We’re often asked what the best channels are to use to generate traffic, so in this post, as an Internet marketing company, we’re going to provide some quick tips on how to approach traffic generation and dominate your market.
Whenever I speak to a new client, I always recommend performing research to uncover the traffic and lead generation opportunities that exist. A quick way to get started with this research is to put together a list of the top 10 to 20 keywords that you would like to dominate in your market. Then use Google’s keyword analyzer tool and take a look at the search volume. Better yet, if you have run or are running a PPC or SEO campaign, take a look at your highest converting and highest volume keywords, and develop your list from the most important to least important keywords.
It’s then a matter of uncovering the advertising or direct response marketing opportunities that exist. An easy way to achieve this is by typing in your keyword phrases into a browser and reviewing the sites that come up. This is all about buying real estate at the best possible price. It’s about maximizing your voice share in the most cost-effective and results oriented way possible.
There are many opportunities that exist, such as sponsored links (PPC), organic listings (SEO), display advertising on the various sites that are ranking well, and email lists. There are also different models that you can use to buy the media from the various sites including on a cost per thousand impressions (CPM) basis, cost per lead (CPL) basis, or a cost per click (CPC) basis. The key here is that you want to be able to compare the various opportunities that exist against each other, and purchase media based on projected results.
Here’s a quick example. If you’re using SEO to rank well and it costs $2000 to generate 100 leads, your cost per lead is $20. Since this is considered a leading indicator of results, you also want to look at some lagging indicators to ensure that your leads are also converting to sale efficiently such as the cost per sale (CPS). Using the same SEO example, if your lead to sale conversion is 10%, your CPS is $200.
Now, let’s say that you find a banner advertising opportunity at a $10 CPM for a leader board that’s above the fold and you purchase 10,000 impressions. If you project a click-through rate of .04 and a Website unique visitor to lead conversion rate of 10%, your projected cost per lead is $31.25. On the surface, you may say that it’s more expensive than your SEO leads, but there are many other factors to consider.
First, if you have a high lifetime revenue per customer, you may want to increase the number of channels that you are using to drive traffic and sales. Second, you may want to rapidly grow your business and are willing to invest more in lead generation. Third, you have to consider your cost per sale, not just your cost per lead. You may find that these leads convert more efficiently than other channels. And lastly, your campaign can be optimized to continue to improve the efficiency of your campaign including your banner ads and landing pages.
This is just a quick example of two channels. Imagine how quickly you could grow your business if you are leveraging all of the opportunities that exist through each channel and through the various vendors within each channel.
Beyond what’s outlined above, there are so many other ways to generate leads for your business and scale it up from affiliates to ad serving networks to retargeting. Stay tuned for more posts on lead generation. It truly is one of the most important areas to focus on if you want to grow your business. If you have any questions, please comment.