You’ve NOT started marketing your business online if you’ve NOT found a way of driving targeted traffic to your web site or properties. However, you will discover that you don’t just need traffic. You don’t even need just visitors. You need an audience. So what’s the difference?
You can get traffic from pop-ups, pop-unders, spam emails, media buying, PPC campaigns, PR releases and a host of other means. However, some sources and methods might only end up crashing your server due to the huge demand on its resources without yielding positive results.
Take spam emails for example: Depending on the headline and how many were sent out, a good number might actually click to your site. That will be traffic but some of the poorest and lowest form. Also consider those annoying pop-ups and pop-unders. They could take over a person’s screen and force them to see your site but you won’t get the benefits that should accrue from having those eyeballs on your site. Instead you end up annoying a lot of people. This can even become counterproductive as your business becomes associated with unethical traffic generation techniques.
So what’s the point in getting traffic that hurts you instead of helping you become more profitable? Well, you can step it up and begin to look for a higher quality of traffic:
Visitors
Visitors are people who chose to come to your site because you gave them compelling reasons to do so. Yes, they’ll still appear as “traffic” in your stats but they are an entirely different breed. These people will take out some time to look at what you have to offer. They might even visit again. They might even make a purchase or deliver your most wanted response.
You get this class by using non-intrusive methods of generating traffic. Search engine traffic (both paid and free) fall into this category. So also does media buying. The more it is the visitor who finds you, the better for you. But visitors (whether they deliver your most wanted response or NOT) shouldn’t be your goal as you market your business. You need to build your audience.
Imagine a preacher with a congregation of 10,000 people who come in every week and cling unto what he has to say. Imagine a popular TV presenter whose opinions are sought for by a “captive” viewership. Imagine a blogger who is seen as the gatekeeper for a particular niche. These are people who “bend” the conversation in various facets of life. They are very powerful people. They have an audience. So how can your business get such a followership? How can you build an audience? There are many ways you can do that.
Here are some tips:
1. Make sure you make connections with the influencers in the market. People will take notice of you if Oprah calls you the rising star of talk show. On the internet, you just have to look for powerful bloggers, niche operators with large followership on the social networks like Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Offer them value and get them on your side. If they accept you, you can gain part of their authority by association. That’s one reason why guest blogging is such a powerful traffic generation technique. It NOT only brings visitors to your site, it makes you an authority by association.
2. Make sure you have top quality content before you even try to make connections. Influencers in any niche have a reputation to protect. While many sites with great content may NOT achieve pre-eminence in their niche (because they have NOT made the right connections), NO site with poor content can ever build pre-eminence (NO matter the people they know).
3. Make sure you capture their emails (I mean visitors to your site) by offering them something of value. People who opt to invite you into their email accounts are telling you that they believe in what you offer and are willing to pay more attention to you. If you nurture them aright by sending them high value content from time to time, they will form the very core of the audience you seek to build.
4. Target a segment or niche. The more focused your target audience is, the easier it would be for you to produce content that meets their specific needs. Furthermore, the easier the competition would be. There’s always one more space for a new voice provided such a voice can differentiate itself from existing voices.
Pick a slant that’s unique to you. Focus on an area that has been under-served. Put your personality into it and those who like your style will stick with you. That’s building an audience. It may take some time but it is well worth it.
So Why Should You Bother About Building An Audience? There are many benefits in building an audience.
Here are some benefits:
1. You have a ready market for your products and services. All you have to do is tell them you have released a new product (which definitely meets their needs) and they’ll flock to buy. They know you deliver the quality they are looking for.
2. They help spread your business messages. Your audience cannot but talk about you whenever anything related to your niche arises. They have become so attached to your brand that they unwittingly promote it whenever they have the chance. An audience makes word-of-mouth marketing a natural part of your business.
3. They will defend your business from malicious attacks. The web has given people the power to spread their opinions. This could be used for good or evil. An unscrupulous competitor might decide to de-market you by spreading falsehoods about you. If you have built an audience, they’ll rise in stout defence of you. It won’t be your word against your competitor’s word. It would be theirs against your audience. That’s reputation management (do I call it reputation protection?) at its best.
4. Your audience will help you create products that the market really wants and NOT what you think it wants. You can’t belittle the power of feedback from end users. If your end users are happy to be “part” of your business you will get insights that will put you miles ahead of competitors that have NOT built an audience.
