Web Design in Oklahoma City

This is part five in our series on "Getting results from your website." Other articles in the series include: "part one: the website hub," "part two: the impact of design," "part three: the need for do-it-yourself content tools," and "part four: the power of blogging," and "part five: keeping it simple." In this article, we're going to discuss how to get the right traffic to your website through Internet marketing.

The right traffic

Driving new visitors to your website is critical, but the idea is not to get as many people to your website as possible. It’s about getting people to your website that need what you have to offer. This isn’t a new concept. It holds true in traditional marketing as well as new media. You want to get your brand in front of your target audience. I recommend developing a plan using the following four steps.

Define your target audience

Defining your target audience sounds simple enough, but it can be more difficult than you think. You need to list out descriptions of the types of people that make great customers for your business. Where do they live? What languages do they speak? How old are they? How much money do they make? Where do they shop? And, perhaps most importantly, what sites do they visit often when they use the Internet?

Find your target audience

Once you've defined your audience, now you need to figure out how to find them online. Ask yourself — "When my target customer goes online, what do they search for? What phrases do they type into search engines? What websites do they visit when they are looking for what I have to offer." You might want to also consider specific questions about major web communities such as — does my target audience use Facebook? Do they use YouTube, Twitter ... etc.? Try to identify as many places on the Internet as possible where large numbers of your target customers can be found.

Engage your target audience

Now comes the fun part. Get in front of your target audience online. There are four main ways to do this.

1. Search engine optimization — optimizing your site to show up in the natural or organic search engine listings when users are searching for the things your target audience searches for. This process can be complex, but extremely valuable. If you're not sure where to begin, it is often best to enlist the help of an SEO company for guidance.
2. Pay-per-click advertising — using tools like Google Adsense to put your ads in front of people who are searching for the things your target audience searches for. This can get you on the search engine listings faster than SEO and can be a good jump start to your campaign. You can also use this type of advertising on social networks like Facebook and really fine-tune the target customer.
3. Banner advertising — identify websites that your target audience frequents and consider purchasing banner ads directly on that site. This is generally most valuable for niche segments where you can purchase inexpensive ads on smaller sites to reach your audience. Often on broad segments banner ads can be very expensive and might not be your best route.
4. Social media interaction — choosing to engage your target audience personally through the online social networks you have identified as important to them. Jumping in is the best method when engaging your audience in this way, but be careful not to do too much too soon. Most people get suspicious of someone who suddenly shows up out of nowhere and starts throwing as much information as possible at people. So, take it slow and build your reputation and presence in the community and your connections will naturally follow from there.

Monitor and modify your plan

If you are doing Internet Marketing, the most important thing to remember is it doesn’t happen overnight. Successful campaigns take time and lots of work to generate results. One of the most important things you can do to ensure success is to continually monitor and modify your plan over time. 

In future posts in this series, we are going to discuss setting goals and tracking results. These activities are critical to help you determine if you are having success in your efforts. The nice thing about online efforts, however, is that everything is measurable. By driving traffic and monitoring results, you can have great success in marketing while keeping your costs as low as possible.

If you have questions about online marketing or anything discussed here, we'd love to help. Contact us and one of our Internet consultants will be happy to speak with you.