5. TRAFFIC

You have a plan, a selected target market, a product, and a conversion mechanism.

Now you need traffic. People, prospects. Folks with cash and a desire for what you have available.

Let's consider key traffic sources in modern marketing:

Online Traffic Sources

My advice is to group sources of online traffic into 5 areas.

Search Engine Marketing Programs
Paid Advertising Programs
Email Lead Gen Programs
Partner Programs
Social Media Programs

Search Engine Marketing Programs

SEO – 'Free visitors from search engines' is what some SEO's call it. But having worked as SEO Manager for the largest independently owned loan brokerage in the UK, I can tell you that traffic from the search engines is not free. Despite not paying per visitor, you still pay in resource time and expertise to be able to rank highly for enough key terms to bring consistent and targetted traffic from SEO.

PPC - A very fast and relatively easy way (easy if you know how I guess) of bringing hordes of traffic to your site almost instantly, and completely trackable for performance measurement. As SEO Manager for the loan brokerage we managed a Pay Per Click budget of thousands of pounds every month (I won't disclose past clients figures of course).

Social Media Programs

A relatively new phenomenon that has evolved with technology beyond the old Internet's bulletin boards, and message boards, into full blown personality profile driven, video enhanced, user generated communities.

Tapping into Social Media is expensive, but vitally important to 1. keep up to date with trends in your market. 2. survey and understand your target prospects. 3. Develop inlinks to your site important for SEO. Tapping the viral distribution of your marketing messages by users sharing with their friends. Etc.

Paid Advertising Programs

Banner advertising is often the first resort of corporate marketing. Paid Ads should be seen as a significant yet small part of the overall generation of new visitor traffic.

Email Lead Gen Programs

As Marketing Manager for Database Group Interactive, I will be able to offer an attractive package for very rapid lead generation, including fully permissioned list rental and broadcast services (as well as other specialist email solutions). Contact me for details.

Partner Programs

Affiliate Programs – Having a horde of loyal affiliates that actively promote your product to their client / customer database is fantastic, important, and just as complicated as the other sources of traffic.

Offline Traffic Sources

There are many ways to skin a cat. Here's how I skin my offline traffic sources into 5 broad categories:

Broadcast media – tv, radio, newspapers, magazines
Space advertising – flyers, billboards, print-ads
In-person events – industry events, exhibitions, conferences, trade shows,
Direct marketing – leaflet distribution, direct sales, direct mail
Partnerships – Individual or company, formal or informal – other people of influence that can bring you leads

Converting Traffic Into Leads

All that new visitor traffic according to the Aggresive Marketing Traffic Model above, should be directed to open content which attracts them into an optin process so that you acquire their contact details (at minimum this should be their first name and email), and only then do you introduce them to your actual sales offers.

This gives you the opportunity of building a Database Program with a pool of prospects that can be educated and enticed over time, so that at the right moment for them, when their desire or pain is most pressing, you will be in contact with them so they see your offer and by.

I am available on a retainer basis to advise on combinging sources of traffic, and integrating them into your marketing funnel.