Conversion101, Part 3: Drive prospective customers to your site

OK, so you now have an amazing website that does a pretty good job of giving customers what they need and is converting reasonably well. What’s next? You need to drive as many prospects to your site as possible.

Notice I used the term ‘prospect’, not ‘visitor’. Online advertisers love to tell you about the number of ‘eyeballs’ on their site and the amount of visitor traffic they can drive your way. But what you really want more than visitors is visitors who are potential customers.

So your overriding strategy should be to reach as many prospects as possible. There are three main ways to tackle this:

#1: Get found in Google for free!

Some 88% of internet users use Google when looking for products and services. This includes your customers and prospects. The main search results that you see pages and pages of are called ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ results. Your aim is to get in the #1 position (or at least on the first page) for the search phrases that your prospective customers will be searching for. To get to these top ranked positions, you need to get noticed by Google using SEO (search engine optimisation).

One of the key things to know about SEO is that it takes time and effort to get recognised by Google and rank well. So don’t expect to do some SEO today and see results tomorrow. Think of it as a good-bet investment for the future.

#2: Pay for clicks with Google Adwords

Have you noticed those ‘sponsored link’ adverts on Google, at the top and right of the results pages? They are called ‘AdWords’, and they’re basically like small ads they you pay for. This is another good option for getting noticed on Google.

The general term for this style of promotional link is pay-per-click advertising, or PPC. The real beauty of PPC advertising is that it is instantaneous. Imagine you are running a promotion and want to attract some highly targeted prospects. By setting up a PPC/Adwords campaign, you can start getting this targeted traffic immediately.

As a general rule, your internet marketing strategy would usually encompass both SEO and PPC strategies, as the two work hand in hand.

#3: Direct marketing using email

Email marketing involves sending targeted emails to people in your marketing database. You would usually use a special piece of software that sends out the emails automatically to your mailing list. This software is called email marketing software.

The key to effective email marketing is targeting, and you can only target if you have quality data in your database. For example, say you’re running a promo for some age-repair moisturiser aimed at older women. As you can imagine, sending this promo out to people who are young or male is a waste of effort — and, worst of all, will actually damage the prospect’s perception of you as a company: you’re basically telling them that you haven’t bothered to consider their individual needs. Even for selling big ticket items in the B2B (business to business) market, these rules still apply. So building a database with good segmentation data is going to be very important.

You can only send email to people who have specifically given their permission to get your emails. This is called ‘opting in’. If you send emails to people you don’t have a businesses relationship with, or who haven’t asked to received your emails, then that’s called spam. There are some quite tough anti-spam laws around now that can lead to heavy fines if you’re caught spamming, so don’t do it.

And before you go sending out that next e-newsletter, take a really close look, and ask yourself honestly if the recipients are really likely to give a damn. Most of these blah-blah all-about-me newsletters get trashed straight away, and are often a complete waste of time.

The key word here is relevancy. For successful email marketing you need to use this medium to build a relationship with customers, and you do this by giving them content and offers that are relevant to them.

Conversion 101

• Part 1: Getting the website foundations right
• Part 2: Know who you’re selling to
• Part 3: Drive prospective customers to your site
• Part 4: Optimise your site to increase conversions
• Part 5: Test your site with real prospects
• Part 6: Identify and remove barriers to growth