🔖 Bookmark this: the best guide in the world for writing your email welcome sequence
If writing your email welcome sequence makes you want to set fire to your home with your laptop inside, give me 10 minutes to walk you through this thing before you need to file a fraudulent home insurance claim with Santander.
Over the next 3 billion words, I will teach you everything you need to write a welcome sequence for your small, service-based business.
Before you continue, please note there are a few provisos to this email marketing guide.
Rule number 1. I can’t kill anybody.
Rule number 2. I can’t make anybody fall in love with you.
Rule number 3. I won’t be addressing product-based businesses or people with lead magnets.
When you’ve got physical products like candles, keyrings, or flux capacitors, your welcome sequence will be very focused on your product range, and incentives to get potential customers to shop their first order ASAP (free shipping, discounts, limited-time offers), so there’s less ‘soft sell’ and more straight-up sell-sell.
This is not to say that some of the stuff I discuss below won’t apply, but this probably isn’t the best blog post for you. Sorry, Etsy friends.
As for my magnetic pals, when you start your subscriber journey via a lead magnet, you’ve already qualified someone’s interest with something very specific (your checklist, e-book, quiz, whatever), so your sequence will need to take this into account and link back to the magnet (getting people to download it and use it and then connecting all that back to your biz, what you do, etc.).
Honestly? Most lead magnets SUCK. So, maybe just don’t do a lead magnet and read on.
In all cases, this guide is best for coaches, therapists, copywriters, designers, strategists, consultants, and anyone else with a service-based business.
Back up, back up, what IS an email welcome sequence?
Excellent question.
When someone lands on your website, you probably have a newsletter form on your homepage, right?
And it’s probably some variation of this:
Um. I’ve noticed you around. Uh, I find you very attractive. Um. Would you go to bed inbox with me?
Your potential client flings their name and email address at you, hits ‘submit’ on the form, and then…
Well.
Nothing.
In many (very sad) cases, that’s where your customer journey ends.
(Except for that dry-ass confirmation email, which everyone leaves with the soulless template copy provided by their ESP.)
No onward relationship.
This is why I’m sitting here writing this. Many small business owners get as far as the sexy form bit on their website and forget to do anything with their subscribers afterwards.
The welcome sequence is the series of emails that should happen once your new subscriber submits their details. It’s the courtship phase of your relationship, where things start to get hot, heavy, and personal.
And the best part?
It’s automatic (supersonic, hypnotic, funky fresh).
So all you have to do is sit the f*ck down, write it once (very well), schedule it via your email service provider of choice, and it’s done forever (or at least until you review it in 3-6 months and figure out if it’s leading to paying clients overtime).
But why do I need a welcome sequence? Can’t I just keep DMing everyone forever?
Shortish answer: you need a welcome sequence if you want your potential client’s undivided attention, and the only place you can get that online is 1-1 in an inbox. Email marketing is like a never-ending trust fall. Every time you send out an email, you put a little more of yourself out there, and over time, this type of intimacy-building marketing tends to turn into sales.
Another shortish answer: look, yeah, I’m not going to do that pitch everyone does about how if you don’t have a mailing list, your dog will die, and Meta’s SWAT team will swing down from your living room ceiling, wearing hazmat suits, screaming at you to give up your Instagram credentials and spraying you down with pesticide.
I’m not writing this to convince you to do email marketing.
Your best marketing is going to happen on the channels you enjoy using.
With this in mind, please don’t read on if you’re going to cack yourself with anxiety thinking you need to set up your mailing list now.
There’s no point doing this unless you’re going to want to do it properly. (And I get enough shit emails to tell you not everyone should be doing email marketing) so genuinely, think this through.
And now, without further ado, here is my 5-email breakdown of what you can include in your email welcome sequence.
Email 1 | Welcome Email (send immediately)
Subject line idea: Did we just become best friends? / Let’s get started, Nadia/ Your new fave email is here / <drops bags> Hunny, I’m home!
Content: your welcome email gets a 4x higher open rate and 10x more clicks than any other email type you send. So you don’t want to f*ck this up, mmmkay?
