Is it even worth sending traffic to your site?
Last month I wrote about how smart businesses are generating thousands of qualified leads through paid placement on search engines.
Now people ask me all of the time how to get more traffic to their site, how much does it cost, and how do I start? And even though the answers can be quite simple, I am loath to tell because in many cases it is a waste of time and money! For most sites, getting more traffic won’t help at all.
The fact is that there are many ways to generate qualified, targeted traffic to your site but there is a more important question you should be asking first:
What do you expect your visitors to do once you get them there?
- Do you expect them to be blown away by your beautiful design and call you up? (It doesn’t happen)
- Do you expect people to read all about your corporate history and be so charmed that they drive right over to meet you? (Very unlikely)
- Do you expect people to bookmark your site and come back when they have a more immediate need? (Research suggests that less than 1% of visitors ever click on their bookmarks)
These questions may sound silly, but that is the strategy for most web sites. Is it worth spending 50 cents – or several dollars to get a qualified visitor to your site and *hope* that one of the above scenarios comes true?
What your site should be doing:
The visitors to your site are coming there to get information to solve a problem. Your site should be offering a solution to that problem.
Now, imagine if you could find a way to give them that information so that it helps you achieve your goals!
What if your visitors engaged in a relationship with your site? They asked for more information, and your site gave it to them. Imagine that you followed up with each and every one of them to educate them and inform them of how you can help solve their problems. Imagine that when they called you, they were already pre-sold. Imagine if when people called you, they were ready to buy!
If your site did all this how would it make a difference to your life? Wouldn’t your job of selling new customers be easier? How much traffic would you want once you know how it translates into solid leads?
When a web site is crafted properly this is exactly what happens. The first step is to have very clear goals for your site.
Get people to give you permission to contact them again.
The web is a direct response medium. It’s interactive. Yet if your site is like most, it is just a bunch of static information. Here are a few ways to get people interacting on your site and moving in the right direction:
- Offer premium information, like “5 things you must know before buying ____”. In B2B applications, whitepapers or reports on an industry trend work well. You can download ours, entitled “Effective Business to Business Lead Generation”
- Create a contest where you do a regular draw for something of high perceived value to your target market (but low cost to you)
- A really good newsletter. Not just lip service to one. I mean a real newsletter with a catchy name, and X, Y and Z benefits that you can only get by subscribing now. Start thinking like a publisher.
Of course this is the tip of the iceberg. On some of our sites we employ 5 and often more methods of engaging our visitor and capturing permission to contact them again. We find that no one way appeals to everyone, but a variety of methods will generate the highest conversion numbers.
What to do with that permission will be the topic of the next newsletter
