10 Cost-Effective Ways to Drive more Traffic

TRUSTe WHITEPAPER
Driving and Converting the Right Traffic
Trust-Building Best Practices for Web Marketing and
Ecommerce Professionals
Andreas Ryuta Stenzel, Online Marketing, TRUSTe
55 2nd Street, 2nd FloorSan Francisco, CA 94105415 520 3491 tel415 520 3420 faxprivacyseals@truste.comwww.truste.com
©2010 TRUSTe. All rights reserved.INTRODUCTION
The goal is to give you a few guidelines on overall approach and strategy you should think about when doing online marketing, as well as a handful of free and cost effective tactical tips to help improve your marketing.
Consider who your specific target buyer is. What type of company and industry do they work in, what are their job titles and those on the buying team, what are their decision making processes and buying behaviors. And what pain points are they servicing by buying your goods and services?
Now consider what your buyer truly values in the purchase. Is it a purchase out of necessity, convenience, price, or brand preference?
Your Overall Approach and Marketing Strategy
Overall Strategy:Where we recommend you start is to think very carefully about these two things - 1. Who your target is, and 2. How they buy. Once identified, finding what is and isn't working and prioritizing your marketing plan and calendar is more straightforward.
Then work backwards from the sale to build out internal and external teams, budgets to your departments, allocations to partners etc. You can quickly apply the 80/20 rule to see where you can optimize resources just by thinking about this now.
How is the demand for your offering versus your sales effectiveness? Is the value proposition so high that lousy sales and customer service people still win and retain desirable customers? Think Apple's i-anything and kids waiting in lines for hours and days. This is a brand purchase. Consider virtualization in the tech industry. This is more of a necessity purchase.
If the value proposition is not core to your target customers needs, your offer, the placement timing of delivery of that offer, and the flow in your webstore or salesperson follow-up needs to be optimal for you to win.
Tactical Tips:Your ideal customer
Look at the information you have about last 100 customers and their purchases in your ideal growth market. What are their job titles, their industries, their original and most recent activities with you. It may seem elementary, but if you cant answer those three things with decent accuracy, then take a look to do some level setting. You may find the marketing person in a company is screaming for your services, while the purchasing department is lukewarm at best when they finally get around to you.
2 ©2010. TRUSTe. All rights reserved.What is working and what is not This is a simple exercise you can do to map out the flow of activities you do to get your visitors to buy.
If you are in a larger organization with multiple products and sales channels then look specifically at a target growth area for your sales. What specific activities are and are not driving sales?
Map out the touch points that come before the successful sales. Track the number of visitors in the upper funnel steps and you will spot the broken pieces quickly.
If you have good marketing tracking systems, you may likely find that many of your marketing and sales activities may drive and service "early sales stage" awareness and interest, then may or may not follow consistently in the consideration and purchase phases. Alternatively for Ecommerce sales, compelling sales and marketing pitches that drove visitors to the cart, drop off as product page specs take over and these visitors lose interest.
RELEVANCE AND DRIVING TRAFFIC
Consider who your specific target is that buys from you.
Overall Strategy:What type of company and industry, job title, buying behavior, and pain points are they servicing by buying your goods and services?
Tactical Tip:Look at the content syndication networks where you can drive targeted traffic by filtering on title levels and verticals, and income levels in the consumer space. With a simple lead form or landing page, you can filter or drive those with purchasing power to your promos. The web has never been more powerful in these regards.
What is driving your specific target to your site to buy?
Overall St... [download for more]