Save Yourself From Wasted Website Traffic With Content Marketing

Stop Throwing Away 90% of Your Website Visitors

Standard marketing goals for many business websites is a two-headed monster: get more traffic and get more leads.  This make sense right?  Work hard to get your business in front of the right eyeballs and those that are ready to buy will (hopefully) be compelled enough by the message your brand is delivering that you’ll get a phone call or a form submission through the website.  The big problem is, the majority of your site visitors are not ready to buy.

So, how do you leverage the visit from the consumer that you’ve worked so hard to attract to your website who is not ready to buy?  The answer is solid content marketing.

Understanding the Buyer’s Journey

Let’s take a look at the process we (as consumers) typically go through when looking at making a purchase.  The following three-step process is nicely outlined by HubSpot and helps us understand the different stages a consumer could be in as a visitor to our website.

1. Awareness Stage

The beginning of the journey that starts with high-level research to become better educated on how to address the problem or opportunity.

2. Consideration Stage

Deeper research into ways in solve problem or opportunity.

3. Decision Stage

Finding someone (specifically) that can help with the problem or opportunity.

Most businesses provide tools for Consumers in the Decision Stage to interact with them.  This is usually in the form of a “Contact Us” form or a phone number to “Schedule a Consultation”.  The problem is, these only appeal to Consumers in the Decision Stage which is the smallest group (10 – 15%) within the Buyer’s Journey.  So what about the other 85 – 90% of Consumers in the Awareness or Consideration Stage that are not ready to select a vendor?

Turning Wasted Traffic Into Golden Opportunities

Getting involved in the Awareness and Consideration Stage is a huge opportunity ripe for the pickings.  Think about it… you have Consumers looking for information to help solve their problems.  Be that information provider and not only will you establish credibility with the Consumer early in the Buyer’s Journey, you can also levarage that information to engage with them in the future.

Is this easy to do?  Nope.  You will have to do what most others in your industry are not and create a content marketing strategy with rock solid content that your site visitors will learn from.  The kicker is, you really shouldn’t be promoting your business’ products / services here.  This content should be selfless and totally focused on helping the Consumer with their research.  Does that mean you give it away for free?  Nope again.  Many Consumers will gladly exchange their email address for information of perceived value.

Next Steps

1. Stop losing the majority of your website traffic and create a written plan to help consumers in the Awareness and Consideration Stage solve their problems.
2. Take time to fully understand your target audience.  What is the problem they have that your product / service solves?  Where do they look for answers to these problems?  What type of content do they like best… ebooks, videos, infographics, slideshows?
3. Put the time in to create really good content that helps them solve their problems.  Do as much as you can with the budget you have to work with.  Hiring a professional video production company would be awesome but that is not the only avenue for creating a video.  Leveage the talents of your team and search for outside help for the tasks that require more help.
4. Place the content on your website.  Create engaging Calls-To-Action that link to Landing Pages devoted to your content.  Exchange your content for some of their information… at least get their email address.  Marketing automation software is super handy for setting this up.
5. Promote your content.  Sure, new content on your website will be indexed and appear on the search engines but don’t wait for that to happen.  Let your social media audiences know about your new, awesome content.  Send out an email to your existing database.
6. Now you have their email address, create some type of follow up process so you can keep your business involved in their Buyer’s Journey even after they’ve left your website.
7. Determine what works and what doesn’t.  Do more of what is working and less of what does not.

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By Ken Franzen

President / Co-Founder of Neon Goldfish