It All Starts With Traffic

We had a meeting the other day with a company that is in an enviable position: They have a great product that people love, they are averaging 20 orders a day through Amazon, and have an engaged social following. Their current challenge is that they are getting minimal traffic and sales on their own eCommerce site and they are launching a new product line with a slightly different target customer.

Oh and did I mention that they are bootstrapped and budget is an issue?

5 Things Anyone Can do to Grow Web Traffic

1. SEO/SEM: Your site should be totally dialed for the search engines. This goes beyond keywords, urls, titles, and H1 tags. Setup Google Search Console, submit an XML sitemap, and connect it to your Analytics account so you can track what you are ranking for. Check your search results and make sure what shows up gives users a reason to click.   Download our free SEO Self Evaluation to find out how you are doing.
2. Content Marketing (aka Blogging with a Purpose): Use an authentic voice. Write about topics around your products that will resonate with your audience. How do you know if it resonates? Look for social engagement and traffic. Yes, buyers guides and “Top 5” lists work, but don’t make that all you do. You don’t need to blog every day and don’t blog with no purpose. Write stuff you want to read about. Answer customer questions.  Graham wrote a great article on Blogging that is worth checking out.
    
3. Social: Keep it up even if you think no one is watching. Work to build and engage your audience. Your content marketing gives you stuff to be social about. Many web users will use social activity as a signal that the company is active. Activity builds trust and increases conversion.
4. Blogger Outreach: Research and reach out to bloggers that cover your market or are related to your market. Many influencers will do promotional posts and help spread the word for a small fee or some free product.  Also collaborate on contests/giveaways on the bloggers site. Be creative.  If you don't have a product, look for opportunities to post articles and contribute your expertise.  For example, if you sell home insurance, provide content for local realtors or alarm companies.
    
5. PPC Ads: The reason this industry is growing so much is because it works. While all of the other tactics take time to build traffic and eventually sales, PPC is immediate. Launch and ad today, make sales tomorrow. Well, actually, it isn’t quite that easy and it takes quite a lot of time to setup, test, and fine tune a winning PPC campaign, but it is easy to get started.

Don't expect overnight results especially if you are doing this for only a few hours a week.  All of these take time to pay off but done right they will grow your traffic which should lead to more leads, more sales, and more opportunities.