I’ve done something RIDICULOUSLY generous for this first prompt, and I’ve written an example for you. I’m not doing this for the rest of the emails cos I’m not running an email-writing charity, and you do, unfortunately, need to pay me if you want emails this good.
Thank your subscriber for signing up for your emails: I’m super jazzed to be in your inbox right now. I know it’s a big deal handing over your email address, so I promise I’ll keep it safe, and I’ll try not to send you emails that make you go, OH MY GOD HERE WE GO AGAIN, ANOTHER FUCKING EMAIL, WHEN WILL THEY STOP?!
In fact, I keep a CSV file of my email list on a USB port I wear around my neck like a sexy little dog collar. So even if I fall into a large vat of chocolate at a chocolate factory (which, tbh, has only happened once), your details are safe with me.
Introduce them to who you are: I’m Nadia. I’m a copywriter and business strategist. In another life, I worked in Dubai with brands like Carrefour, Cartier, Priory, Dubai Design District, Meraas, and Privilee. I’ve been head of sales in a San Francisco-based SaaS startup, I’ve been a marketing and communications manager at a luxury membership company, and I’ve even run a co-working space in an art district.
Right. Now that I’ve done the LinkedIn bit, let’s never talk about that stuff again.
I just need you to know I’m kind of a big deal, and you can trust me with your digital marketing. In fact, I’m so clever I have to roll my huge brain around on a special little gold trolley cos it’s too big and heavy to keep inside my skull.
(For balance, a project manager once threw a whiteboard pen at me during a board meeting, and this other time, I lost a sale, and the head of sales lobbed his phone at my head.)
Brief intro to what you do/what you help them with: These days, I apply my big brand knowledge to small businesses and startups. My special skill is making website copy un-boring. My special-er skill is helping fix bad marketing and sales.
Let them know how often you plan to get in touch: you can expect me to land in your inbox once a week/once a month/whenever I muster an email’s worth of words.
And recap what you’ll talk about: I want you to have a gold trolley for your brain, too, so all my emails are designed to get you thinking smarter about your copy, marketing, and sales. If you take my advice, there’s no reason you can’t fix your small business without paying me oodles to do it for you. (But it’s cool if you want to pay me oodles one day too. I only need to make 76 more oodles to retire, so it’s all for a good cause.)
CTA time! Always give your sub summin’ to do even if you just want them to visit your website and check out your services: Now we’ve had fun in your inbox, let’s have fun on my website. Click here (link to your services page), and I’ll blow your mind with all the things you can make me do for you.
OR
Now you know all my secrets, the power imbalance is making me feel weird, so please hit reply and tell me what you do for a living.
Note that this is just a suggestion.
The idea is that your sub is MEGA digging you right now, so strike while the iron is hot and get them to engage with you ASAP. This could mean getting them to book a consultation call, offering an incentive to book a service, or even just asking them to follow you on social media!
Goal: first impressions are everything, daaaarling. You need to shine. Make sure your sub knows what they’re getting themselves into, and give them a little action to do cos you want to train them to ENGAGE from early on in the relationship.
Email 2 | Tell your origin story (2 days later)
Subject line: Why I do this/ Storytime!/ I bet you’re wondering how I got here/ Open for cringe pic of me
Content:
Think origin story. Think Peter Parker getting bitten by a radioactive spider. Think opening credits with a rousing Hans Zimmer soundtrack. It’s time to share the big story.
The thing that got you into doing what you do now.
And it doesn’t HAVE to be one of those tear-jerker LinkedIn stories about finding a dog on the street and feeding it half a burger, then going for an interview the next day and finding out the dog you helped is the CEO of the company you’re interviewing at, and he’s so impressed by your altruism he gives you the job.
The origin story I tell in my welcome sequence is a very modest tale about how I almost died of boredom fixing CVs for people in my local coffee shop. I decided to pivot because I’m terrified of boredom—doing boring work, reading boring words, and now I spend my days fighting boring marketing.
Hot tip: If you’re stuck with how to start your origin story, then find a picture of yourself from the time when you started your business, or just before.
Maybe you worked somewhere funny?
Maybe you were just miserable in a dead-end job.
Maybe it’s you on the front cover of TIMES magazine.
