If your website isn’t racking up sales, it only means that your website isn’t generating traffic. Sales is a numbers game. The more people you can market your products to, the higher the probability of getting a sale.
We can prove this using simple math.
Let’s assume that the sales conversion rate is fixed at 2%, that is, for every group of people who visit your website, 2% will buy a product from your website.
Thus, if 100 people visit your website, 2 will become paying customers. In comparison, if 1,000 people visit your website, you’ll have 20 paying customers.
Can you imagine if your website only attracts 10 visitors?
On the flip side, what if your website attracts 100,000 visitors? Better still, what if the volume of website traffic hits 1,000,000 visits?
So, if your website isn’t racking up the sales, either you don’t have a digital marketing program in place or your current digital marketing campaign has flaws.
This article is for online entrepreneurs who are still thinking of investing in digital marketing. When it comes to growing your business website, the question of investing in digital marketing isn’t “if” but “when”.
What Is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is a marketing strategy that utilizes Internet-based tools, platforms, and processes such as search engines, websites, social media networks, and email to deliver content.
Businesses invest in digital marketing to accomplish different objectives. For example, a startup will use digital marketing to create awareness for its brand while a tenured company might run special, limited-time-only promotions through online channels to generate quick sales.
A Business Consultant’s digital marketing strategy might focus on frequent blogging to build his reputation as an expert in a particular field of study. Meanwhile, an e-commerce retailer will develop a carefully crafted digital marketing campaign to ring up more sales.
Regardless of what your business goals are, the true superpower of digital marketing is its ability to drive traffic to your website.
The reason why digital marketing campaigns fail is because their foundations aren’t built with traffic generation as a key cornerstone. The focus is heavy on sales, brand awareness, and online reputation.
However, without traffic, none of these objectives will be met. Your website will just be another virtual marketing brochure on the Internet.
How Does Digital Marketing Drive Traffic To A Website?
There’s a reason why you can’t sell a hamburger to a vegetarian or an air-conditioner to an Eskimo.
They’re not interested in those products.
The genius of digital marketing is that it allows you to target potential customers and train your sights on a specific target market.
If you’re primarily using traditional marketing strategies to build your business, it’s like using a shotgun to hit bottles lined up on a fence. You’ll fire off a lot of shotgun pellets but might hit everything except a single bottle.
Digital marketing gives you a more strategic, laser-focused, and calculated approach to targeting your audience.
You’re not wasting time, money, and resources trying to find customers because, with digital marketing, the customers will go to you.
Specifically, to your website!
Understanding how digital marketing works to drive traffic to your website will help you fine-tune your campaign strategy and allow you to hit your business goals accurately.
It all starts with you.
1. Define Your Brand Identity
How do you want your brand perceived by the market?
Your brand identity will not only influence your website’s design but also your digital marketing strategy.
If you’re selling high-end, premium leather goods, setting up a booth in a flea market – a venue of bargain hunting – won’t be a good idea.
Ideally, you want to position your business brand to a market that can afford your products, is brand-conscious, and is familiar with the type of products you’re selling.
Defining your brand identity is more about “who” your brand is rather than “what” your products are.
According to Nobel Prize-winning Economist, Psychologist, and bestselling author, Daniel Kahneman, the act of purchasing is an emotional one. A person’s decision to purchase an item is triggered by having an emotional connection or response to the product.
To define your brand identity correctly, you must let your target market know who you are. After all, there must be a reason why you decided to get into this type of business – say, expensive, premium, and high-end leather goods.
Is it because you realized at an early age that premium leather goods are durable, last longer, and look better as they age and are therefore, more of an investment than an expense?
If so, then that should be your brand identity.
Your brand identity will be encapsulated in your business’s Brand Value Proposition (BVP) that appears on the Home Page:
“Premium, High-Value Leather Goods That Look and Feel Better With Age. Our leather goods are always an investment, never an expense.”
The BVP is a powerful statement that lets the audience know who you are and what your business is about. Support the BVP by introducing yourself to the audience.
- Create an explainer video about the origins of your business.
- Produce short videos about a day in your life and post them on social media.
- Engage with your audience; share personal stuff with them such as your hobbies, interests, favorite food and movies.
- Give your audience a behind-the-scenes look into your business; introduce them to your employees.
- Link your videos to the Homepage of your website.
Storytelling is such an effective way of communicating and connecting with your target market. It humanizes your brand and associates your business with a face.
At Mountaintop, we always tell our clients:
“The About Us page of your website is not about you. It’s about how YOU can help your site users find solutions to their problems. And you can do this by sharing your story on why you decided to get into this kind of business.”
