How to drive qualified traffic to your website

If you’re like most small businesses or entrepreneurs, you’d like to drive traffic to your Web site. There’s a right way, and a wrong way. The wrong way is to drive ever more traffic to your to your site, whether or not people want to be there, want to buy what you’re selling, or appreciate what you do. This kind of marketing is rampant on the internet. And it won’t increase anything for you except a high number of people who arrive on your site and bounce, that is, leave immediately without clicking further into your site.

The right way is to select traffic that is qualified. This traffic is made up of people who are or can be genuinely interested in what you offer.

Here’s how to do it. We’ll use Sandy’s Gift Baskets business as our case study.

1) Set up your business resources and a goal

Before Sandy can attract traffic to her site, she needs to have a mission and become a resource before she can be a vendor. This means creating credibility with her ideal customers before she ever asks for the sale. One of the best ways to accomplish this is by offering something on her website which has high perceived value at no cost to her prospects. This could be an article relevant to their need, a content driven report, or an invitation to sign up for a workshop, seminar or business briefing. Sandy has chosen to provide a downloadable article.

In order to download the article, she has visitors leave their contact information. It can be simply a name and email address, or full contact information. The visitor will receive her free offering, and she will have engaged a new contact in conversation. She set up her contact submission process, so that it takes the visitor to a Thank you, page a.k.a. conversion page. She tracks views of this page in her web analytics tool to measure the effectiveness of all her strategies to attract visitors, engage them in conversation, and guide them along the path to becoming a repeat customer.

Sandy’s business goal is to increase her revenue from selling gift baskets online by 200% in one year. Notice that it is very specific and measurable including product, percent increase, and time frame. She also set monthly benchmark goals, so she can keep track of progress along the way.

2) Attract qualified prospects

Sandy put herself in the mind set of her qualified prospects. She made a list of terms and phrases she thinks various categories of prospects will use to find her and do business. These include Gourmet Gift Baskets, Chocolate Gift Baskets, Wine Gift Baskets, Baby Gift Baskets, Get Well Gift Baskets, New Baby Gift Baskets, Corporate Gift Baskets.

3) Engage prospects in conversation

Sandy selected one key phrase, and wrote an article on Corporate Gift Baskets. She published it on her website, which is also a blog. Then she published excerpts in business and other social media like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Digg,  forums, discussion groups, and Ezines that are specific to her corporate market. In each instance, she created a link back to the downloadable article on her website.

The article and excerpts are content driven, and not blatant sales pieces. They provide hints on the who, what, where, when, and why of corporate gift baskets. She includes features that invite a response. Depending on the place where the excerpts appear, she adds questions, a poll, a comment box, a feedback form, or an invitation to request more information. She includes anything that she thinks will encourage the reader to engage in conversation with her and eventually convert to a customer.

4) Guide visitors toward your conversion goals

Again, Sandy put herself in the mind set of her qualified prospects, and thought through the steps she thinks they would want to follow or tasks they would want to achieve before converting to a customer. For each step, he selected active words or calls to action. Her task path calls to action include Get acquainted, Get hints, Get product info, Get prices, Order now, and Contact us.

She wants to know the effectiveness of her task path for her ultimate conversion goal. So, she organizes her web analytics to track each step along her task path as mini-conversions.

Summing up

So here you have it—the right way to drive qualified traffic to your website.

• Set up your business as a resource, and set specific, measurable goals.
• Select,  attract, and keep in touch with current and qualified potential customers.
• Engage prospects and existing customers in conversation.
• Guide them to your conversion goals, again and again.

By following these steps, you will not only attract the right visitors, you will also build trust, name recognition, revenue, and you will be recognized as a resource before you are a vendor, putting you miles ahead of the competition.