Whatever it is, a picture is a good way to kick things off when you’re stuck.
Remember, the origin story is not your life story. So please don’t trauma-dump on your subscriber. It’s weird. You’re only two emails into your relationship.
The origin story email is also the perfect time to explain your mission, your values, and why what you do is special (and so different from everything else out there). You can even weave in a testimonial if you’re feeling daring.
Goal: By sharing your brand story, you’re building on that budding connection you’ve got going on, and you’re embedding yourself in your subs' brains like one of those parasitic yeerks from Animorphs (if you get this niche reference, I want you to go back to my email and hit reply because you’re my best friend now).
CTA: Your subscriber is getting to know you, so why not ask a little about them too. Ask them to reply and tell you their weirdest job before they started doing what they do now.
Whatever you ask, do make sure it’s small.
A common mistake I see online is people asking their audience MASSIVE asks (and then being super surprised when no one takes them up on it).
You want to breadcrumb your requests and make them low effort.
Someone who doesn’t even know you isn’t going to sit and write you a 500-word response to your email (unless your mum is on your list). So try to make it easy for people to engage with you by keeping your questions easy to respond to.
Email 3 | Spotlight your top service (4 days later)
Subject line: worst coach ever/ bad designer ruined my life/are you still doing this?/Got website shame?
Content:
It’s finally time to sell your thing. You’ve warmed up your sub, so now they’re really digging you, it’s time to connect all the lovely brand stuff with what you actually sell.
This is your first ‘deep pitch,’ so describe your client’s problem in detail. Make it clear. You can use before-and-after photos, benefits, features, a testimonial, a case study, or a locket of your grandmother’s hair. Do whatever you need to do to make your services (or the service you’re most keen to sell) easy to understand and access through this email.
In my welcome sequence, my service-selling email is called ‘Nightmare on Homepage Street’. I use it to describe how terrifying it is to stare at a blank page and not know how to write or structure a homepage. This email consistently brings in fresh business because it clearly explains my ideal client’s problem. I also love doing Homepage Revamps (where I revamp homepage copy), so it’s a win-win.
My CTA is to book a consultation, because I want you to take a bigger step with me and think about talking to me about your business now. And that might happen if you feel like I GET your problem space and I speak to those frustrations with a clear solution.
The goal is to invite people to work with you, whether that’s getting them to take a first step and have a chat or, if it’s a low-cost service, straight-up asking them for the sale!
Most small business owners I talk to tell me they're scared to sell over email because they’re worried subs will be put off by the sales chat.
Newsflash: you’re running a business newsletter for your business. If people don’t like you selling business, respectfully, they need to GTFO and unsubscribe.
Email 4 | Teach ‘em something educational (6 days later)
Subject line: my best tip ever/ fix any email with this tip/ fix your website in 5 minutes/ my fave copy hack
Content:
Sending emails is a delicate balance of give and take. The privilege of being in someone’s inbox is always only 1 unsubscribe button away, so if you send a sales pitch one day, try to follow it up with a nice juicy carrot the next day.
Remember, this tip is going in your welcome sequence, so make this tip/trick/hack something timeless and special.
A good place to start is brainstorming the most frequent complaints/pain points clients share with you. Or let them in on the easiest, most effective fix you can make in the next 5 minutes.
Easy actions are super motivating, and you want your subscribers to feel successful, excited and a little bit giddy that they’ve been able to do something alone (with your helpful guidance).
This is more of that breadcrumbing stuff we were talking about.
If 1 tip is doable, they’ll be more likely to open the next email and the next email and keep trying your methods (and build a preference for the way you teach and do things).
Also, it makes you look hella smart, and we LOVE a thought leader.
Goal: show off your knowledge. Establish yourself as a bit of a smarty pants. Give them value. Keep your subscribers keen for more of your beans. You want to be known as the go-to for what you do. So showcase that knowledge proudly.
Email 5 | Wrap it up + keep ‘em keen (8 days later)
Subject line: That’s a wrap / you made it! / I’m sick of me, are you?/ No more emails for you (for now)
Content:
It’s the end of the road. Thank your sub for their time and attention, and let them know you’re done showering them with welcome emails.
