But probably should ask…
Do you have your web site ready for PAID traffic?
It’s very easy to get carried away at the thought of instant traffic to your site in the form of AdWords clicks. But if that site of yours is not ready for traffic, then you’re just wasting your time and money.
I’m not talking about conversion optimisation here – all these things follow later. I’m talking about giving your business the best possible chance of generating ROI from your ad spend, and forming some kind of relationship with the user that just clicked through. Conversions that matter are not always transactional in the form of money in the bank and a product sold. They can often be as simple as an email sign-up or a ‘White Paper’ download. Building a relationship with the researchers and the information hunters is just as important as converting those ready to buy.
The idea here, in simple terms, is that even if this user (who’s click you just paid for on AdWords) does not purchase from you on their first visit, if you get your ‘hooks’ into them somehow, then you may be able to get them back to your site for free the next time when they are ready to buy.
Here’s a list of things I’d consider:
- Email sign-up form (even if you don’t send out emails yet)
- Facebook Fan/Business Page and a ‘Like’ box on your site. (yes, simple as that. They’re free, 500 million ++ people might see it… so go get one).
- A Contact Us form that works… (You know who you are, the site with the broken contact form that emails no one, or the incorrect email address listed.)
- Follow Us on Twitter link. (If you are on Twitter make sure you let people follow you easily).
- Local business? Phone number and even your address on every page!
OK that’s just a few ideas for now.
The other question to continue to ask yourself even while you are paying for traffic is:
Are you also doing everything you can to build a consistent and reliable source of ‘free’* traffic?
* nothing’s ever free… in the case of free web traffic I refer to that which you have not had to purchase it via amedia buy. Eg. SEO versus PPC (SEO you pay for on-site dev, and off-site factors, not the actual click from the search engine).
