Let's say you have the best website in the world. Great! Now what? The truth is that a website by itself doesn't offer much value. If you aren't doing anything specific to try and get people there, no one is going to see it. Here are 7 ways to drive website traffic and sales leads:
Table of Contents
- Integrate with 'Traditional' Marketing Campaigns
- Use Social Media
- Leverage Email Marketing
- Optimize for Search Engines
- Co-Market and Collaborate
- Pay to Play with Paid Advertising
- Align Sales and Marketing
1. Integrate with 'Traditional' Marketing Campaigns
Yes, I'm an inbound marketer talking about using traditional marketing methods. For example, if you're going to do a TV ad, radio commercial, or direct mail campaign, make sure the focus of the marketing piece is to drive people to a landing page on your site.
Tip: Use a unique URL for the landing page so you can track the number of leads generated from a particular traditional marketing campaign.
2. Use Social Media
Everyone talks about using social media, but what the heck does that even mean? Many companies "do social media," but they rarely put anything out there that links back to their site. It might be good for brand awareness, but it's not good for driving website traffic!
The most important thing to know about using social media is that you need to consistently publish good content. Here's how it works (I'm doing it right now!): write a blog post, publish it on your website, and then post it on your social media profiles like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If it's a good article, people will click the link from social media and go to your website.
Here's the kicker though - you have to have people connected to you on social media for this to work. If you have a LinkedIn profile with barely any connections or a Facebook account with no followers, very few people will see your post, and that means very few website visitors!
Tip: Get connected with your customers, prospects, and target audience on social media right away!
3. Leverage Email Marketing
Compile a list of current customers, past customers, and prospects and email them your awesome content.
The key here is AWESOME CONTENT! If you email dull, irrelevant information, you'll burn a lot of bridges. Not only that, if you have a disorganized, "dirty" contact list (meaning you have a lot of bad email addresses, contacts from purchased lists, or people who aren't your target audience), you could be marked as SPAM, which is really bad.
When done correctly though, email marketing can be a very powerful tool for generating website visitors and leads.
Tip: Take the time to clean up your contact data and put processes and systems in place to make sure it stays clean. Bad data = bad email marketing.
4. Get Traffic From Search Engines
Everyone wants to know how to rank higher on Google. All search engines look for sites with quality, relevant content because it improves the search experience and makes them look good when their users can quickly and easily get the information they want.
It all comes down to the content you're creating and how much your readers like it. Companies that put in the hard work to align their content with the buyer's journey, have a solid keyword strategy and ensure pristine on-page SEO are building a solid foundation for increasing their site's authority, meaning it's a source of trusted information.
Good content is just the start though. People have to read it, like it, share it, comment on it, and link to it. It's a long game, not a short game strategy. That is how you build site authority and get more traffic from search engines.
Tip: Gather your sales and marketing teams and review your keyword and content strategy. Where are the gaps?
5. Co-Market and Collaborate
Co-marketing means marketing together: collaborating with another company that shares your target audience but doesn't compete with you directly. For example, if you sell masonry work, you could co-market with a landscape company.
Strategies for co-marketing include things like guest blogging on each other's blog, emailing each other's content to your respective lists, or doing a joint event like a webinar or seminar. The benefit of co-marketing is that you're quickly getting in front of a new audience and expanding your reach.
Tip: Make an effort to spend time developing relationships with potential partners. Your centers of influence can be instrumental in driving traffic and sales.
6. Pay to Play with Paid Advertising
Well, you can always pay to get people to come to your website. It's a good strategy if you have a new page and you want to get eyeballs on it quickly.
Paid advertising can be tricky, though. You can end up spending a lot on website traffic that doesn't add value to your customer acquisition. Having a highly targeted audience and relevant, high-value content is the winning combination. That is ALWAYS the winning combination!
Tip: Be clear about the expected outcomes, and be prepared to continuously test various approaches until you find the winning message.
7. Align Sales and Marketing
Sellers can - and should - use digital content in their one-to-one sales outreach to help educate buyers and reinforce their positioning. Who's more important to be on your website checking out articles and information than your target prospects and customers?
And marketers can - and should - communicate with sellers about how website users are interacting with the digital content. Sellers can create one-to-one sales messaging based on high-traffic and high-converting pages to drive even more website traffic.
Tip: When sales and marketing teams align well, they achieve greater profitability and better annual revenue growth. Create a sound sales and marketing alignment framework and culture.
The Takeaway
The key to driving website traffic and sales leads stems from developing your current business network (your Rolodex), being connected with them online, creating relevant and engaging content, and promoting and sharing it in a variety of ways.
But don't stop there: the next step is to make sure that when someone gets to your site, you create a superior user experience to keep them engaged and interested - otherwise, you'll lose them.
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