Some people like to send gifts at this point in their journey (like a free download or WTV). I’m not this kind of person, but I’m also not against it. Especially if you’ve hinted that there’s a gift waiting at the end of the welcome sequence earlier in your other emails. Then, you’ve given the sub another incentive to open your emails. Win.
Now’s also a good time to remind them that moving forward, they can look forward to getting your daily/monthly/whatever-frequency emails.
At this point, I like to ask for feedback about my emails and I do this with a form, but you can simply ask them to reply to your email. Feedback is a great way to learn if your welcome sequence is hitting the mark with your subs.
Finally.
Chuck in one more CTA inviting them to stay inside your little world with you and connect on social media. If you want, ask them if they have any email topic suggestions for future mail!
Goal: the welcome sequence is all about bonding with your sub, so ensure you underscore how happy you are to have them along for this newsletter-sending ride.
4 bonus things ‘cos it’s already 12:15am and I might as well die writing this blog post.
1. Don’t use 5-10 CTAs at the bottom of each email. You’re giving me decision fatigue, and it makes me want to scream.
Focusing on just 1 problem, story, or idea can make emails easier to write. When you finish, neatly tie up your email with one call to action. Make it easy for people to make decisions.
2. Keep your formatting simple
Do not send people a solid wall of text. Let your sentences breathe. This is an email; it’s supposed to be quick, fun, and light.
3. Don’t copy people
What works for me won’t necessarily work for you. Similarly, my content goals are not necessarily your content goals. So before you try to emulate someone else’s style, just know that it probably won’t get you the same results because you don’t know the strategy behind that copy.
4. Have a strategy
Sometimes writing emails is difficult because you don’t know why the hell you’re even doing it. If that’s you, consider hiring someone like me to help you work through it with you.
Want my eyeballs on your welcome sequence?
I’m working on a 4-week email course where I’ll teach you everything you need to write the best sequence ever. You’ll get copywriting tips, email writing tips, and you can even share your emails with me for review.
Interested? Add your name to the waitlist below.
Are you destroying your small business with these 6 craptastic headlines?
When small business owners like you and me aren’t running around wearing giant foam animal heads, braying at the full moon and smearing our shit up the walls, we’re usually trying to come up with another excellent headline for a sales page…
When small business owners like you and me aren’t running around wearing giant foam animal heads, braying at the full moon and smearing our shit up the walls, we’re usually trying to come up with another excellent headline for a:
🤢 Sales page
🤢 Landing page
🤢 New service/product
<Insert other pain-in-the-ass headline jobs here>
So if you’re staring down a blinking cursor right now and wondering what to plonk in your ‘H1 header’, stick your fingers on ice for a second and read on, because I’m going to help you not sound like Marie Forloe, Amy Porterfield, Jenna Kutcher, or any of the other millionaire grifters pushing ✨MeGa KilLeR CoPyWrITiNg TeMpLAteS✨ online.
But before I walk you through the 6 (terrible) headlines I want to banish from the internet forever, I want to chuck a disclaimer on this situation real quick.
These 6 headlines suck not because they were always terrible. But because they’re now used SO frequently, the people who read our business copy online are immune to them. They are unmoved by them, indifferent to them, and do not click buttons or buy your things because of them.
The simple fact is:
Every single headline your audience reads needs to latch their attention like a Dyson sucking on a dirty rug. Every sentence they read thereafter must pull their eyes down the page with the same irresistible crumb-gobbling strength.
If you’re unsure what I mean, (or you’re keen to prove my point that most people only read headlines), here’s a scary statistic to scare you.
On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest.
As a copywriter, it’s my job to compel even the most reluctant readers to read, but it’s very hard to do that when, right now, it feels like most small business copy online has been written by the same 3 (terrible) copywriters. So I spend at least 67.5% of my client projects prying services and products out of car crash copy situations, and desperately pumping life back into them with my keyboard.
So this blog post is 1 part (aggressively) loving request to step away from nothingy headlines that kill sales (no one reading your copy = no sales), and 1 part helpful nudge towards helping you replace very boring, done-a-million-times-before headlines with better words and ideas that’ll catch attention and keep people reading.
