9 Marketing Tactics to Get More Traffic
Small businesses work hard to stay competitive online, where the entire world is a potential customer base. Even if your target audience is within a defined area, online presence is necessary to be found. You also know that having a website doesn’t necessarily mean that you will have people visiting. How, then, can you increase your chances of future customers finding you among the sea of small businesses? Read on to find out.
1. Use SEO –
We can’t stress enough the importance of both online and offline SEO practices. Without proper SEO, none of your other marketing efforts will work as well as they could. SEO is one thing that never ends as the search engines regularly change their indexing terms. You need to keep up with these changes.
2. Run Paid Ads –
Social media ads, especially those on Facebook and Pinterest, are seen by more people than most other advertising. Learn to target these ads, and you multiply your marketing dollars and efforts. Rather than posting generic ads, targeting a particular group helps you reach those more likely to click to your website.
3. Seek Influencers –
Small businesses often follow industry bigwigs. Rather than simply following them and trying to put their methods into action, reach out to them and ask for help. By gaining their confidence in you and your business, you get their followers' confidence too. These are people you may not be able to reach otherwise.
4. Run Contests and Giveaways –
People love the chance of getting something for free. When you add in competition, it increases the appeal even more. Make your giveaways and contests closely related to your business to increase the chances that those who enter want what you have to offer. For example, if your business is photography, you may not want to offer an Amazon gift certificate. Rather, offer a family photo session. That way the entries you do get are all going to be from people who are interested in getting a family portrait. This increases your chances of future sales from both winners and losers.
5. Test, Test, Test –
Running A/B testing on every ad you create is very important for small businesses. Not every ad will work for every venue, and you need to learn which ones work where in order to be effective. Every time you develop a new marketing plan, take the time to test it, making sure the ads you are placing yield the highest results they can.
6. Create Urgency –
We don’t want to feel like we may miss out on something important. This is why children hate going to bed, and people check their social media feeds continually. By creating a sense of urgency, you make people feel like they have to act now or they may forever lose the chance at what you are offering. Words like “limited,” “ending soon” or “gone forever” will have more people acting now rather than waiting for a later time that may never arrive.
7. Give Directions –
Human nature makes us like easy. When your daily life is full of decision making and responsibilities, it's refreshing to have someone figure out what to do next for you. You can be that person for your audience. Don’t be afraid to ask people to “order now,” “read this for more information” or any other particular direction.
8. Create Compelling CTAs –
This is related to the above action. Make your CTAs impossible to resist. Tell people what you want them to do and make it seem like they will be missing out on something that others will get.
9. Content marketing –
One thing remains consistent in marketing, and that is compelling content. It is your greatest asset. Give people information they can use, and give it to them often. Create content that is so valuable people will want to share it on social media and refer to it on their blogs. Make search engines love you because you give them new reasons to crawl your site; they love new content.
Putting these tips into practice will have you on your way to a steadier stream of targeted visitors to your website. Once you get them there, it is your knowledge that will keep them, but getting them there is often the greatest challenge.
