More Web Traffic: Getting Traffic To Your Site Is The Start Of Something Beautiful!

Web traffic is absolutely crucial!

Did you know that at the time of this writing there are nearly 367MM websites online?!? That’s a pretty big number…  And the reality for the vast majority of these website is that most don’t have a chance at being successful on any level. Why? Because they will never be found or seen by the people who need to find or see them. Without web traffic, you are dead in the water when it comes to generating leads and the resulting income you want.

So, if you want to support your ideas or business online, then understand that…

People who want to consume your content, ideas, or products and services have to be able to SEE you online! Building a website to promote anything… either tangible or intangible, is like opening up a brick and mortar store. If you started a shoe shop and your prospects couldn’t find you because you were in a crappy location with no effective marketing, how successful could you be? If you said, “not very” go to the head of the class! If on the other hand you started a shoe shop and you were located in a busy shopping center, had a solid direct mail campaign, and did a good job of tracking your customers habits… Well, you are probably going to do much better than the shop doing business in secret.

So, guess what: you only get what you engineer!

You have to intentionally get traffic to your website.

Getting traffic online can be done many ways. Let’s take a look at the 4 most common ways:

1. Social Media: uses tools like facebook to get your message in front of a group of fans/followers.
2. Banner Advertising: uses ads that you pay to run on other sites getting traffic from your idea customer.
3. Pay Per Click: uses services like Google Adwords to display ads within search results pages.
4. Search Engine Optimization: uses proper website structure, content creation, back links, and tracking to rank you within a search engine’s search results.

And, within these types of traffic, the quality of that traffic will vary significantly. Here’s a graph demonstrating the current hierarchy of web traffic quality:

As you can see, SEO gives you the most high quality traffic. And, if you think about it for a moment, it should! Let’s say you want a new Samsung TS-2197 Monkeybrite Flatscreen TV, for example. So you go to Google and you type “Samsung TS-2197 Monkeybrite Flatscreen TV” in the search bar. If I have a webpage on my website that talks about the Samsung TS-2197 Monkeybrite Flatscreen TV and I rank page 1 for that search term, you will find me… And, because you were actively searching for that specific product, chances are good that you are pretty interested in buying it before you ever even got to my site! Which means…  that you will convert into a sale easier. High Quality traffic = Easier conversions!

If you learn 1 thing about traffic… Let it be this:

All Traffic Has A Cost Associated With It!

Now, before I get hate mail from all you social media “experts” out there claiming you can get free traffic from social media, stop a think for 2 seconds on the real time commitment necessary to run a solid social media campaign. It takes a lot. Because it takes a lot of time, even smaller businesses are now hiring people specifically for the purpose of managing social media. Social media is not FREE! Even if you do it yourself it requires your time and your time is best spent in other areas of your business.

Man, talk about a reality check.

Believe me, social media has a place. Just be careful not to fall prey to those selling the social media pipe dream. You will pay for traffic in time, money or both!

Paying for traffic is an effective way to get it. In fact, if a campaign is running correctly it will pay for itself. This requires you to have the systems in place to handle the leads that come your way from your website or other media. The traffic itself is only one part of the picture.  So, to know how much you should spend, you have to know or develop your traffic and conversion numbers, which takes some time.

All traffic has a cost, but what type of budget are we talking here?

The web is still one of the most inexpensive ways to generate good quality results based marketing campaigns. In fact, there is no better platform for tracking your performance than the web. With today’s tools, you can pretty much track any aspect of your marketing campaigns automatically!

A good solid traffic generation budget would be $500 – $1000 per month for an SEO or PPC campaign, perhaps less if you are in a small market with little competition. And, both SEO and PPC are 100% trackable and verifiable. You will know exactly what traffic you get from the campaign and where it comes from.  Let’s compare that to other forms of “offline” traffic generation:

• Offline | Newspapers – $1,300 per week for 2” x 2” ad
• Offline | Television – $200,000 for one 30-second commercial (during prime-time)
• Offline | Direct Mail – $1,500 for 1,000 4×6 postcards (includes postage)
• Offline | Radio – $90 to $120 per week on a rotator (prices higher if time slots for ad are selective)
• Offline | Magazines – $1,200 to $5,000 per month or per issue (depends on ad size and demographics)
• Offline | Outdoor (Billboard) – $3,000 to do artwork and install media on billboard; rates depend on impress level, ranges from $5,000 to $500,000 (the higher the qualify of the artwork and the larger the demographic group, the higher the price); minimum contract is 16 weeks

A few interesting specific offline examples are:

• Offline | The cost of an average ½ page Yellow Pages display ad for one full year is over $15,000.
• Offline | The cost of the inside front cover of Cosmopolitan $125,000.
• Offline | The cost of the least expensive ad on the Vogue rate card is $70,978 for 1/3 of a page
• Offline | The cost of a five line ad in “The New York Times” currently costs $301.60.

And, while it is somewhat possible to track the results from these types of ads, the tracking doesn’t even come close to the accuracy you can attain online. For this reason, large companies who use a great deal of print ads will generally send traffic to a website at some point in the print ad campaign.

You should never pay for marketing that is not trackable.

SEO, PPC, print, radio, TV, and Social Media marketing all have a cost. Pay for marketing that yields a measurable result that you can use to guide your business down the right path.

The web is STILL the least expensive way to go… But that is changing fast as more and more people come online to do business. It’s more important than ever before to be smart about what you do.

If you find yourself wanting clarity on these concepts, you can find out exactly how they relate to each other and more importantly to your success by contacting us today to setup your FREE 30-minute phone consultation!