According to a 2015 study by KoMarketing, 52% of site users make the About Us page the first stop when visiting a website. This is their preferred destination on a website because they want to learn more about the people behind the business.
Remember, you are your brand, and your brand is you.
If the audience can align with who you are, they will quickly and easily establish a connection with your brand. Your website will welcome more visitors who are interested in learning about you and your products.
2. Gain Insights About Your Target Market
Now that we’ve established your brand identity, let’s focus on your target market.
Who are your customers/buyers/end-users?
You might think you know who your potential customers are because of the purpose of your product and brand identity.
For example, if you sell running shoes, then your customers are runners. If you’re selling pain relief spray, then your customers are people with chronic pain.
Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as that. Some people buy running shoes to walk more comfortably but they’re not runners. Some people might need pain relief spray to keep their muscles warm during cold weather.
Assuming who your customers are still amounts to guesswork. If you’re starting a business and have a tight budget, you can’t rely on guesswork when making decisions.
With digital marketing, you have the tools to gain insights and learn more about your target market.
- Access your social media analytics. Find out the demographics of your followers. Identify the posts that generated the highest levels of engagement. Earmark the locations of your followers.
- Conduct Keyword Research. What topics are consumers searching for in your industry? Uncovering the most popularly used keywords will give you clues on topics of interest that are relevant to your business.
- Email surveys to your newsletter subscribers. Ask them questions about your products. What do they look for when choosing a product? Solicit their opinions and suggestions.
- Engage with your followers on social media. Find out the common issues, problems, and concerns of your followers.
- Join community groups on social media and in chat forums. Participate in the discussions, take note of valuable inputs, and connect with community members who can be key resources.
- Check the chat log files. What were the common issues raised by your customers and followers?
When you have more information about your customers, you’ll be able to create a Buyer’s or Customer’s Profile that you can use as a guide for producing targeted content.
3. Diversify Your Content Marketing Strategy
Time to get those creative juices flowing!
According to a 2024 study by HubSpot, 29% of marketers include content marketing as part of their digital marketing strategy. Likewise, 50% of marketers plan to increase their investment in content marketing.
9 out of 10 people associate content with blogs, articles, and other forms of written media. It’s easy to understand why. Blogs are the prevalent form of content on the Internet with more than 600 million pages published by 1.9 websites.
Blogging is popular with businesses because it’s proven to deliver results. Just read through the statistics below on how blogging helps businesses grow:
- 80% of the audience interact or engage with blogs.
- Websites with blogs have 434% more indexed pages.
- Websites with blogs create 97% more inbound links.
- Blogs help businesses generate 67% more leads.
And the statistic that proves why you need digital marketing for your website…
Blogs drive 55% more traffic to websites compared to businesses that don’t blog.
However, blogging isn’t the only process that you can use for your content marketing strategy.
Other forms of content have also been proven effective in driving traffic to a website:
- Videos
- Infographics
- eBooks
- Newsletters
- Whitepapers
- Product Guides
- Memes
In particular, videos are fast becoming the preferred content marketing process of marketers and consumers. 73% of respondents in the HubSpot survey reported that they can learn more about a product by watching a video.
Each type of content has its unique advantage that can contribute to the success of your content marketing campaign.
By diversifying your content marketing strategy, you can expand the reach of your campaign and generate website visits from a wider range of sources. You can also optimize your digital marketing budget by allocating more resources to platforms that deliver better results than others.
4. Consistently Create Optimized, High-Quality Content
Blogging isn’t just writing about a topic you’re an expert on. Producing videos isn’t just capturing images on film that you’re interested in.
You’re not creating content for yourself. You’re creating content for your audience. Impressing yourself won’t drive traffic to your website but impressing your audience by consistently giving them high-quality content will.
High-quality content is content that is…
- Unique – There’s nothing like it on the Internet.
- Relevant – It includes information that addresses the concerns of the audience.
- Informative – It contains updated information or data about the subject matter.
- Useful – It provides useful and applicable solutions to the concerns of the audience.
- Engaging – It compels the audience to take the desired action.
- Professional – It must be easy to read without errors in spelling and grammar.
However, if you’ve checked all of the boxes above, your target audience won’t be able to find your content unless it’s optimized for search.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important step in the content creation process. SEO uses a variety of techniques and tools to help search engines find your content.
Here are 6 popular go-to SEO techniques:
- Keyword Research – Keywords are the most commonly used words or phrases to launch a search query on a topic. Without keywords, search engines won’t be able to find your content and index it for your target audience.