Cool?
Let’s get into it.
1. Ready to change your life? (or any other massive ask which NO ONE is ‘ready’ to take)
Especially hate this type of question when it’s written above a button to buy a product or service because it sets the bar too damn high.
How sure are you that your service will actually change someone’s life?
If you’re a doctor about to perform open-heart surgery, then a changed life is an almost 100% guaranteed outcome for the person booking surgery.
But if you’re selling (any kind of) coaching, copy, wellness services, alternative therapy, or those smelly things filled with lavender you keep in your drawers so your undies smell nice, then be wary of massive statements that:
1️⃣ you can’t prove
2️⃣ you can’t deliver
3️⃣ will annoy me
The best remedy for this type of headline is to delete it and replace it with a question which reflects the actual result you can deliver. So if it isn’t a massive life change (it isn’t), then you could coax a click with a question like:
💥 Ready for copy that’ll 3x your click-through rate?
💥 Ready to stop using terrible clichés in your copy?
💥 Ready to stop asking people if they’re ready?
Tbh, just stop asking people if they’re ready and write copy that gets people ready to click without you having to ask if they’re ready because guess what, if they’re ready, they’re going to click. Wow. This was annoying to write. Let’s move on.
3. I’m just like you / I’ve been where you are / I was just like you
Yesterday, I saw ‘I was just like you’ emblazoned on a homepage under a picture of a perfectly made-up white woman sitting on the floor of her (long and expensive-looking) hallway with a wine glass in one hand. She was smiling like Princess Diana at that White House dinner where she danced with John Travolta.
John Travolata dancing with Princess Diana at the White House Dinner. Iconic.You know.
Regal-hidden-pain-style.
Princess Diana smiling despite being married to an absolute weasel. I gotta assume she thought this was what a breakdown looks like in the wider world?
A better photo probs would have been someone lying in bed with greasy hair, wearing crumpled, lightly sweaty pyjamas, watching their 4th True Crime documentary of the day.
But in general, it’s always tricky when we say things like ‘I was just like you’ because you haven’t got a clue who might land on your page.
Honestly.
What are the chances they’re just like you?
let me answer that for you.
Slim to none, mate.
If you want to highlight your potential client’s problem state or current challenge (the thing you solve for), then I beg you steer clear of super wanky, faux-empathetic statements.
Relating to a potential client’s challenge doesn’t have to be as literal as claiming to have the same life experience (because you probably don’t).
If your website is full of this stuff and you’re hurredly rushing to throw a tea towel of shame over your screen, then drop the towel and do this instead:
Offer a few old clients or potential new clients a coffee chat, and ask if they can spare 30 minutes to talk to you about their actual problems. Customer research is a super easy way to pick up on the challenges your copy needs to address because you’re taking the words straight from your intended audience’s collective mouth.
Here’s an example:
Say you’re a wellness coach and 4 out of 5 people you work with complain to you about stress-induced lack of sleep. This is fantastic (for your copy), because you now know you need to talk about stress and lack of sleep.
How could this turn up in your business? (Great question)
You could share a blog post or email about why a lack of sleep leads to poor well-being. You could host an online clinic where you talk about 5 foods that’ll help you sleep better. Or connect how what you do in your coaching sessions will facilitate better sleep and less stress over time.
You see what I mean?
You don’t have to struggle with the same problem your client has to be good at solving it.
All you have to do is show your audience (through your content) that you’re educated and experienced enough to provide the solution.
So a better headline might be:
😪 Let’s talk about all the ZZZ’s you’re missing
😪 Burnout: the hidden cost of sleepless nights
😪 You know what’s sexy? 8 hours of sleep (I’ll show you how to get ‘em)
4. What if I told you…
This old chestnut sets off every single alarm bell in my brain because it’s usually followed by a statement like ‘You can have it all’ or ‘You really CAN make £5,000 a month on Instagram’. And in all cases, it’s always a red flag for me because I KNOW the next section is going to be:
INTRODUCING MY 6 WEEK, 1-1 PROGRAMME: FUCK YOU, PAY ME. A SAFE SPACE FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT TO STOP PLAYING SMALL 💸🤑🛍️
A good rule of thumb when shopping for online services is that if it promises outrageous results, it’s usually referring to an exceptionally tiny sample of clients who have actually had consistent £5,000 months off the programme described.
