In the past few weeks, if you’ve been following along with us on our #GetGoing series, you have:
- Crushed the Roadblocks that keep you from marketing effectively
- Uncovered the elements that form your marketing framework
- Identified the metrics that will help keep your marketing on track
- Discovered details about your customers that will help you target them more effectively
- Learned how to develop more compelling marketing messages
- Supercharged the curb appeal of your website by focusing your time and money on what really matters
If you have finished all the tasks above, then you’ve worked harder than Santa and his elves the week before Christmas!
The last 2 installments of our #GetGoing series—yes there are only 2 left!—cover attracting more traffic to your website and then what to do with that traffic when it arrives.
Here are a few tips to attract more traffic to your website than Santa has houses to visit!
1. Socialize and Advertise
Social media is no longer an option, it’s a must-do for every business owner. We talked about that here. If you haven’t seen the videos in this post from Erik Qualman talking about the social revolution and power of social media (and now mobile media), go watch them both.
We’ll wait!
2. Interview Industry Thought Leaders
When you get important people to your website, other important people find out and visit too. Everyone wants to learn from an industry leader, so if you know someone who is a unique thought leader in your vertical or industry, get them on video or on a blog talking about what they know.
Experts are sticky. Like flypaper. They attract people to your website and then you get to ‘borrow’ the trust that people already have for them as if it’s attributed to you.
3. Make your site faster and more responsive than Santa’s elves.
If your site hasn’t migrated itself into the modern responsive world, you are soon to be an extinct wildebeest. You know the kind on Animal Kingdom that can’t get up the side of the mountain during the migration? Sorry, too much natural selection for a Christmas post?
Making sure your site is responsive ensures that you capitalize on the over 53% of traffic arriving at websites from mobile devices. Let’s face it, people are on the go now more than ever. If you want to get them to your website, you have to catch them on the go. When your site is responsive and it is fast, people will not only find you, they will stay on your site.
We anticipate that responsive, fast websites will become such a necessity for people that one day Santa himself will have a cell phone to monitor last-minute emails from kids and Facebook requests as he roams from house to house with his reindeer.
4. Unplug and network.
The strength of your online reputation will be bolstered by in-person networking opportunities. Go to local events, join your local Chamber or local Business groups, be a speaker at a local trade or industry organization. Meet people. Share business cards, invite them to like your social media pages and visit your website.
They will tell other people about you and other people will bring their friends too. Friends are good. We like friends.
5. Write evergreen posts
These are longer-form, authoritative posts that you will be able to link to over the long-haul. One of our development partners, Cross & Crown, just wrote a blog on the changing research validating the efficacy of long-form video posts. We often think that longer content doesn’t work because our readers have a shorter attention span than a child opening Christmas presents, but new research is showing that some long-form content is pretty effective.
Just like a present at Christmas that you love, we hope this blog will inspire you with more ways to drive traffic to your site!
