something you can do yourself!

For any changes you can’t make yourself, estimate how much you think it would cost to have someone do it for you. If you’re not sure where to ballpark for a certain change, feel free to ask me and I’ll give you a number!

4. Compare

Now using your value ratings versus the cost and/or time it would take to implement, choose one change from each goal to make right away.

Doing this will allow you to get started with your blog blueprint with a minimal time and money investment!