A guide to drive more engaged customers to your site

Today, we’re going to address the elephant in the room. Having a good website does little to nothing for businesses if it doesn’t drive enough visitors and prospects. While there’s plenty of tactics available for you to drive traffic to your site, this article focuses on three achievable ways for SMEs and entrepreneurs to experience great results.

Content Marketing, or how to be relevant to both Google and your customers

When in 2018, my wife and I considered buying our first home in Toronto, we contacted a few realtors and agencies to arrange some showings and learn more. The trade-off is that you have to give up your email so they can add you to their newsletter, which is fair. The majority of them settled in emailing random and promotional offers, which led me to unsubscribe from their mailing list. The keyword here is promotional. But a few of them opted to send me educational newsletters featuring information about the market in Toronto, the latest trends, and a few offers. To this date, I still receive those emails since, even if we’re not ready to buy now, I look forward to these. The keyword here is educational.

And this is what makes content marketing different from traditional marketing. Content marketing is educational, not promotional. So why does it matter to you? Gone are the days where prospects blindly trusted brands and were making decisions based on traditional advertising.  Today, the power is in your customers’ hands. If you want to experience growth, you need to acknowledge your customer problems first, then create that trust and relationship through content they find relevant, and at the end offer them the right solution – yes that’s where your products or service comes in handy.

When you create content that your audience cares about, you start driving more traffic to your site and also retain your prospects longer. And the longer and more engaged, the more likely to convert your audience is. The same principle applies to brick and mortar stores, big chains do their best to keep you in their store. Ikea has restaurants, and airports make you show up 3 hours before your flight so you tend to buy more.

Another benefit is that search engines rank websites serving relevant content higher. Indeed, Google’s focus is on quality so they prioritize websites that users value. To do so, first you need to identify the keywords and popular terms your audience searches online. There are many tools that can help you – I personally recommend using Google Search Console, Answer the Public, and Uber Suggest. Then, you create content that matches these searches. You will not necessarily see actual results overnight, as SEO is more a long-term objective that is well worth investing in. To achieve quick results, we’ll get to this point a few lines below.

Adding some ‘Gram(s) of social to your mix

This one is almost common knowledge in 2019, but for most (not all) businesses, social media is a fantastic way to reach their audience and get as many eyeballs as possible on their product and services. What is interesting is that not all social media are equals when it comes to results. And while there’s no universal rule, if your main target is the Generation Z (those born after 1996) your best bet is to use Instagram. If your target is more seasoned, then Instagram becomes significantly less relevant and you should spend more effort on Twitter and Facebook.

So you get the idea, first you need to understand where your audience spends time and what they’re  interested in so you can start posting content accordingly. This becomes particularly true when you are looking to improve your brand awareness. In fact, by keeping your audience profile in mind, you start building authority by sharing content that has real value to your audience. Which then leads to a higher engagement and loyalty.

Reaching a broader audience and driving them back to your site with smart ads

With Facebook’s new algorithm, organic reach for businesses is almost non-existent. The easiest way to get around it is to “boost” your posts and create social ads. The problem? Every business chooses this approach, which means it has become now more expensive to reach their audience through paid social as businesses outbid each other.

So if you’re on a budget, this approach can limit your growth opportunities. But if you fall into this category, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use social media and paid social altogether. Paid social media advertising remains in 2019 extremely cost-effective as each platform uses PPC (pay-per-click) which means you only pay for clicks generated.

Paid social is also the easiest and best way for entrepreneurs to test offers, headlines, and other variants to see what works best with your audience. Here’s an example, your current promotion is about a BOGO (Buy One Get One) offer. Your headline on your next ad could simply be “Buy one get one free”. But what if “Get 50% off when you buy 2 items” generates more clicks? The only way for you to know is by running a split test on your social channel. Why? Social ads allow you to quickly learn what engages your audience and pivot accordingly.

Another aspect of ads is Retargeting. Every one knows them. You visit a website and all of a sudden ads about that website keeps showing on other websites, your Instagram and Facebook feed. This is a great way to display targeted messaging to those who left your site without buying and “converting”. Retargeting campaigns require a strategy  and shouldn’t be executed in a vacuum for best results.

The bottom line is that to maximize your effort and observe the best results, you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket. Content marketing and social media helps you with your SEO, while paid social media advertising does wonders to expand your reach, build brand awareness, and optimize your offer and messages. We hope this article will help you get results. To learn more about growing your business, feel free to  email us at contact@dotgrowth.co.

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