Did you know, the current COVID-19 climate presents Sunshine Coast business owners with a huge opportunity to increase online traffic due to the massive growth of digital consumption in the last two months?
A report by Comscore revealed some eye-catching statistics on how the COVID-19 pandemic has currently affected global audiences and consumer behaviour across online platforms.
“The recorded number of website visitors for online retailers topped 779 million in early March. This is also the HIGHEST recorded number of e-commerce traffic for any given week so far in 2020!”
There’s really no denying how consumers have opted for their phones and computers as a form of digital entertainment to cure at-home isolation boredom.
The opportunity to increase online traffic during a season of increased consumer demand and scrolling time is rare. The time to act is now, so start leveraging proven strategies to increase your online traffic.
We’ve put together a list of our top 4 tried-and-tested tactics to boost your online traffic because no matter what industry your work within, remaining top-of-mind is always a priority.
Recommendation #1 : Boost Online Traffic With Blogs
“When creating content, be the best answer on the internet.”
– Andy Crestodina
Blogging Creates Entertainment
Blogs are a highly effective way to communicate relevant and seasonal content with your audience (whilst also increasing online traffic and growth). The idea is that you’re building your business as a trusted source for reliable information. It establishes your credibility within a highly competitive industry and encourages your target market to always flick to your business, should they want up-to-date industry news or ongoing entertainment. If you’re stuck for ideas on what to write for your industry, or writing simply isn’t your thing, don’t worry, we are always here to help – just get in touch!
Not sure how blogging applies to your business/industry or what you would write about or writing isn’t your thing – chat to us…
Blogging Builds Your Websites Organic & Paid SEO
During a climate of business downturn, there is an optimal opportunity to review your website’s organic search ranking and industry popular key terms. The obvious goal is to be ranked number one on Google. Therefore, you can write SEO friendly blogs that will not only appeal to your audience, but also address your business objectives – including increased web traffic!
Writing SEO Focussed Blogs Takes A Village
Writing SEO friendly blogs is not as easy as putting a few keywords together on a page. There is often an integrated digital marketing team; or what we like to call a ‘village of people’; who work behind the scenes to deliver practical, entertaining and strategic content for businesses like yours.
This may include, however, is not limited to:
- Marketing Strategists: Responsible for offering direction on a topic that is relevant and useful for the current climate and business objectives. Additionally, they offer strategies to re-purpose the content through Social Media, Email Marketing, Downloadable Content, Customer Retention & Ongoing Engagement strategies.
- Copywriter: Responsible for pulling the content topic, keywords and SEO tactics into a blog that seamlessly delivers an enjoyable read, as well as increased rankings to a web page.
- Web Developer: Responsible for publishing the blog and ensuring that the hidden Alt Tags, Meta Descriptions and Web Links are optimised towards the focus keywords.
- Digital Marketer: Who is responsible for conducting the keyword research and pulling together reports which offer the direction and reasoning for keywords that need to be targeted within a blog.
So, don’t waste your time writing content that has no strategy! All of your marketing efforts should be working towards a common goal – to be number one. Another great way digital marketing agencies can offer to boost your online web traffic is to promote your content.
Recommendation #2 : Boost Online Traffic With Paid Advertising
“It’s not the best content that wins. It’s the best promoted content that wins.”
– Andy Crestodina
Advertise Through Social Media
Your audience’s interaction with your brand should be a journey that encompasses multiple touchpoints in the digital landscape. According to Smart insight, about 90% of social media users would have actively communicated in some way with a brand or business, if there was a social platform available to them to follow. Building traffic to your website through promoted content on social media happens to be one of those key touchpoints.
Reach A Greater Online Audience Through Paid Advertising
Social media accounts should be treated as another promotional gateway for engaging with new audiences and driving traffic to your website. However, the problem most businesses face is their small social online following. To overcome this challenge, assigning a marketing budget to conduct some form of paid advertising will likely increase your goal to reach your ideal target market – on a much BIGGER scale. Additionally, when re-sharing your blogs to these platforms, you know you’re serving it to the right market who will likely deliver on results.
If you spend time creating content to help promote your business and expertise in the market, you need to make sure your blog gets seen. Don’t let your blog be part of the 42% of professional blog posts which receive less than 10 interactions due to inadequate marketing!
Do you need a Team Of Advertising Experts?
