Tuesday 13 July 2010

How to Attract the Right People to Your Site - The Web Marketing Process Part 12


This article is part 12 of a series. You'll find part one here. And part 11 here.

Get live updates as each new part is released: Follow on Twitter.

Who buys your product or service? As soon as you know the correct answer to this question, you'll find it much easier to attract the right people to your site.

It pays (literally) to know exactly who you're marketing to, because it makes it easy to find the people you need to promote your product or service to. And finding the right people is half the battle.

For example, my DIY SEO Seminar teaches people how to do their own Search Engine Optimisation. It's specifically designed to appeal to small business owners that lack the money to pay a professional SEO company.

Armed with that knowledge, it's relatively easy to find the type of person I need to promote my DIY SEO Seminar to. For example, a lot of small business owners are members of BNI. I am a BNI member, and can visit different BNI groups (i.e. subbing in BNI vernacular).

Of course, finding your target market is the first part in a 2 part process. You must also have something to offer. And the thing you offer must be compelling.

Your offer should appeal directly to your target market, and attract them to your site to receive that offer. The medium you use will affect the kind of offer you make. For example, I can offer BNI members a free featured listing in my directory. This provides SEO value, and so appeals to people who are already thinking in terms of realising SEO value.

In web marketing terms, where the goal is to send targeted people to my website, I might start by writing an article about Search Engine Optimisation. I may then get that article published on a dedicated article site such as Ezine Articles.

The article will end with my profile, where I make a specific offer to the reader and send him/her to a landing page on my website. We'll look at landing pages in more detail when we get to the "Leads" component of the Web Marketing Process (see part one for more information).

My article is about SEO, and will be read by people with an interest in SEO. The article will be designed specifically to appeal to small business owners who need to do their own SEO. It's purpose is to sell the idea that...
  • Most small business owners can't afford to pay for SEO
  • SEO isn't difficult - anyone can do it
  • They can do their own SEO and save thousands of pounds
The article will be published on an article site that has its own built-in community. That subset of the community interested in SEO will read the article. And a further subset of people are likely to be interested in learning more about SEO. In my profile, I'll construct an offer aimed at these people.

This sends targeted traffic to my site. It also has the potential to convey SEO Benefit to my site. But this isn't its main purpose. And visitor generation doesn't end with the links in the article. The article is merely a filter designed to weed out unsuitable people (i.e. those outside the target market). To have it do its job, I need to send people to the article itself.

Why not simply send them directly to my site? Because the article is the filter that weeds out unsuitable people. And because the article prepares the prospective client to buy by...
  • Selling the idea they can do it themselves
  • Establishing my SEO expertise
The article isn't sales copy as such. It must offer genuine value to its target market. It must have utility value in and of itself. By making the article useful to my target market, I ensure they read it all the way through.

Those that click the link and visit my landing page are now fully qualified prospective clients. And I'm in a good position to convert these visitors into leads.

As you can see, it's in my interests to send as many people as possible to the article. To achieve this I'll do the following (at the very least)...
  • Tweet about the article and link to
  • Ask key people to retweet the article
  • Comment on relevant blog entries and link to the article
  • Write a short article for my own blogs that then link to the article
  • Link to the article from my Facebook page
  • Ask key clients to link to the article from their Facebook page or group
  • Use deep linking techniques to boost the SEO value of the article
  • Encourage people to link to the article as a valuable resource
  • Post in relevant forum discussions and link to the article from my signature
  • Submit ads to classified sites that link to the article
  • Submit links to the article to directories that allow deep linking
  • Email clients and subscribers and recommend the article
  • Hand out links to the article at networking meetings (free article about SEO)
  • Link to the article from all my websites
  • Ask key clients and individuals to link to the article from their sites and/or blogs
  • Offer to write guest articles for 3rd party blogs that then link to the article (or that serve the same purpose as the article and link to the landing page)
  • You'll find more link building ideas here
The point is, this approach uses a 3rd party article community to obtain free traffic. And then attempts to generate additional traffic.

The article acts as a filter, ensuring that I send highly targeted and motivated prospects to a landing page designed specifically to receive them. I don't simply link to the landing page, I make an offer designed to appeal to the target market.

This is one way that professional web marketers generate free targeted traffic to a web site. And it's highly effective.

In part 13 we'll look at how to use SEO to generate targeted traffic within the Web Marketing Process.

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7 comments:

Connor Bringas said...

Very interesting post. I agree though you definitely need to know who your marketing too. You cant just walk around blind..

Debt Leads said...

Great post thanks for the lead generation help. Its not easy to get traffic..but when you do it keeps flowin. Anyway good post keep it up

Wayne Davies said...

My view is that getting traffic is the easy part. Converting visitors into leads is the tricky part.

Candice said...

I agree that you need to know who you're marketing to, but once you know this - what then? How do you find them on the Internet?

ellipsis dive said...

Hi. As someone else said here, it is easy to get traffic. It is hard to convert visitors into leads. That's the tricky part :)

ellipsis dive said...

Just wanted to add something new: Why don't you post more about the subject of lead marketing and lead generation.

database lady said...

All this was explained to me by a person offering me SEO - it's not that it's so complicated I couldn't do it myself, but it is quite long winded and the trouble is finding the time to do it.