The goal of online marketing isn’t more Twitter followers.
And it isn’t number 1 rankings for your keyphrases.
The main goal is to make more money.
And the first step to do that is by acquiring more customers.
You need a systematic way to bring in more business. Without fail.
If you want to see exactly how to make more money online, then keep reading.
Image courtesy of E_TAVARES
You have to get people’s awareness, turn it into interest, and build trust before they will decide to purchase anything.
Your job is to design systems around these activities to make sure that you’re always generating new customers.
Remember that tactics and techniques always change. So don’t worry about those just yet.
Instead, focus on these 3 main strategies for online customer acquisition.
1. Traffic Generation
The first step is traffic generation. This stage is all about generating awareness and getting people to your site for the first time from a variety of sources.
You can divide all of your traffic into two types:
1. One-time traffic
These one-time activities have an obvious cause-and-effect relationship.
You take action, then experience immediate growth, followed by a significant drop off.
A good example is social media promotion. You submit or promote something to your favorite social media channel(s), and the traffic comes quickly, and dies off quickly.
This type of traffic is hard to predict. So it’s important to focus and emphasize methods that will consistently bring you traffic on a regular basis.
2. Predictable Traffic
This regular traffic gives you a baseline, and something to estimate when you’re projecting and measuring your progress.
The best example is SEO. When you have a good SEO strategy in place, your content or blog posts should continue receiving visits in the future. Your blog then becomes a marketing asset; a library of content that will continue to bring traffic and value over time.
Another example is advertising. Remember that online advertising is an investment when you’re doing it correctly. Investing in online advertising should bring qualified traffic on a regular basis.
When you find a tactic or channel that performs significantly well, you want to try and turn it into a source of predictable traffic. For example, driving at least 100 visits per day to your blog from your Facebook page might be a pretty regular occurance you can count on, estimate, and measure.
Just be careful of where you’re investing time and energy!
2. Lead Nurture
Now you need to turn that momentary awareness into genuine interest before they bounce.
A vast majority of your website traffic will bounce, and be gone forever. Which isn’t good news… because the vast majority of all website traffic is from new visitors.
So you need to have a system in place that converts these people and gives you a chance to build trust.
That begins with a way to capture leads through email, and regularly follow up.
Most people won’t buy the first time they see your website. Or the second, or maybe even the fifth. According to Robert Bly,
A good starting point is the ‘Rule of Seven,’ formulated by the marketing expert Dr. Jeffrey Lant. It states that to penetrate the buyer’s consciousness and make significant penetration in a given market, you have to contact those people a minimum of seven times within an 18-month period.
So you need to get their contact information, and have an automatic system that sends them regular updates… about helping them! No one cares about you. Don’t send them a company newsletter that talks about your company and accomplishments. People only care about themselves.
Remember that people online have problems and they’re are actively searching for solutions. So help their problem, and sell them the solution.
3. Conversion Optimization
Finally, you need to convert your traffic and leads into real sales. Conversion rate optimization helps you turn your existing traffic into free money.
It has one of the best returns-on-investment in online marketing. Here’s a quick overview.
Step 1: Your traffic finds a landing page with one, specific offer. They may come straight from your advertisement, or they may be looking for an incentive you promised them if they sign up for your lead nurturing system from step two.
Step 2: Then you test specific elements on these landing pages to see which convert better. It might be a headline, or maybe the call-to-action your using.
Step 3: The easiest way is to use split testing. Show half of your users the “A” page, then the other half a “B” page with your one change. Use the widely available online tools to run the process for you.
Step 4: If one page performs better (i.e. converts 5% more than the other page), then you have a winner. Time to pick a new variable to test and get started.
Step 5: Track these results and update your website based on this real-time user behavior.
According to Google,
The average AdWords campaign adopting the Google Conversion Optimizer achieves a 21% increase in conversions while decreasing their CPA (cost per acquisition) by 14%.
Just by using conversion optimization, on average people were able to decrease their advertising by 14%, while increasing conversions 21%! Employing conversion rate optimization services can further enhance these outcomes, offering tailored strategies to optimize advertising expenditure and drive higher conversion rates.
Invest for Growth
Online customer acquisition has two variables. The cost to acquire customers (CPA), and the customer’s lifetime value (LTV).
If the customer’s lifetime value is higher than the cost to acquire them (LTV > CPA), then your investment in online marketing will always be a money-maker.
That is how you grow a successful, profitable business. You need to invest (time, energy/effort, money) into things that will make more money.
So design systems around generating traffic, developing leads, and converting sales. And track how much each customer is worth vs. how much it costs to acquire them.
Making more money starts with getting more customers. And if you have a systematic strategy, then you’ll get automatic and sustainable growth.
