The online world has grown significantly since the beginning of the pandemic, and retailers are finding it harder to compete with other websites. Even if you make some developments and use paid advertising, consumer preferences can change in the blink of an eye. All the money you are spending on ads may not prove to be as useful as you thought.
Many businesses find it difficult to come up with new and innovative ways to increase their website traffic. Whether you are an entrepreneur or a business veteran, here are some different methods that have proven to yield results in increasing website traffic:
- Create a Blog
- Stay Active on Your Social Media Pages
- Utilize the Power of Influencers
- Perform Keyword Research
- Send Email Newsletters
Create a Blog
Curated content is one of the best ways to bring more traffic to your website. Not only will it make your current customers want to come back to your page more often to see what is new, but it will also bring new shoppers who may just be looking to read up on a topic you posted, find out you sell merchandise, and purchase something before they leave.
In order to create content that will attract the right visitors to your website, you must first understand the buyer persona you are targeting. Once you know your audience, you can post about topics that will naturally attract these consumers. Hubspot offers these five steps to help retailers create an interesting blog post:
1. Identify Your Buyer Persona:
Find out more about your target market. Understand everything from job title to pain points.
2. Conduct SEO Research:
Learn what your audience is searching for on search engines so you can provide the best content.
3. Write a Draft:
Begin by drafting a post that answers your audience’s questions. Use interesting angles to make your post stand out.
4. Publish:
Publish your post through the blog on your site. Use SEO tools to optimize your content.
5. Promote:
Promote your blog post on social media and email newsletters to generate traffic. The more traffic your post generates, the higher it will rank in search engines.
“Retailers can bring in a lot of qualified search traffic to their websites by simply writing blog posts on topics their ideal customer is interested in,” Ryan Turner, Founder of Ecommerce Intelligence, said. “Answering the most common questions related to your product line and selling in a wider market is a great place to start. Many of these longer tail search queries will have very low competition in search engines, and you already know anyone searching these topics is a great prospect to get your business in front of with helpful content.”
Stay Active on Your Social Media Pages
Social media is another great tool to bring more traffic to your website. Besides posting to your different platforms, you can also use Instagram Stories, live video, IGTV, or Facebook Messenger. The key is to always keep up-to-date with the latest features, because that is where all the users will be flocking toward.
Kylie Ora Lobell offers some key tips to make the most out of your social media usage and bring more traffic to your website:
- Post content across your social media platforms, (blogs, e-books, white papers, infographics, videos, etc.)
- Interact with followers by replying to them, reposting their content, and tagging them
- Use relevant hashtags
- Update the link in your bio to promote new content and products when they come out
- Change a cover photo to promote new merchandise
- Tag influencers who may be interested in your products
- Include enticing information from the content to encourage consumers to click the link
- Reply to other users looking for answers with links to your website and blog
“Social ads on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, along with search ads via Google Adwords and Bing, are usually worth testing. This is especially true if a brand does not yet have a strong organic presence on social media, or in search engines. Paid ads are often the fastest way to get buyers to an ecommerce store. We always recommend established brands invest into a solid email marketing program as well. This is because keeping existing customers and turning them into loyal brand advocates over time is always more profitable than new customer acquisition. Email marketing is a very cost effective way to do this,” Turner said.
Utilize the Power of Influencers
Word of mouth has always been a great way to bring new customers into your brick-and-mortar storefront, and that still rings true for ecommerce websites. Influencer marketing continues to be a growing trend because it is a budget-friendly paid advertising option for smaller brands to drive more traffic to their website. When influencers post discount codes, links, reviews, or giveaways of your products, you are tapping into their audience.
Hubspot offers some great tips on how to create an effective influencer marketing strategy:
1. Determine Your Campaign Goals
The first step is to create goals for your influencer marketing strategy — these will help you measure the success of your campaign. Think about your objectives in terms of reach, relevance, and resonance.
2. Determine your Campaign Audience
Regardless of which type of influencer you work with, your target audience will remain the same. Different influencers may have different ways of connecting with your audience, but your business’s overall marketing goals and buyer personas do not change.
3. Set Your Budget and Choose Your Influencer Type
There are five major types of influencers: micro-influencer, celebrity influencer, blog influencer, social media influencer, and key opinion leader. Determine which type will work best for your business’s goals and target audience. From there, you can start building a budget.
4. Choose Your Influencer and Review Their Work
Once you have determined the type of influencer you want to work with, it is time to identify the right one for your brand. Quality of content and engagement are the top two factors marketers review when considering an influencer on social media, followed by alignment with company values, branding, and follower count.
5. Develop Your Campaign Messaging for Your Influencer
Once you have chosen an influencer, it is time to plug them into your campaign. Work with your marketing team to develop your campaign messaging and determine what content your influencer should, and should not, publish.
6. Finalize Campaign Expectations with Your Influencer
Review all of the expectations you have for them in addition to any expectations they have for you. Remember, your chosen influencer may have worked with other brands before yours — meaning, they may already have their own processes in place for the way they do business.
7. Pay Your Influencer
They do not work for free, so you will need to discuss compensation early on so you can both be on the same page about what the work will entail if you decide to move forward.
8. Measure Your Campaign Results
Lastly, you must measure your influencer marketing strategy results. This is how you will determine the level of success you have had in reaching your audience with the help of the influencer.
“In many cases influencers can be good resources to bring traffic to your website, but they need to be vetted to ensure the traffic is likely to be qualified,” Turner said. “An influencer with a few hundred thousand followers will be able to generate significant traffic, however it might not be very targeted unless their audience is niche. Many online retail brands see a higher ROI working with a handful of smaller micro-influencers who have less overall followers, but more engaged ones around a specific subject or niche. In this case, there is a much higher chance of the traffic converting to sales.”
Perform Keyword Research
Including relevant keywords on your website can not only help bring your blog more traffic, but also your products. Research the different words and topics that consumers are looking for so you can include them in product descriptions and blog content.
To conduct keyword research, use tools like Moz, Ahrefs and SEMrush. These sites show what keywords competitors are using, how often people search for keywords, how expensive the keyword is for pay-per-click ads, related keywords and much more valuable information to guide keyword strategy. Hiring an SEO agency is always an option, as well. They can offer valuable insights and perform audits to identify issues that may be keeping your site from being shown in search engines.
“Keywords are highly important for SEO, but you also do not want to over-optimize them. Google understands what consumers are looking for and what a web page is about without excessive keyword use. Keep keywords in mind, but always write for humans rather than search engines. Keyword targeted blogs can attract new visitors consistently, but the web page also needs to turn visitors into customers with good copywriting and genuinely helpful content,” Turner said.
Send Email Newsletters
Email newsletters are great for keeping your current customers informed about any sales, new products, and general news happening within your company. This helps to keep your brand relevant and at the top of their mind.
Kylie Ora Lobell offers some best practices for email marketing:
- Include enticing information from the content in the subject line and in the body of the email.
- Insert a link or button that subscribers can click to read more of the content.
- Make sure emails are mobile-friendly. Links should be easy to see, since 46% of all email opens are done on mobile devices.
- Employ personalization tactics by including the name of the subscriber.
- Make the email visually appealing with the use of well-designed templates.
- Conduct A/B testing to see which versions of emails receive more opens and clicks.
There is so much that businesses can do to bring more traffic to their website. Get creative and conduct some tests to see what works best for your audience.