ultimate guide to squarespace's built in marketing tools and features

Marketing tools and features built directly into Squarespace platform

Having a pretty website is great. We all want a site that looks good, has lovely photos and images, a seamless design and cohesive branding. This presents our business or brand professionally online and helps connect with an online audience and potential clients/customers.

But have you ever stopped to think about how your website works from a marketing perspective?

Marketing is essential if you want to grow your website, get more traffic, and build up your business online.

It’s not enough to get people onto your website and wow them with gorgeous aesthetics - instead, we need to think about how our website can do more : it needs to look good AND convert & drive business.

As a web designer/developer, I’m a HUGE fan of Squarespace for many reasons but I particularly appreciate how they have given so much thought into the marketing and digital strategy side of their platform. When I build custom Squarespace websites for my clients, I often step in and make sure that their design incorporates marketing and business strategies because I want their websites to actually convert and drive business. Web design is about so much more than just aesthetics and a good website things about form AND function. It helps establish and develop a brand but it also works to convert site visitors to clients/customers. Marketing is integral if you want to grow your website and reach your business goals, connect with a wider audience and set your brand apart in a competitive (and often saturated) online space.

There are so many marketing features and tools that are built in directly to the Squarespace platform and I want to talk about those in this blog post today. In most cases, all you have to do is enable a setting or activate a feature. It couldn’t be easier!

I hope that you use this list as a checklist or reference point of sorts, and apply these marketing features to your own Squarespace website. If you include these marketing tools and features on your own Squarespace website, you are leveraging opportunities to grow your website, increase traffic and drive more business - for free! Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

In no particular order of importance, let’s take a look.

1. Promotional popups

I am a huge fan of Squarespace’s built in promotional popups and I strongly encourage all my clients to use them because the numbers don’t lie, they convert so dang well!

If you haven’t already, check out my two blog posts and video tutorials about Squarespace popups:

Promotional popups are often used to collect email newsletter or mailing list sign ups.

For example, you might offer a freebie in exchange for email opt-in. You can see this in action on my own website where I use the popup to promote my (super popular and awesome) Squarespace SEO Checklist. This has helped me to collect thousands of email addresses in exchange for this valuable freebie. See screenshot below:

But that’s not the only way you can use Squarespace’s promotional popup! It’s also great for sharing news and updates, announcements, special offers, sales, promotional or discount codes, and a whole lot more!

In my professional opinion, every website should make use of the promotional popup feature because it is such a powerful marketing tool. You can play around with different offerings or calls-to-action (CTAs) depending on what your brand/business goals are, so have fun with it!

2. Announcement bar

The announcement bar is another marketing tool that I love to include on all my client websites. As a marketing feature, the announcement bar packs a lot of punch into a small space because it sits at the top of all website pages, above the navigation or main menu. Talk about prime real estate and maximum visibility on the website!

If you haven’t already, check out my posts and video tutorials about Squarespace’s announcement bar:

To get the announcement bar up and running on your own website, all you have to do is enable the setting then customize the design. From here you can play around with different CTAs but since you’re working with a character limit, keep it short & sweet and to the point.

For example, at the time of writing this post, I’m using the announcement bar to let visitors know that my Squarespace SEO for Affiliate Marketing Masterclass is now live. See screenshot below.

In the example above using my own website, site visitors click the link in the announcement bar and are taken to the Masterclass sales page where they can learn more about the product and purchase it. Through analytics, I can see that the announcement bar sends quite a bit of traffic to that page, which helps convert visitors into customers :)

I also recommend that you mix up your announcements as your offerings change (e.g., promote a sale, offer a discount code, share an announcement, etc.) and link to different content on your website as you see fit. Whether you’re using the announcement to share your latest blog post, book out your services, or launch a new product, there are infinite ways the announcement bar can support your website’s marketing efforts!

3. Grow your email list

I’m a firm believer that every website should have an email list because email marketing is such a powerful way to stay in touch with your audience (many of whom represent current or future clients/customers) and grow your business.

Squarespace makes it super easy to grow your email list and really tap into email marketing, which is something I appreciate enormously!

There are a few ways to go about this but let’s start with the simplest option: using the newsletter block.

This is possibly the fastest way to start collecting emails for your mailing list or newsletter because all you have to do is insert the newsletter block onto any page or post and you’re ready to go.

Within the newsletter block, there are several options. First of all, you can begin with Squarespace’s Email Campaigns which is a feature that is available on every site. With Squarespace Email Campaigns you can:

Create email campaigns that match your site's branding.
Track clicks and unsubscribes.
Send automatic emails when visitors subscribe to your newsletter.

