Internet Marketing Tips, Tools and Strategies

Google Analytics isn’t just for seeing how many website visits you get in a month; it is a powerful tool that gives you the ability to understand your customers and their needs based on statistical information. Customer behavior is often dictated by their geographical location and thankfully Google Analytics gives you information on customer location.

So how do you get location data in Google Analytics? Well Google has a handy section under visitors called “Map Overlay”. This allows you to see where your website visitors are located in the world, which you can drill down from country, to state and even to city level maps. 

If you are a company that targets customers in your local area - your surrounding neighborhood, city, or maybe the entire state; knowing how to access this geo-information can help you make improvements to your website content, advertising, etc. to increase traffic and conversions. How?

Find the content that is bringing your target audience and improve on it. Are particular products or content phrasing on your website resonating with a particular audience? Do people in your area use search strings that your website contains? Find the keywords that are driving your target location traffic to your site and write content focused on them.

Really understand who buys your product. Are you under the assumption your customer is from suburban locations? Google Analytics can show you that urban or rural users are actually the bulk of customers searching for your product or service. Knowing exactly who your client is, not who you think they are, helps you develop marketing and sales tactics that work.

Locational information also can tell you if you are limiting your business. By viewing your Google Analytics location information, you might discover that there is potential for expansion to another state or even internationally! Or, maybe you might want to consider adding an ecommerce option to your website that allows users to buy product from areas you aren’t currently doing business with.

Knowing where your customers are located helps you understand them. Understanding your customers allows you to market yourself and your company effectively for success! So be sure to start utilizing Google Analytics location data right away to start understanding where your customers are located and what they need.

Don’t currently use Google Analytics or need some help understanding what all the numbers mean? Contact WSI for an analytic consultation today.  

One of the best things you can do to increase your leads and sales with online marketing is to focus on traffic conversion. If your site is really good at converting traffic (email opt-ins, e-commerce sales, lead forms, etc), you won’t need as much traffic. Too many business owners and marketing professionals focus on traffic and very little time is spent on traffic conversion strategies. Often times you need a lot less traffic then you think to make a lot of money using online marketing.

Here are 4 Traffic Conversion Strategies you can implement to increase conversion.

1) Soft Conversion – I call this traffic conversion strategy the "soft conversion". I call it a soft conversion, because it's a soft introduction to your company. You aren' trying to sell anything at this point, you are using the "give to get" strategy to establish this introduction. This is a must have for every business, I don’t care what industry you are in, you need to build your email mailing list. Using a soft conversion strategy, which is essentially opting into your email mailing list somehow, you are building one of your most important assets in your business – your mailing list.

There are businesses that earn on average about $1 per person on their list every time they mail to them. I know of companies that have over 100,000 people in their lists and each time they send out a high quality email, earn a 6 figure income per mailing. This is not the norm, but even for the small local business owner, having a list of 500-1,000 people to mail to each month keeps you relevant and in front of your target audience. Make sure that your soft conversion opt-ins are tied to your email marketing software and build your list automatically.

Some Ideas for a "Soft Conversion"
• Whitepaper Download
• Sign Up for our Newsletter (come up with a good offer to get people to sign up, give something away, discounts, monthly giveaways, etc).
• Free Information Kit
• Video Access (have a great informational video to share, have people opt in to view it)
• Webinars
• Brochure download

Soft conversion strategies require follow up of some kind. Consider setting up some autoresponders to engage these leads over the next 2,4,10, 30 days to pull them back to your site for main conversion. Your main conversion would most likely be your full lead page offer or product sales page.

2) Landing Pages – Improving the pages that have your offers on them can increase traffic conversion considerably. Split test some different landing page designs and layouts, offers and call to actions. Give the page some time to determine if it’s working or not. Often times people get impatient and change their landing pages too quickly without getting enough data to determine if a change is necessary or not.

If you are a local business trying to drive new leads, don’t overdo it! The simpler, the better in most cases. Make sure you have 1 phone number on the page that is highly visible. Often times, using a local number for a local online campaign (SEO, PPC, Email) is better vs using an 800#. You can also display a lead capture form on the page as well. With the lead capture form, asking for less information at this point will improve traffic conversion, so make sure you are not asking for too much from the prospect at this point or you might just drive them away. Get their Name, Email and Phone number. You may even have to leave the Phone number as “optional” at this stage in the lead generation process. A lot of people do not want to be contacted by phone or do not want to give out their phone number

3) Sell Benefits & Optimize Your Content – Stop trying to sell yourself or your company and simply sell the benefits of what you are offering. Using bulleted lists outlining the benefits of your products and services helps your traffic quickly scan your content and find the solution to their problem. Solve problems with your benefits list vs talking about what your company does. Monitor your conversion rates and if they are not where you would like them to be, start split testing pages or make 1 or 2 changes at a time to measure the impact. Going back through your site and re-focusing your content to sell benefits will improve conversion rates along with modifying your content to be easier to scan for online readers (shorter paragraphs, bulleted lists, use headings).

4) Use Video – video can play a vital role in traffic conversion. Using a video on your landing page, home page or elsewhere will provide a much higher level of engagement with your traffic then text will. This is also a huge differentiator as most businesses do not take the time to produce a video. You probably don’t even need to go and spend much money to create a video, use a Flip Camera and shoot it yourself. Video can provide a much higher level of personal touch with your prospects then your typical web page content. There are all kinds of data online as to the conversion rates of pages with video, do your own research and I think you will find that not using video is a big mistake.

Judging by most of the traffic conversion strategies that we see sites using online, especially for small to medium sized businesses, most companies could double or even triple their conversions in a short period of time simply focusing on these 3 key areas outlined above. What would 2x-3x’s the amount of leads from the same amount of traffic do for your business?