The scary thing about advertising online is the potential to make costly mistakes. We have heard horror stories where novices try to tackle the paid digital space themselves. The outcome included a hefty bill from Google, followed by a lawsuit and a very remorseful business owner.
Realistically, an effective paid advertising campaign is much more than just spending money wherever you like. We can also most certainly guarantee industry giants follow a similar strategy when it comes to paid advertising. These would include:
- Establishing your marketing budget
- Survey market analytics
- Curating informative content that appeals to your audience
- Setting up and design traffic focused campaigns to your website
- Setting up the appropriate audiences
- Performing ongoing optimisations
- Reading and reporting on results
So, we’d highly recommend leaving it to the experts, such as Chilli, who can manage all the above for you. This eliminates your risk of spending money on unknown results or underperforming campaigns.
Recommendation #3 : Boost Online Traffic With Regular Emails
“Email Marketing is effective when you use low commitment calls-to-action.
Emails are invites, landing pages are parties”
Matt Byrd
Do You Leverage Email Marketing? You Should.
Your audience’s interaction with your brand should be a journey that encompasses multiple touchpoints in the digital landscape. Email newsletters are another effective tool for boosting online traffic. You need to design a highly engaging template where you can share the latest news, sales, and offers from your business.
A few ideas to help you to build into regular email marketing include:
- Sharing informational and educational blog posts
- Highlighting new product launches and teaser sales
- Re-posting positive reviews, testimonials and feedback from fans and customers
- Sharing tips and tricks for using your product or service more efficiently
If you’re searching for a professional email marketing team who can bring your ideas to life, reach out to Chilli today!
Do you leverage transactional or re-engagement emails? If not, you need to.
Despite the rise of social media platforms offering remarketing strategies through paid advertising – we still highly recommend implementing emails as part of your digital marketing strategy. Statistics have shown that email marketing is still a highly effective method for re-engaging with your current customer base.
Here are a few stats you should know:
- The number of active email users globally is forecasted to reach 4.3 billion in 2023.
- Average expected ROI is $42 for every $1 you spend on email marketing.
- Sending 3 abandoned cart emails results in 69% more orders than a single email.
- 49% of consumers would like to receive promotional emails from their favourite brands.
A few tactics to upsell to your customers where a digital marketing team can step in and assist include abandoned cart emails, upsell emails after product or service purchases, special offers or discounts, and special offer emails after cancellation.
Are you implementing any of these ideas?
If you’re not leveraging re-engagement emails within your marketing plan – don’t stress. Chilli has you covered. Get in touch!
Recommendation #4: Boost Online Traffic By Improving Your Local SEO Tactics
“Successful SEO is not about tricking Google.
It’s about PARTNERING with Google to provide the best search results for Google’s users.”
– Phil Frost, Main Street ROI
Review Your Local SEO Strategies
Businesses who are not paying attention to their local SEO strategies are falling behind. If you own or work for a brick and mortar business, your first priority should be to review your local business listings. This includes:
- Adding location pages to your business’s website
- Improve the consistency of your business’s Name, Address, and Phone Number across every platform online (including social media platforms)
- Update everything in Google My Business and check once a month for relevancy
- Focus on gaining real reviews
All of these simple and fast tactics will boost your local ranking for customers within your geographical area. These are small elements that most business owners overlook. However, it’s these key elements that go into a Google algorithm, assisting customers to find your website.
Are you interested in learning how Chilli can boost your local SEO ranking further? Send us a message!
Ask For An SEO Crawl Report
If you’re unsure what the health of your website is and likelihood to appear in searches – conduct an SEO crawl report, these typically detail the errors and areas of improvement to boost traffic to your website (i.e. page load times and duplicate content).
Ask For A Website Audit
If nitty-gritty website research isn’t your cup of tea, we recommend conducting an in-depth website audit. A website audit involves scaling through your website and identifying any underlying structural issues which could also be hindering your web growth and traffic reach.
Fill out our Chilli enquiry form today for your free SEO crawl report and advice from our team!
So…Where Do You Begin?
Ready to increase your website traffic but don’t know where to start?
Our friendly team at Chilli is here for you with all the resources you need for digital marketing and beyond!
With over 25 years of experience assisting both large and small businesses, we’ve executed digital marketing strategies that help boost conversion rates and website traffic through targeted advertising and strategic algorithm research.
We are your experienced digital marketing agency on the Sunshine Coast. Contact our team today to schedule a meeting, phone or video call with us!
