Stop Driving Traffic, Start Capturing Leads
By Chris Chariton, vice president of marketing services & product management, GlobalSpec

If your Web strategy focuses on driving traffic, you end up with anonymous clicks and page after page of site traffic reports with limited value.

Rather than driving traffic, focus on getting motivated prospects and valuable customers to visit your sites and convert them into qualified sales leads. By re-framing your objectives, you may end up reallocating some of your online marketing investments.

Take keyword ads on general search engines. While these are important parts of an online marketing strategy, your ads may not be reaching the audience you are interested in targeting. You can end up paying for a glut of unqualified traffic — even if you have the right keywords.

Business-to-business advertisers can avoid attracting unqualified traffic from the vast ocean of consumers visiting mass market search engines. One way is being more focused with your keywords. Instead of using "pumps," consider using "turbine pumps," a keyword geared toward a specific audience. Using long tail SEO keyword practices will attract people with the same specific and targeted interests.

Another strategy delivering motivated prospects – not just clicks – is displaying ads only to targeted audiences. You can't always do this on general search engines. But you can with some B-to-B oriented destination sites – vertical search engines – where your filtered, targeted audiences are aggregated for you.

Other strategies helping drive qualified prospects and not just traffic to your site include having a presence in relevant online directories, advertising in appropriate e-newsletters and showcasing your capabilities with banner ads on targeted sites.

A robust, visible presence — not just a link to your Web site — in online directories provides branding and messaging capabilities to motivate qualified prospects to visit you. Look for directories that are geared exclusively toward your B-to-B audience. They offer multiple options for showcasing your company and products.

Purchasing ads in e-newsletters can also change the focus from traffic to qualified leads. When determining an e-newsletter ad strategy, consider both the size of the audience and the mix of readers. Ask the publisher for both the number of subscribers and a subscriber profile, preferably by industry and job function. Review the subscriber profile and you'll know if you're targeting the right audience.

Finally, don't forget online banner ads that appear on targeted Web sites. Seek out a partner that offers a banner ad network allowing you to reach targeted audiences across multiple sites with a single buy, helping to save media research, program management and tracking time.

These strategies drive prospects to your site, usually to a specific landing page deep within your site containing relevant content. Now the other half of the equation comes into play: You need to convert these visitors into qualified leads.

Accomplish this by offering valuable content that qualified prospects will register to obtain. In other words, exchange something of value (their contact information) for something of value (a white paper or Webinar offer). Your lead-focused landing page should include a simple form, plus an e-mail address and phone number for you to capture.

Conversion of site visitors from nameless, faceless clicks to identifiable prospects also gives you a way to accurately measure the effectiveness of your marketing initiatives. This allows you to shift dollars to the programs that perform the best.

Follow these suggestions and you'll never again incorrectly focus on driving traffic to your site. Your focus will be exactly where it needs to be: on customers, not clicks.

---Source: Multichannel Merchant List & Data Strategies June 30, 2008 newsletter (www.multichannelmerchantmag.com.) Chris Chariton is vice president of marketing services and product and product management for GlobalSpec. Reach her at CChariton@globalspec.com