It is very very difficult to replicate and achieve the type of results these people promise.
And I think that’s a crime.
If you’re dead set on using ‘what if I told you…’ then a good way to fix this offender is to pair it up with a statement that breaks with your reader’s expectations like:
⚡ What if I told you marketing your business really does suck?
⚡ What if I told you I only made £12 in June?
Ofc my fave way to deal with ‘what if i told you…’ is to delete it, but that’s neither here nor there.
5. I’m so glad you’re here
This is the most disingenuous statement you can put on a website because no one says I’m so glad you’re here in real life unless you’re waving down a passing police officer ‘cos you’ve just seen someone getting mugged at the bus stop, or you're reading this blog post 500 years ago when 'glad' was still a popular and widely used word.
If being glad is something you’re known for, by all means, rock it.
But if it isn’t something you’d ordinarily say, I’d give it a miss. Also, it’s piss poor headline copy, and no one is hanging out and reading past this statement.
This is a good (bad) example of this copy in the wild. It’s a homepage banner with the words ‘Welcome! I’m so glad you’re here’ emblazoned in purple next to a relaxed white woman walking down an empty sandy beach wearing a teal cardigan and blue jeans. We don’t know where ‘here’ is or why we’ve made this person glad, but if I see this on any website, I’m bouncing immediately. 6. Subscribe to my newsletter
Mmmm no. I’d rather eat a dirty nappy.
If your newsletter invitation is still the default ‘subscribe to my newsletter’ copy then you don’t deserve people on your mailing list.
Here’s looking at you, Lego.com:
HOW is this the newsletter copy on the actual Lego.com website?! 🤣 Respectfully, their Head of Marketing needs to fire themselves. NO ONE is filling out this form with the promise of getting "Digital Marketing Emails". Embarassing. ⬆️ This is the kind of lazy copy I combat daily.
Got a newsletter? Give me a damn good reason to give you details.
Earn my email address.
Want a good newsletter form?
Do you know how I know it’s good?
An actual paying client plagiarised it off me almost verbatim.
When I confronted them and asked them to change it, they acted utterly baffled, stopped replying and unfollowed me (all signs of innocence ofc).
Here are 2 other examples of cool newsletter copy:
I found this lead magnet gem on marketingexamples.com (one of my fave places on the internet).The cool thing about this is they’ve highlighted a MAJOR pain point for plant parents, and they’ve offered a valuable bit of content to solve it. 
Oh look, it’s copy I wrote for my client The Future Kind Collective, a company culture consultancy. The good thing about this headline is it speaks to 1 of their key client demographics (people who work in management) and explains in the copy underneath the name of the newsletter what you can expect to get and why it’s valuable to running your startup. When your headlines ain’t headlining, ask for help
If you’re feeling quite sensitive after reading this, then please allow me gently kiss you on the forehead and tell you we can fix this.
It’s what I do, It’s what I live for.
And if you’ve been following me for a while then you’ll have heard me say this 100,032 times before, but as with all the advice I share, the key is CONTEXT.
So if you’ve written an excellent sales page or social post where 1 of the above headlines is making you an absolute killing, then good for you.
But as a copywriter, it’s my job to stand on my lecturn and shake my fist at poorly communicated brand messaging, and I’d rather not leave you alone with all these bargain bucket headlines.
I want to elevate you, and everything you do, ya know?
Read this far and think you need a little headline help?
You can email me at nadia@imnadiaamer.com with the subject line PLEASE HELP ME, and I’ll get back to you. My Calendly is currently unavailable because I simply don’t have enough childcare to have an open calendar, so I’m only taking on clients privately until the end of 2024.
Do you need a website for your small business? 8 reasons why the answer is ‘HELL YES’
When I (aggressively) encourage small businesses to have websites, I’m advocating for freedom from your social media in more ways than one (keep reading for more freedom from the scroll), one of those ways happens to be disconnecting your dependence on your social account as the one-and-only source for your sales.
