The three keys to any online marketing campaign are acquisition, conversion and retention. Acquisition focuses on generating traffic to your website. Conversion is the percentage of online visitors who take a desired action while retention entails the processes associated with maintaining relationships with your existing clients.
1. Ways of acquiring visitors to your website
Search engine optimization – in simple terms, this is the process of making your website appear at the top of search engines for various keywords that are related to your products and services. If your website is properly optimized and appears on top of search engines like Google then you are most likely to acquire more visitors.
Banner and text ads – This is a form of online advertising that entails putting an advertisement into targeted web pages. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking to the website of the advertiser. Banner ads can help you acquire a substantial number of visitors if they are placed on the right network of web pages.
PPC – Pay per click (PPC) is an online advertising model in which advertisers pay their host (Google, Yahoo, MSN e.t.c.) only when their ads are clicked. This is an effective way of looking to acquire online traffic in the sense that only targeted people who are interested will click on your ads.
Affiliate marketing – This is a revenue sharing agreement between a website owner and an online affiliate. The affiliate marketer purpose is to sell on behalf of the website owner or to direct visitors to a specific landing page or website.
2. Converting your online visitors
This is the percentage of your online visitors who take a desired action. Examples of this desired action include buying online, downloads, signing up for a newsletter or membership. It is the dream of every online marketer to have a high conversion rate. However, conversion rates are determined by various factors which include the attractiveness of your landing page & the placement of call to actions within your landing page. Therefore to have high conversion rates it is essential to have well designed landing pages.
3. Retaining your online visitors
Email marketing & Newsletters – If you send these on a regular basis then your recipients will be kept informed of any developments within your business. The other way to do this is by enabling automated blog feeds.
Reward your visitors– It is essential to reward some of your most loyal website visitors. This will keep them coming back to your site in anticipation of getting rewarded again.