Most people will be aware that driving traffic to a website takes more than just putting a website online and telling a few people about it. With so many people heading straight online when they are looking for information and products, a website is a valuable resource in your marketing arsenal. It, therefore, pays to take time to understand how you can make the most of your website, where improvements can be made and how to promote it to ensure it is paying you back on the effort you put in.
Launch event
A launch event can be a fantastic way to create a buzz, build awareness, and drive people to a physical store or a website. A launch event isn’t limited to new businesses or stores either; you could have a website launch event (or relaunch) or launch a new product or product range. Anything that you can think of that your customers may be interested in hearing about is worth having at least a small event for if you have the time to plan and resources to spare.
The other option is to create seasonal events. Companies like Amazon are great at doing this with events like Amazon Prime Day and summer sales. Not only will it help to drive new customers to your website, if you promote it well it’s a good excuse to contact existing customers or customers who haven’t purchased in a while to tempt them to come back.
On-Page SEO
To help people find your website when they search on Google or other search engines, you will need to conduct some kind of search engine optimization (SEO) work. There are a number of important tasks that need to be completed, to rank highly on these search engine result pages (SERP), some of which you can do yourself with a bit of research and basic technical know-how.
Fundamentally, it all starts with website design. At the top of the list for any new website design or remodel is mobile-friendliness. It’s been known for a while now that more people are searching online using their mobile vs. a PC so making sure your website is responsive and can be displayed on mobile devices is one of the single most important factors to getting your website to show up in the search results.
After that, you can look at on-page SEO. This includes activities like researching the best keywords for your page and adding them in your website copy. You can then begin looking at including these words in the meta title and descriptions, page names, and alt tags on images.
If you’re running an e-commerce store, it’s particularly important to pay attention to the product information to ensure that it’s complete and up to date and that product pictures are clear and the correct size.
Social media
It goes without saying that pretty much any brand needs some kind of social media presence. If you are operating in consumer markets, then a Facebook or Twitter profile is probably best suited to reaching out and engaging with your audience. If you’re selling mainly to businesses, then a LinkedIn profile may be more suitable as this is a professional networking website.
Sometimes when people start social media accounts for their business, they are unsure on what to post. The flip side is that they only post really promotional updates which people rarely take any notice of because we’re all so used to being bombarded with advertising messages. A mixture of interesting and engaging content is, therefore, crucial. Creating regular blog posts for your website and a content calendar will get people clicking through to your site and ultimately gaining you more website traffic.
Also, don’t forget that the nature of social media is that it’s social. You should be prepared to respond to people who have commented on your posts or who have tweeted you. This goes for positive and negative posts. A quick response that helps to resolve a negative comment or genuine customer complaint is much better than leaving it with no reply or even worse, deleting it.
Referral program
One of the best ways to promote your business and drive new traffic to your website is to set up a referral program. If you have a good base of loyal existing customers it’s likely they will be willing to share your website or a social media post with their friends in exchange for a discount or money off their next purchase.
The important thing to remember here is the lifetime value of your customers. If for example, you sell a consumable product like razors that people will come back and re-purchase every month at $10 apiece then you can probably afford to do a $10 giveaway knowing that over a year that customer is worth $120 to you. However, if you sell a product that a customer may only purchase once like a cheap $20 watch, offering a $10 discount will wipe out your margin, and you may even make a loss.
PR and Media
One of the oldest and most tried and tested ways of building awareness about an event or business is by getting in the local or national press or getting some media coverage like being on the radio or TV. It’s usually very unlikely that you will get any coverage just talking about your business so you will need to find an angle that a reporter will be interested to write about.
If you’re looking to get into the paper, think about any fundraising you might have done for charity. Alternatively, maybe an employee has done something special, like run a marathon. These are all more interesting stories than ‘look at my business!’
As for the media, you could try positioning yourself as an expert on a subject to get yourself onto a talk or panel show. Maybe you run a camping shop, and there’s a discussion about a national park you could talk about, or maybe you run a pet shop, and there’s a news story about a rise in dogs being abandoned in your area. Again, finding the right angle, so you become relevant to the conversation is the important bit.