Picture this: you’re a small business owner and you close all your clients in your DMs on social media. Your sales process is a million variations of the below conversation.
The really cute bit here is how you don’t have a succinct description for your service offering, so you always have to type out the bits you remember/have saved in your phone notes. 10/10 for efficiency.Sometimes you close in 5-minutes, sometimes you close in 5-weeks…
And in the meantime, you’re still chatting to your prospect (because you post all this great content all the time, and they keep replying and telling you how funny/awesome/smart/brilliant you are).
Your sales chat scrolls away on a chatty breeze that’s too damn delightful to ignore.
Off it rolls into conversation heaven, never to be reread.
Buh-bye chat, and buh-bye priceless opportunity to coax your potential client away from their distracting social media and pull them into your special small business world, where everything is all about you-you-you and what you do.
Gee, if only you had a place. A dedicated spot, where like, all your service offerings live? And like, anytime anyone wants to know about what you do, or make a booking with you, you send them a quick link with all the information? Oh, and there's a button with payment integration or some shit like that?? LOL??!! 🤣
Read on if you relate to my client below, and you’re not sure why you need a business website because “you’ve never got any biz from having it there.”
This post is a follow up to an Instagram story I shared about a wonderful small business owner I’m working with on a homepage revamp for her coaching business.1️⃣ You don’t ‘own’ your social media accounts
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok whatever your social media poison, these third-party platforms are tools that amplify your small business presence, but the accounts you build on them are not guaranteed assets you can count on.
Let me explain.
Instagram can delete or disable your profile anytime they want to. I’m not trying to scare you. It’s just facts. If you build up a following of 100,000 and tomorrow your social media platform of choice accidentally wipes your account, that effort is gone.
When I (aggressively) encourage small businesses to have websites, I’m advocating for freedom from your social media in more ways than one (keep reading for more freedom from the scroll), one of those ways happens to be disconnecting your dependence on your social account as the one-and-only source for your sales.
Having a website that explains who you are, what you do, who you do it for, and how people can work with you is a weight off your social media that will pay off forever, because (unless Armageddon happens) your website will always be there for you. Promoting what you do.
Do you actually trust this face tho?2️⃣ 84% of consumers think a website makes a business more credible than a business that only has a social media profile
Credibility. It’s a thing.
Any Tom, Deborah or Hafizah can set up a social page and claim they’re a lifestyle coach or a decluttering specialist, or a 6-figure sales coach. It’s not hard to mock-up a lifestyle, we see it all the time in those well-researched Daily Mail stories where Kardashians have photoshopped their bums on their holibobs, and we hate it, don’t we?
How dare they lie to us like that.
Those lies usually start on social media, and they start there because it’s so easy to manipulate the truth of a photo or tell a massive porky in a post.
When you’re a small business, your credibility is one of the most important marketing tools in your business building kit. There’s no room for doubt in your profit margin, so don’t create fertile ground to sew the stuff. Anyone can peddle professionalism on social media. Hell, we’ve all been taken in by a guru or two!
If your social media is the club promoter on the street, then your business website is the nightclub.
Your club promotor reinforces the club mission, qualifies the clubbers who’ll pay for their table at the end of the night, and only sells tickets to cool cats. Your website delivers the promise that your social media propounds. Your website is all the things you said you were. Your website is the original source. It’s where you pitch the goods and make sales. It’s where you confirm to your ideal client that you, my friend, are The Business.
3️⃣ Your website is a forever shop window, clearly displaying all your gear
For a tenner a month, you can buy your small business a shop window that the whole world can access and browse.
A website is the only place you can clearly display what you do, your services, and who you work with. It doesn’t matter how good your social media feed is, and it doesn’t matter how frequently you share; no one is scrolling back 3-weeks to read your last sales related post. So unless you’re relentlessly selling your services on your social media (or have a massive media budget for ads), there’s always a chance you’re missing passing traffic.
A business website means always having a clear reference point for your service offerings, and this is particularly important for small business owners who frequently produce sh*t tons of valuable content marketing but (just as frequently) risk burying their 1:1 services/courses/webinars/events in the mix because they aren’t always creating sales material that clearly signposts potential customers towards purchase decisions.
