Are you a business owner?
Well, I am one, and my prime concern for the longest period has been to drive traffic to our website.
Does your real-time visitor report on Google Analytics show a linear-flat line?
A website on its own doesn’t guarantee business. It takes efforts to drive prospects to your website or your landing page. But, does this necessarily have to be costly?
Not so! There are ways to generate a tonne of traffic for your website on a limited budget without spending a fortune.
For a bootstrapped business or a startup is to gain qualified leads at as little cost as possible. This is indeed possible by following a spoke wheel marketing:
The article now will grow into 10 different strategies to gain qualified leads for your business:
- Find social influencers who can promote your brand
Influencers with clout in a given industry come in many forms these days. Instagramers, bloggers, YouTubers, facebook groups, and microbloggers. They are not very difficult to find, but what matters is vigilant filtration and identifying influencers that can benefit your business the most.How do you get an influencer to promote your business? by incentivization.
Incentivise the act by sharing your product with them and request them to try it. If they happen to have a good experience with your product or service, they’ll appraise it accordingly on their channel.
The key is to ask for feedback! This will help you create a community around your brand.
Further, you can request the following-
– to write a blog for your website
– insert your links in their blogs on their website
– co-host a webinar or podcast with them - Become a blogger yourself
Write to add value to your target audiences’ lives. Your blogs at all times should be written to help others achieve the desired goal.
This can also be seen as a trust-building exercise.
DON’T write to get SEO-right! Trust me the fad is over. Write to support and extend help. Only churn high-quality content; suggestions by Neo Living:
– Always find new information to share
– Be thick, that’s on the content
– Structure your thoughts well
– Your articles should be research backed
– Pass the ‘So What‘ test
– Do not drift away from your audience - Have you heard of Social Bookmarking?
That’s the key to create backlinks to your website, which hence converts into targeted traffic to your website.
This is also incremental in strengthening website SEO.
Some free social bookmarking websites are as follows:
Evernote
Stumble Upon
Product Hunt
Digg
Juxtapost
MetaFilter
Pinterest - Locale specifying weblinks
It is advisable to maintain profiles on local and hyperlocal web networks like zomato, swiggy, uber eats, indiamart, yellowpages inter alia listings.
Maintain as precise information as possible, viz., hours, days, location, additional information, pictures, videos, reviews.
Next big thing is to build yourself a Google business website. This puts you on the map, making it easy for clients to search for you.
Also, in most cases makes you readily available on Google search results. Thus discounting your worries to surface on google which generally takes a while. - Create business alliances
You are new on the market. It is difficult for your audience to trust you right away. This is, in fact, my most emphasized tip of them all, every time I consult a business.
Publish white papers, long posts, and research. Contact prolific writers, publishers or social media influencers who have a network and share a repute with your audience.
You share a soundbite with the experts thus identified, so that they can copy and paste your content to spread it across the social media.
This will ensure ‘virality’ to your content and a plethora of backlinks. - Build a community around your business by engagement
Engagement doesn’t really mean that your post/tweet/share at least once in a day.
I order to ensure longevity for your brand, you’d have to engage with your fans as often as possible.
Give your business a humane character by keeping your interactions one-to-one. For example, my clients can explore the services by talking to a chatbot on my facebook company page; alternatively, they at any point can opt to talk to an executive or request for a FREE CONSULTATION by me for their business. - Video market your greater penetration
Over the last few years, the audience on the social network has mostly shifted to consuming video content, well-over pictorial or textual.
You should actively create unique video content to publish it on YouTube or Vimeo. Next, you can optimize it using powerful keywords. - Provide solutions with question and answer websites
Millions daily log onto Google to seek answers to one query or the other. It’s your best bet to be found by your target audience which incidentally can even be a potential client.
Websites like Answerbag, Quora, Yahoo Answers, and WikiAnswers all unite question askers and answerers together. Answer questions about your business’ subject matter expertise and make sure to include the address of your website in your profile and answer credentials to draw free landing page traffic. Just remember to include links in answers as you write. - Network over LinkedIn
LinkedIn, mostly understated, has often proved immensely helpful to new businesses.
Leadpages contributor, LinkedIn expert, and founder of Linkfluencer Alex Pirouz offers a few LinkedIn traffic hacks:LinkedIn allows you to publish articles within the platform (just like a blog). This feature was rolled out in 2014 and has been a game changer.Some of these posts from users get hundreds or thousands of impressions in a short space of time.
To add to that, they can potentially rank really well in Google searches.
Finally, they can get you even more than great traffic, because you can place links throughout and at the end of the post promoting your landing page—so your article can turn into leads or sales.
Here are a few tips to create LinkedIn posts that will be found by the most people:
- Be strategic with your keywords.
- Include pictures and videos to break up your text.
- Create a ton of value within the post.
- Include a call to action in your bio.
- Choose your topic wisely, and it can presell your prospect on what you have to offer before they even get to your landing page.
- Paid Advertising
This is surely the toughest path to tread if you are not a pro at buying media. Further still, this remains the best way to fill on your sales/leads funnel.
It encompasses a number of strategies, like:- (PPC) Pay Per Click – (Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, Bing Ads)
- (PPV) Pay Per View – (TrafficVance.com, MediaTraffic.com)
- Display Advertising – (BuySellAds.com, BuyAds.com, Pulse360.com)
- Solo Ads – (DedicatedEmails.com)
Remember: you don’t have to use every strategy listed above to drum up new, high-quality leads. Select a few ideas that make sense to start, see how they move the dial on your business. While site visitors and traffic is excellent – it’s the quality that counts. As you embark on the following activities watch your conversion rate on landing pages to ensure that you’re reaching people who are truly interested in what you have to share.
Article by: Rahul Jain
Rahul Jain is a communications expert, brand strategist and author of ‘English by mistakes’ with over a decade-long experience of working with global conglomerates and agencies.
He is the former Chief executive of a News Trust of India and the youngest one in India at that. He is now furthering his passion to build global brands.
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