- External Links – By linking facts and data presented in your content to other reputable websites, you enhance your image as a reliable resource of information.
- Internal Links – You can also link information presented in your content to previous articles that you’ve written and published on your website. Internal links will take your audience to your other web pages.
- Refreshing/Updating Content – Did you create content that ranked high 2 years ago? Do a simple rewrite to keep it fresh, update the information that’s shared including the keywords, then repost. You’ll be attracting new visitors to your website.
- Technical SEO – This type of SEO focuses on improving the backend performance of your website. Specifically, how the web pages are set up and get organized.
Some of the Technical SEO we do for clients include fixing broken links, adding a site map, and improving meta descriptions.
- Local SEO – Don’t overlook the importance of local SEO! A 2021 study by Milestone revealed that local searches accounted for 22.6% of website traffic.
Register your business at a few online directories like Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Yellow Pages, Yelp, and Yahoo Places.
Optimize all forms of content – blogs, articles, videos, images, infographics, newsletters – with the right keywords. Product descriptions must contain these high-value keywords.
5. Use PPC Ads
PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click ads. PPC ads are an SEO cheat code because anyone who clicks on your ad will land on your website. The more clicks your ad gets, the higher the website visitor count.
Unlike traditional marketing paid ads where you issue full payment before it’s published, with PPC, you only pay the agency whenever someone clicks on your ad.
Another advantage of PPC over a traditional ad placement is that your ad doesn’t just randomly appear on anyone’s page. The search engine’s algorithm gathers data on a user’s search history and online behavior.
Using this data, the search engine identifies potential buyers/end users of your product and targets them for your ads.
For example, a user who keeps watching fitness videos on YouTube will most likely see a lot of PPC ads about running shoes and pain relief spray.
Thus, with PPC ads, people who visit your website are those who have a high probability of becoming paying customers.
Search engines and social media networks like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram have paid ad or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) arrangements that you can avail of.
6. Stay Active
Although Digital Marketing gives you the necessary tools to pinpoint potential customers, don’t expect your efforts to yield the desired results overnight. It takes time, consistency, and patience to achieve success in digital marketing.
The rule of thumb is to stay active.
- Try to write and post 2 to 4 blogs every month.
- Aim to produce and upload at least 4 video-based content per month on social media. The best networks to post videos are YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
- Engage with your followers as often as possible. Respond to questions that are posted on your social media page and chat support. Extend your appreciation to positive comments and objectively address negative ones.
- At least once a week, share the personal side of the business. “Behind-the-Scenes” and ”A Day in the Life” types of content are getting popular because they highlight the personalities behind the enterprise.
- Provide a status update every day. For example, if you’re selling baked goodies, post photos of items that you’re developing in the kitchen.
- Frequently participate in forum discussions in the groups you belong to. Actively taking part in focus group activities by giving opinions and insights. Propose solutions to problems. These actions will help enhance your reputation in the industry.
Some community members who are impressed with your ideas and contributions might visit your website to learn more about you.
- Review your website and social analytics at least once a month to get insights on their performance. Take note of changes in the demographics, on-page numbers, and engagement levels. Analyze the results and assess the changes to your digital marketing campaign, if needed.
- Scour the Internet for mentions. Reach out to consumers who posted positive comments, glowing reviews and 5-star ratings, and those who recommended your products to others.
Let them know you appreciate their kind words and ask permission if you could post their comments on your website and social media pages.
In your digital marketing activities, make it a point to always mention your website by including its URL in your posts.
Conclusion
The iconic line from the classic Kevin Costner film “A Field of Dreams” might apply to a fantasy baseball field but not your website.
Building a website doesn’t automatically mean people will come to it. You have to invest in a digital marketing strategy to market and promote your business website to people who need your products and services.
Without digital marketing, your website will just be NPA – a Non-Performing Asset.
However, creating and posting content, preparing a marketing schedule, conducting research, engaging followers, reviewing website analytics, and building links… that’s a lot of work!
As an entrepreneur, your time is best served handling the day-to-day affairs of your business. Managing the demands of a digital marketing campaign will take up a great deal of your daily hours.
The smart approach is to outsource digital marketing to a proven agency like Mountaintop Web Design. We don’t only build award-winning websites. We also provide digital marketing services to our clients.
Our content has received recognition and citations from reputable platforms such as UpCity. We can map out a results-driven digital marketing strategy for business and turn your website into a money-making machine.
Give us a call. We give a free 30-minute consultation.
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