The secret to generating more traffic to your website

increase website traffic

The secret to generating more traffic to your blog and your website

If you are like me, then you are constantly scouring the web for more ways to learn how to drive traffic your blog and get more subscribers on your email list.

Heck, if you’re like me, you’ve probably spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars in courses learning how to become a better marketer for your agency and for your customers.

Just this past week, I’ve read or written these five articles.

  • Derek Halpern of Social Triggers tells you how to gain 2,281 RSS subscribers in 27 days with a podcast.
  • Elena Verlee of PR In Your Pajamas will show you how to get a following using PR.
  • Andrew Warner of Mixergy just released a course that will teach you how to get paying customer from Facebook, without spending a dime.
  • Neil Patel on Quicksprout.com writes extensively on SEO.
  • On this blog, I’ve revealed my 20 minutes a day Twitter strategy.

So, what’s the secret to getting more traffic to your blog and more leads for your business?

A Back Story

When I was growing my agency, I chased every silver bullet under the sun. If there was a course on Facebook, I bought it.  If there was a course on public relations, I bought it.  I was constantly looking for that one thing that would put my agency over the top.

Though my intentions were good, I was stretched too thin.  I ended up creating boring content on my blog.  I ended up with a Fanpage that I later abandoned.  And I had an unused Twitter account with about 500 followers.

I tried creating videos, and doing some PR, and guest posting, and optimized my Linkedin profile and dabbled in SEO.  I did all of the stuff that the experts told me that I should be doing.

And you know what?  I failed miserably.

The Secret: Do Less

The absolute best advice that I could give any agency who wants to grow their audience, and sign up more clients is do less marketing activities.

website traffic
website traffic

The truth is, every one of the articles listed above will help you reach your business goals.  But unless you have a lot of people or money, you can’t possibly follow the advice of everyone who gives it.

When you are first starting your marketing efforts, pick two or three activities that you can focus all of your resources and dominate.

It wasn’t until I scrapped everything that I was doing and focused on doing a few things incredibly well that my agency took off:  Guest posting, email marketing, blogging, and online press releases.

When I started the Sales Leads in 30 Days blog, I decided that I was only going to use Twitter and guest posting to build my email list and get the blog off the ground.

I want to focus on perfecting two strategies.  Once the blog is off the ground, then I can add other elements to propel the blog to new heights.

3 Steps to Deciding which Strategy is best for you

Step 1:  Understand Your Resources

I find that most agencies and companies in general skip this step and jump right into developing goals.

As I’m sure you know, launching a blog can be a long, grueling process.  How much time do you have to grow it?

Do you have any money to accelerate the growth of your blog?

Let’s say you also want to build a Fanpage.  Again, this requires a lot of time (or money) in order to grow a thriving community.  One of the worst things that can happen is that you launch your Fanpage and there is no activity on it because you don’t have the resources needed to grow and nurture your fans.

Before you choose your tactics, determine how much time and money you have to invest.

Step 2:  Define Your Goals

I subscribe to the SMART Goals strategy.

I’m going to share with you a goal that I have for this blog:

The goal of this blog is to have 1,000 people working in marketing agencies, SEO consulting firms, etc, subscribe to my mailing list by July 1st.

This goal is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant to my business strategy, and Timed.

Determining your resources will allow you to determine just how attainable a goal is.  For instance, I plan on achieving this goal with just me doing the labor and no money.  It would be completely unrealistic for me to set a goal to get 1,000 people on a mailing list by February 14th.

Now, if I had $5,000 to buy ads in industry publications and blogs, then I could build my list much faster.

Step 3:  Build Your Strategy

Once you’ve determined which tactics you are going to use, you need to determine the strategy for each.

For instance, Facebook is a great means to create videos in order to engage your fans.  This will help differentiate you over the thousands of fan pages that just use text.

Or perhaps your Twitter strategy will be to answer questions publicly that your prospects have.  This will force you to engage your audience a lot more than I do on Twitter, but that can be a very good, and profitable undertaking.

If you decide that you want to use Google +, you may want to host a Hangout once or twice a week.  If I were growing my agency right now, that’s a strategy that I would definitely use.  There is no greater way to promote your agency than to be face to face with multiple decision makers at the same time.  It’s like going to a networking event whenever you want to.

The point is, you can’t just throw up a Facebook page or a Google + page and expect your audience to join in droves and sing your praises.  Each medium that you choose to leverage will require a strategy unto itself.

Step 4:  Leverage Your Platforms

You can be sure that once I have reached enough traffic here on this blog and attracted a large enough Twitter following, I’m going to extend my reach into other marketing efforts.  Right now, I don’t know what those will be.

But imagine this, if I reach my goal of 1,000 people on my list by July 1st, and have a Twitter following of 10,000 or so, I will be able to hit the ground running with whatever I decide to choose.

I will be able to have a vibrant Facebook Fan Page on day 1, or a community of people eager to listen to my bi-weekly podcast.

I won’t have to work nearly as hard to promote these endeavors as I would if I were starting from scratch.

You too, can do the exact same thing.  Once you’ve dominated the two or three platforms that you’ve chosen, you can leverage that traffic and engage with them in other mediums.

Conclusion

If you are looking to drive more traffic to your website and sign up more clients, then chances are you should be doing less, not more.  Start focusing on two or three marketing tactics that you can dominate.  By doing this, you will be able to leverage a finite amount of man power and money and build a thriving community that will pay dividends in both revenue and engagement.

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