We appreciate that growing traffic can be a struggle for small businesses. That’s why here at the Internet Business School, we’ve created our Local Business Marketing course. But before you delve into the world of local marketing, here’s a few starting strategies that you can use right now to increase your number of clients.
Strategy 1 – Tell Your Website Visitors to Do Something on Every Single Page.
Every page on your website is an opportunity for potential clients to get involved with your business. Take advantage of this lead those prospective customers where you want them, but putting a call to action on all of your pages. This not only maximises the traffic through your website, but you start to train your audience to follow instructions when you give them. If you never ask them to do anything, they’re going to be taken by surprise when you ask them to hand over money. However it’s not surprising for you to ask them to engage every time you deliver content or information to them. If you do this your customers will come to understand your relationship is a Give and Take one, you give them information in exchange for their engagement and then sales. Engagement can be anything from signing up to a free newsletter to directing customers to your blog.
Strategy 2: Use the Sidebar or Breaks in Your Blog to Make Offers
From discounts to simple opt-in to lists, side bars are an excellent place to grab the reader’s attention. The point is simply to capitalise on the attention that blog page is getting. Once they opt-in they can go down your business’ sale funnel, meaning you can monetise the traffic you get from your blog and maximise profit by creating relevant offers on these pages.
Strategy 3: Get Their Contact Info the First Time
For every page and opportunity you present, you should also include a way to capture the traffic and further the relationship with the client, even if they don’t convert immediately. To do this, why not drive people to a URL that will require an email capture before they can get what they want. Another method is to create a retargeting pixel to capture the traffic from your website and remarket to them on Facebook – driving that traffic to a Lead Magnet that can also get you their email address. Now you can market to them wherever they are, inbox and News Feed.
But why is this important? Well, when someone visits your website or sees your sign for the first time, they’re what’s known as cold traffic – they don’t know anything about you and they don’t trust you. However if they see you repeatedly in their News Feed or get content from you in their inbox, they start to warm up to you. The warmer they are, the closer they are to spending. Warming however does take a bit of time. It’s recommend you contact your buyers a minimum of seven times in an eighteen month period. It’ll take a minimum of seven times before they are ready to buy from you, often it’s more. However if you never captured their information at the start, you’re never going to be able to start those interactions in the first place, so always collect a list!
Strategy 4: Focus on Your Products Benefits, Not Its Features
This is especially important if you sell anything over Amazon. When you write a product spec, don’t just write what the product is, include how these features benefit the buyer. Tell them why they should care about this product. When advertising your product, tell the potential buyer how the product will take them from their Before state (unhappiness, dissatisfaction, lacking in something) to their After state, where their life has been changed and improved with the use of your product.
Make sure your benefits are fully explained. You could imagine you’re talking to Homer Simpson as you’re explaining, as he exemplifies some of the traits you need to get through when explaining to a customer. He easily gets confused and can’t figure things out on his own, so explain things clearly. He is however a good person so don’t belittle and talk down to him. Explain everything very clearly to him as he won’t think of it on his own. This approach to marketing works best – assume nothing, spell everything out.
Looking for more expert tips and guidance on how to increase your traffic and client base? Learn how to get more leads, prospects and cash slow to your small business, or start your own local business marketing agency with our Local Business Marketing course.