The days of counting solely on a well designed website to generate marketing ROI for a business are coming to an end. In 2006, CNN.com announced that the Web reached a new milestone: 100 million sites. To contrast that, from January to April of 2009, the number of sites on the internet increased by 46 million. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the Web is a crowded place. So how do you stand out in the midst of the noise? Here are 4 ways to drive customers to your site and keep them coming back.
Drive Qualified Traffic to Your Site
Traditional marketing vehicles (newsprint, magazines, and stand-alone print pieces) a all becoming a thing of the past. These marketing methods are expensive and, in our rapidly changing age, print often can’t keep up. While there may be some value in print, don’t rely on it and ALWAYS feature your Web address prominently.
Internet marketing, on the other hand, is highly targeted, includes metrics and conversion tracking, provides low entry cost, allows for unmatched reach, and if done properly, can be individualized and interactive. Internet marketing and advertising includes everything from a properly built and optimized site to email marketing, online PR, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and social media.
Take Advantage of FREE!
Internet advertising can be a relatively inexpensive but don’t underestimate the benefit of utilizing free resources. Take PPC advertising for example. The click to impression ratio is often around 1%. So, for every 100 impressions of your ad on a site like Google, one person might click on it. If you’re like most people, we’ve trained ourselves to ignore the paid listings and instead focus on the organic listings. These listings should be your #1 priority! There is no magic to getting better organic listings on a search engine (each search provider is a bit different) but there are some proven techniques that will help.
Start by learning how your customers are searching for your product. Google Trends and your website analytics account are good places to start. You need to understand the key words they’re using and what topics they’re interested in. Keep those keywords in mind as you write your content and create custom pages for the major topics related to your business. Include links within your content to other relevant pages on your site and get links to your pages from outside sources whenever possible.
Value Added Web Sites
Once you have a customer on your site, how do you keep them there? A good place to start is by giving them what they’re looking for. Organize your site so that it’s easy for a customer to locate products or learn about your services. Use headlines and organize your content so that it’s a pleasure to read. Nothing drives a customer away faster than dense, hard to read, copy.
Keep your customers coming back by adding value to their experience. If you’re an expert in your field, blog about topics of interest to your customers/clients. Include a newsletter sign-up option and send out periodic informational newsletters to drive traffic back to your site.
Engage Your Customers
Don’t underestimate the value and power of social media. Once the realm of teenagers, social media sites have seen dramatic growth in older age groups. In the past few months alone, users of Twitter older than 25 have grown by 84%. On Facebook, users older than 25 make up more than 60% of all users. Additionally, data from Nielsen Online shows that social networks are visited by 67% of the global online population and time spent on these networks is growing at 3 times the overall internet rate, accounting for almost 10% of all internet time (PDF, Nielsen Online, March).
All of this being said, there are a lot of your loyal and potential customers/clients using social media. The power of social media lies in its ability to provide a platform for a business to listen to and engage with customers. These customers can then influence their sphere of friends to learn more about your business. To put it simply, when done right, social media can be word-of-mouth on steroids. Check out “When to be Social” to learn more about how to effectively leverage social media as a business. Link to your social media pages from your website and provide links back for customers who find you through sites like Facebook or Twitter.
In all of your marketing endeavors, don’t forget that your website is the key that ties all of your marketing efforts together!
