[Note from Lee: Please welcome Ashley Bruce, the newest member of TopRank’s Online Promotions team who is making her first blog post at Online Marketing Blog with this Lionel Richie inspired post about improving qualified traffic through online marketing tips.]
Internet marketers often have to get creative when it comes to solving client web site traffic and sales problems. Inspiration from friends and family, movies, or even the smooth sounds of the local adult contemporary radio station can be useful.
Take this longstanding frustration: Online marketing efforts can sometimes produce an increase in website traffic that is not accompanied by a corresponding increase in conversions. While more traffic is almost always positive, it does little good if the majority of site visitors aren’t seriously interested in the products or services being promoted.
So how does one make sure the right traffic finds the right web site content? I recommend taking the advice of ‘80s pop icon Lionel Richie by asking your site visitors the classic question, “Hello, is it me you’re looking for?â€
While Mr. Richie may be directing his sentiments at a visually-impaired coed (see the video if you don’t know what I’m talking about), this is a question whose answer is critical to every online marketer as well. In order to get conversions, you need to make sure the business you are promoting is being found by legitimate prospects. Ensure your site provides what visitors are looking for by following these five musically-themed guidelines:
- Know your audience – Should you be targeting a product’s end-users or distributors? What stage of the buying cycle are you targeting? A good online marketing team conducts the proper background research in order to fully understand who they are trying to reach, where they are in the buying cycle and plans content creation, optimization and promotion accordingly.
- Book your prospect’s favorite venue – Once you feel you have actionable knowledge of your target audience, you can select appropriate places for reaching them. Research communities, influencers and behaviors of the target audience to establish a useful presence and content, be it on social networks, forums, blogs or the company web site.
- Give fans what they want – Make sure the offer and conversion opportunity are a good match for what the target audience is looking for. In some cases they will be looking to buy your product, but in others they may want more information like a white paper or a case study, or the opportunity to be contacted.
- Choose the right ‘lyrics’ – When selecting keywords to optimize your site content or pay-per-click campaign, keyword popularity is only a starting point. Choosing the most appropriate keywords to describe product or service offerings considering relevancy, context and intent are important. Â Research, consideration, evaluation and purchasing are different phases of the buyer’s search experience. Optimizing the right content with the right keywords for each of these phases will help prospects find your site in a more relevant way.
- Sing it loud – The copy, images and overall design of your website and landing pages should be obvious cues to the type of product or service offered and consistent with search query that brought them there. Structure your site design and calls to action so that prospects immediately know that they’ve found what they are looking for. For example, sending PPC traffic from a specific product keyword to the company home page will alienate and confuse the searcher. Send specific traffic queries to specific landing pages. For SEO, optimize specific content for specific phrases to help searchers pull themselves to the right content for conversion.
Implementing these tactics can increase web site traffic specifically for people who are more likely to convert. When you pose Lionel Richie’s question to your visitors, more will respond with a resounding “Yes, it is you I’m looking for!†And while you may not receive thanks in the form of a clay sculpture, the increase in your conversions should more than make up for it.
What metaphors for increasing qualified traffic and conversions have you found to be effective? Or maybe you have other SEO insights derived from Lionel Richie songs? 🙂