(Hello, sales pages).
4️⃣ Money pouring into your bank account while you’re asleep
If I had a pound for every single time a small business owner told me they wanted to generate passive income, I’d be at least 332 quid richer.
Apart from hosting your sales pages, your business website can host a little shop where keen beans who love what you do can buy your courses, ebooks, meditation recordings, sassy merchandise, and anything else you fancy flogging.
The best bit? Minimum real-time effort for you, maximum effort from your website. All you have to do is connect your site to a payment gateway and watch the money roll in.
I’m not going to go into the intricacies of creating passive income right now, but I promise I’ll do it one day.
5️⃣ 24/7 employee, and you won’t get arrested for slave labour
You can’t hang out with your ideal clients 24 hours a day, but you know who can? Your business website. Similarly, you can’t hang out on social media drumming up interest forever. Your website CAN.
Running a small business is exhausting enough as it is. But, you don’t need to hire a VA or a PA or the CIA to know that you need all the help you can get when you’re starting on your business building adventure.
Your website is the best employee you’ll ever hire. It will never complain about having to work weekends. It loves the night shift (that’s when most of your customers are scrolling for you), and it never asks for holidays.
Amazing.
*GIRL = WEBSITE 6️⃣ You can make your audience paaaart of your wooooorrrld
Look at this trove. Treasures untold. How many wonders can one website hold?
Great question, Ariel.
A question you’ll never get to answer if you keep insisting that your audience only hang out with you on Instagram.
Every time you post on social media, you get a tiny micro-opportunity to connect with your ideal client. What you don’t get is lots of quality time. That stuff? That happens on your website when they fill out your newsletter form and get on your juicy mailing list. That dreamy Little-Mermaid swirly-cavern-exploration experience happens when they’re on your website, downloading your lead magnet and discovering that you’re amazingly talented, supremely helpful and definitely the right service provider for them.
Remember, your audience's attention span is NOT guaranteed on social media, and it certainly isn’t all yours. On Instagram alone, you’ve got to share that attention with over 25 million other business profiles worldwide!
7️⃣ The full brand experience
Your website is the most ‘you’ part of your business, from the buttons to the hero banners to the submission message copy. Your website visually reinforces your brand identify, confirms your identity and positioning through the copy, and helps people get familiar with the look and feel that is YOU.
And no, your social media templates are not a brand identity. They are only one part of your toolkit. Your website needs to echo that social space. Not only does it make you look professional AF, but it also makes you look a lot more credible and put together, and who doesn’t want that for their business? Amirite?
8️⃣ SEO - supersize your presence and boost your biz traffic
Search engines like Google are the school prefects of the internet. They stalk the halls looking for Ronnie Rule Breakers and Lazy Lucy types that don’t explain themselves properly online.
This looks like:
> making sure Google gets who you are and what you do
> ensuring you’re a credible source of whatever it is you do/provide
> scanning your content for structure, intent, quality, ease of use (mobile-friendly), load speed, keywords etc.
There are over 200 SEO ranking factors that search engines use, and I’m not going to go into them all here. Still, I see so many small business owners carelessly sh*t all over basic SEO because they don’t think they need to consider it.
Well, what if I told you that a good ranking could result in more organic traffic to your site and more clients? Would you be interested then?
Thought so.
Final Thought
We all like a deep and meaningful in the DMs. Hell, I love them. But constantly chatting to prospects is not a sales strategy. It’s a sales tactic.
The best small businesses know how to unite strategy + tactics to create $$$ results.
Being tactical alone is not a plan. It’s exhausting, and if you’re like me, then you’re probably a one-person band who doesn’t have the time or energy to constantly ‘BE’ a business.
A business website will decrease the mental load and free you up to be a better person outside of your business (and that’s where we all really want to be, right? Outside. Doing life. Having fun. Eating shawarma.)
Want me to apply all the above to your small business website? Don’t have a website yet? Need a loving nudge?
My most popular wordy service is the Homepage Revamp. Starting at £1,900, I’ll caress your online space and set you up for a first impression that makes your people wanna press all your buttons.
You can start your website adventure by pressing this one 👇👇👇