So good, right?

Squarespace also has an integration with Mailchimp with is another great option that you can use within the Newsletter block. I have set many of my clients up with this option in the past but whichever way you go, you can’t really go wrong. The main point I want to drive home is you need to start an email list from your website…. like, asap… and this is probably the fastest and easiest way to do it.

Alternatively, you could always insert email opt-in forms of another email service provider (like MailerLite, Convertkit, Infusionsoft, etc.) using the code block, but this is a bit more advanced.

4. Blogging

Don’t @ me, every website needs a blog - yours included.

Blogging is one of the best marketing tools available because you can create valuable content that speaks directly to your ideal audience. You can use your blog as a way to promote or sell your products, services, offerings, etc. Blogging is also fantastic for search engine optimization (SEO), which is essential if you want to get more traffic to your website.

If you haven’t already, take a look at my top posts & video tutorials about blogging with Squarespace:

Blogging goes hand in hand with marketing your brand/business/website for so many reasons, not just because it’s good for SEO. Blogging is also a great way to connect your readers to your brand, establish yourself as a leader and/or authority in your industry or niche, and you can use blogging as a way to develop and strengthen your relationship with new and existing audiences & customers.

When it comes to blogging, you can have a standalone blog (i.e., link to the Blog in your main navigation menu) but you can also get creative and insert your blog feed into pages on your website. I do this on my website’s home page, which you can see in the screenshot below:

I spend a lot of time creating valuable blog posts and video tutorials for my audience and I know that my content marketing efforts pay off, so I definitely want to highlight them on my website’s home page.

If you are on the fence about blogging, HOP OFF and start one today! You’ll thank me later, trust :)

5. Connect social media accounts

If your website is your brand/business' home online, a great way to think of social media is as if it's the garage attached to the house.

Websites and social media channels should work together seamlessly to promote and support your business online. Social media is a great way to circle traffic back to your website and control the message you communicate to your audience. It also lets your audience connect with your business on the platform that makes the most sense to them. Some people who prefer to consume information visually might prefer Instagram or Youtube, whereas a customer with a question might turn to Facebook or Twitter.

Connecting your business' social media accounts to your website is a no-brainer but I'm surprised by how often I see businesses skip this step or do it incorrectly.

If you haven’t already, check out this post & video tutorial about connecting social media accounts to your Squarespace website:

How to connect social media accounts to your Squarespace website

After you’ve connected your social media accounts to your site, there are best practices you can follow that will keep your website looking good and user-friendly.

First of all, make sure the icons for each connected account displays in a visible position on your site. you also don’t want to go overboard and connect sovial media accounts willy-nilly. For most businesses and brands this isn’t a huge concern but it can be a grey zone for anyone with a personal blog. Rule of thumb is to connect a social media account if it’s related to or supports your website, but don’t bother if you’re using a platform for personal use. Not always great to mix “business” and pleasure, ya know? Finally, be carefully about automatically pushing content from your website to social media OR pulling social media content to display on your site.

6. Adding social icons

If you followed the instructions above in point #5 about connecting social media accounts to your Squarespace website, the next thing to do is display those social icons.

When you add the social icons to your Squarespace website, you’re linking visitors directly to your social media profiles & accounts. This is great because it helps them find you wherever you maintain a presence on the web and they can connect with you on the platform that works best for them.

Icons include logos for many common platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and Twitter.

For example, I have included social icons in the footer section of my website (see screenshot below):

Here’s how you can add social icons to your Squarespace website. If you’re going to connect your social media accounts, you might as well show site visitors where they can follow you and social icons make it super easy! I love that you can insert the social icons in several different places around your website, really control the placement so that it fits in well with your design and synchs with user experience.

7. Display Instagram feed

Another Squarespace & social media marketing tactic for you!

A very popular marketing strategy is to display your Instagram feed somewhere on your Squarespace website, on a page or in a blog post.

If you haven’t already, check out my blog post & video tutorial about displaying Instagram feeds:

How to add an Instagram feed to a Squarespace website

The most popular place to display an Instagram feed is in the footer of a website but there are loads of different spots that you can add it, it just depends on what look and feel you’re going for! You can see this in action on the Create & Cultivate website, see screenshot below:

Adding an Instagram feed to your Squarespace website is a great way to add visual content and get creative with what you are including on your site! You can add the Instagram block to just about any web page or blog post you'd like, and they can be reformatted differently each time to suit your needs.

I love that it’s a hands off marketing strategy too. Once you’ve added the Instagram feed to your site, Squarespace automatically pulls the recent or relevant content so you don’t have to do anything else to get the images to show up.

