Often the chief complaint heard among people attempting to run a business online is that they simply don't have enough traffic.
While this is no doubt true, the methodology they use to try and remedy this situation is entirely faulty. The truth is, there are literally hundreds of ways to generate traffic to your pages, some quite easy. However whether or not this traffic does you any good is another question entirely.
This seldom turns out well. What you get, if anything, is a bunch of visitors who stay a couple of seconds each, seldom engaging or doing anything else beneficial on your site. This is primarily because you have neglected to figure out exactly what type of traffic best includes your audience, and how to effectively get it. What's really needed here is a plan that takes into account who your chosen audience is, and where they typically hang out. Then you can start to craft a strategy. Let's look at what you need to do to make it happen.
Questions to ask about your traffic campaign
Before you go spending money or time, get great answers to these questions.
- Understand your audience – This is key to knowing how to advertise effectively, paid or not. Are they male or female? Young or old? Rich or poor? Develop a detailed customer avatar that you know inside and out before you spend one thin dime!
- Discover where they hang out – Your audience congregates somewhere; it's up to you to find out where. That might be on a social site, forums, or popular website. Get this intelligence and act on it!
- Tools you can use to help – Probably the best tool to use at this time is Facebook's Audience insights. You need an ad account to use this, but it's free. There is so much available demographic information here it's downright scary. Another tool is Alexa.
Okay, now what?
Only after gathering this critical intelligence can you begin to make decisions about which traffic sources may be right for your particular audience. This might end up being a video marketing campaign on YouTube, paid ads from the likes of Google Adwords for Facebook Ads, or a content marketing initiative aimed at getting pages ranked on the search engines.
Whichever method it ends up being, the point is to make sure you have targeted your audience as best you can BEFORE you begin to market. It's all about obtaining the best return on your investment you can!
If you need professional help getting targeted traffic to your website, schedule an appointment today!
