Friday, February 27, 2009

Marketing In Difficult Times: Improve Website Traffic

By Michael Fleischner

Marketing online can be complicated. So many segments, audiences, and offers, finding the right Internet marketing mix is more difficult than ever before. With the help of some online tools, a good strategy, and careful management of your campaigns, you can significantly improve your marketing results even in a difficult economy.

If you are an established business, chance are you already have a website or blog. In fact, you may also have tons of visitors coming to your website each and every day. The key is to leverage your visitors and build long term relationships that can pay dividends.

As times get tough, so do marketers. Through trial and error, I have implemented a number of campaigns via my website to improve the conversion of website visitors to customers. As pay per click expenses continue to increase, each visitor needs to do more to support my business. At the same time, my business needs to provide more value.

Provide a free report on your website. When visitors come your website, be sure to have a free offer they can access by providing their name and email address. This allows you to capture information about your users in exchange for helpful or valuable information. After they have provided their email, you can communicate with them regularly.

Use an automated communication stream. Auto responders are great for moving your prospects through the purchase process. After visitors sign up for free information, you can automate the process of speaking with them on a regular basis and providing information that is timely and relevant.

Create a reason to come back. Another great technique is to change up your free offers on a weekly basis. This is easily done if you offer a course covering a new topic each week. Let users know that by coming back to the site, they can access new information, transcripts from a recent conference call, or access to expert information.

Lastly, think about starting a newsletter. Newsletters are great for opening up a dialogue with your users and helping them solve problems or issues they may be facing. Create topical articles that are relevant and leverage your list to increase sales. Newsletters are inexpensive to produce and improve relationships with customers.

In a tough economy, you need to do what you can to get more from your website visitors. The only way to do this successfully is to first offer something of value. After you've made the first move, many browsers will be willing to share some information about themselves. Put your thinking cap on and consider new ways to attract website visitors. Once you have found something that works, stick with it.

As you add greater focus and attention on website traffic and conversions, you will find that your marketing budget does more with less. Make the most of what you have and watch your sales increase. - 15254

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