8. Social sharing

Social sharing is a really effective way to push content from your site to different platforms. If you give people an easy and obvious way to share your content on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc., odds are they will actually do it!

If you haven’t already, check out these posts & video tutorials about social sharing with Squarespace:

One of the best ways to grow your website is by encouraging your audience and visitors to your website to share your content on social media. Not only does this place your content in front of more people, it also helps drive more traffic back to your website. Most people think of social Share buttons as a regular feature of blog posts and product items (which they are), but did you know they're also great to add to Events and Album pages? Shoutout to free marketing in multiple places!

Here’s an example of social sharing buttons at the bottom of blog posts on my own website:

If you don't have social Share buttons up and running on your website yet, try it out and see what happens. These little buttons can have a big impact and help your website grow faster than before.

9. Podcasting

You probably already know that visual content is a super part of any website and brands/businesses are increasingly integrating video content to the pages and posts of their websites (shoutout to Youtube videos!)

But did you know that audio content can be equally valuable for marketing?

Squarespace understands the importance of audio as part of the evolving online marketing strategy, and I love that they make it super easy to integrate podcasting onto any website.

Here’s a great overview of how podcasting works with Squarespace. You can also set up a blog to host your podcast on Squarespace , which is just awesome because it’s all easy to host and integrate directly onto your site.

I don’t have a podcast so admittedly I haven’t actually tried this out myself but if I did, you KNOW I’d be all over this

10. SEO

Ahhhh…. Squarespace SEO 😍

In case you haven’t heard, I’m a Squarespace SEO expert and this is really my niche so I could talk about it til the sun goes down haha :)

One of the best things you can do for marketing is to master SEO and lucky for you, Squarespace wants to make this as easy and effective as possible! They WANT to see your website reach the top of the rankings and they provide you with so many tools and resources to get there!

Remember that SEO is an art, not a science. There’s so much to learn about Squarespace SEO which is why I have written about it a lot - it’s the most popular topic on my blog by far. Check out my Squarespace SEO page for more resources, blog posts & video tutorials and get your copy of my Squarespace SEO Checklist below for free!

SQUARESPACE SEO SERIES

This article is part of my series on Squarespace SEO. I have so many tips to share on the subject that it would have been crazy to put it all in one article! There are many misconceptions about Squarespace SEO which is why I've dedicate so many posts to this topic. Enjoy!

Click to view all posts in the Squarespace SEO Series

Visit my Squarespace SEO page for lots more resources.

^ My Squarespace SEO Checklist (above) has already helped thousands of people so be sure to grab your free copy :)

If you only did one thing to improve the SEO of your Squarespace website, please add site and page descriptions. From here, you can make sure that the images on your website are named and formatted correctly so that they have a better chance of showing up in Google or Google Image Search Results.

I am a huge believe in the power of keywords so if you don’t know what keywords are and how they relate to Squarespace SEO, check out my blog post & video tutorial here. If you really want to master Squarespace SEO, avoid keyword stuffing like the plague.

If you want more SEO goodness, be sure to check out my Squarespace SEO page for all resources on the topic.

You can also sign up for my newsletter (right here or below), where I often share Squarespace SEO tips, tricks and high-quality exclusive content. I send out emails to my list every week and while I don’t talk about SEO every time, I can guarantee that you’ll still find the newsletter topics interesting, entertaining and worth your time.

Finally, shameless plug : hit me up with any specific questions you have about Squarespace SEO and your website because I’m your girl. You can reach out to me directly if you’re interested in working together on your website and we can talk about whether or not you would be a good fit for my consulting and ongoing services. I can’t take on every request to do SEO consulting but I do pick a few websites and businesses to work with every month and I’d love for you to be one of them.

Final Thoughts

When it comes to marketing and getting more eyes on your Squarespace website, there are so many features and tools you can take advantage of - best of all, most of them are built directly into the Squarespace platform!

Work your way down this list and try out these different marketing tactics on your own Squarespace website. I know you’ll see great results in no time!

Websites are obviously lots of fun to build and maintain, but there’s a whole lot more to them than that! Websites can be a fantastic tool to grow your business, reach a wider audience of potential clients/customers, increase brand awareness and set yourself apart as a leader in your industry or niche. Marketing will help you get there faster so be sure to take advantage of all these features on your Squarespace website!

Now it’s your turn to tell me, how do you market your Squarespace website? Do you already have any of these features or tools up and running on your site? Are there any that you’re going to try out after reading this post? Any surprises on this list? I’d love to know so leave me a note in the comments below!