Getting Visitors - The Web Marketing Process Part 11

This article is part 11 of a series. You'll find part one here. And part 10 here.

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There are many different ways to get visitors to your website, including...

• SEO (search engine optimisation)
• Social Media
• Social bookmarketing
• Article marketing
• SEM (search engine marketing)
• Online advertising
• Offline advertising
• Guerilla marketing
• Viral marketing
• Forums
• Alliance and affiliate marketing
• 3rd party content (e.g. Squidoo)
• Blogging
• Freebies and giveaways
• External web content
• Business networking
• Email marketing
• Newsletters (on and offline)
• Promotion to existing clients
• Online press releases
• Regular press releases
• Surveys
• Ebooks and reports
• Download
• Link swap schemes
• Directories
• Classifieds
• Competitions
• Podcasts
• Slideshows (e.g. Slideshare)
• Video marketing (e.g. YouTube)
• Link bait

And many more than this. For example, take a look at 66 ways to get links and visitors to your site.

You'll look at a lots of different ways to get traffic in coming articles, but none of these methods is as important as knowing...

• The type of visitor that most benefits you
• The specific thing that will make that type of person want to visit your site

The key to getting the right people to visit your site actually lies in how well you understand your target market, and how good your targeting is. We looked at target marketing in part 8. Now it's time to wade in get our hands dirty!

There's no point getting people to visit your site if they...

• Don't want/need your product or service
• Can't afford your product or service
• Can't physically buy/use your product or service

Any traffic scheme that simply sends you random visitors is essentially useless. You may as well stop people at random on the street and ask each one to give you £1,000.

The most obvious purpose of targeting is to understand who wants or needs your service, can afford it, and is in a position to actually buy it from you (e.g. in the right geographic area).

It's essential that you understood who this person is, where s/he can be found, and what will persuade him/her to visit your site. You need to know this before you try to generate traffic to your site.

In part 12 we'll take an in-depth look at how web marketing professionals identify the right people, and attract them to a website.

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