Tactical Execution

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Hello and welcome to Tactical Execution, an information series exploring innovative marketing and strategic business positioning for entrepreneurs and small businesses in an increasingly competitive world.  My name is Patrick and I’m your host.  You can find written versions of these podcasts at TacticalExecution.com and I encourage your candid feedback at the same location.  Today, we’ll be talking about generating organic website traffic so let’s get started.

Building traffic on your website is built on many of the things we’ve discussed so far in this series.  Gaining expertise and giving it away for free will drive traffic to your website.  An effective and “sticky” website design will bring traffic.  Building an email list will bring traffic.  Pay-per-click advertising will definitely bring traffic.  And podcasts and YouTube videos will bring traffic as well.  All of these activities build website traffic but there are a few other tricks to the traffic game and that’s what today’s podcast is all about.  I’ll break these tactics down into four strategies.

But, before we get into that, I need to say I’m purposefully omitting ONE strategy here and that’s article marketing.  The reason I’m doing that is because I’ve devoted an entire future chapter JUST to that topic.  You can get a lot of benefits from article marketing and we’ll talk about that another day.  For now, we’ve got four good strategies to cover.

The first one is to contribute regularly to popular blogs and forums in your area of expertise.  This takes time but it’s extremely effective and I strongly encourage you to give it a try.  The first step is to identify the popular blogs and forums in your field.  You might already know where they are or you might have to do a bit of research.  Personally, I would enter a few keywords along with the word “blog” or “forum” into a Google search and see what comes up.  I would also check the advertisements in popular industry publications, either online or offline.  Those who have popular blogs or forums will go out of their way to promote them.

It’s important to note that you should look for the blogs or forums your CUSTOMERS are reading, NOT necessarily your competition.  For example, if you’re trying to promote yourself as an internet marketer, I wouldn’t necessarily look for forums about internet marketing.  THAT’S where all your competition is.  Instead, I’d look for forums about small business or various professions or trades – people who could BENEFIT from your expertise, NOT people who already HAVE your expertise.  Think about who your CUSTOMER is and find out what THEY’RE reading.

Okay, so once you’ve identified your targets, you want to see who can post articles or comments.  In most cases, you have to register to contribute but I definitely think it’s worth it.  You see, making contributions to these online conversations allows you to demonstrate your expertise directly to your target market.  By contributing regularly, you show your involvement in the field and give your audience a direct look at your knowledge and communication style.  You’re giving your audience an opportunity to SAMPLE your value.  Obviously, you can include a link along with your post such that anyone reading it can quickly and easily link back to your own website.

There’s no question this type of thing can bring a lot of traffic to your website but you have to contribute on a regular basis to keep the stream alive.  Your posts will become outdated fairly quickly so you always need to sustain the effort.  I recommend allocating an hour each day.  Of course at the beginning, it’ll take longer because you have to identify the blogs or forums you want to contribute to and then get a feel for the community but after that, you can visit each website in turn, read what’s going on and contribute your expertise to the conversation.

If you’re unfamiliar with blogs and forums, a good way to get acclimated is to subscribe to the RSS feeds provided by all of these sites.  It’s free and it’ll quickly give you an idea how it all works.  Besides, you can always cancel your subscription if you get tired of it.  The point is; you want to be a reader before you become a contributor.  Understand the medium and THEN find a way to participate and promote yourself.

The second strategy to increase organic website traffic is to start a blog of your own.  Now, I put this second for a reason.  If you have absolutely NO internet traffic, a blog isn’t going to benefit you very much.  You need to get the ball rolling BEFORE you start a blog of your own.  But once you’re on your way, a blog can give your visitors a reason to come back again and again.  Think about it.  You’re using OTHER blogs and forums as a way of marketing yourself to your target market.  Well, once you have some traffic of your own, you can make your internet community available for OTHER people who want to market themselves.

This is what modern marketing is all about.  Make yourself useful.  Create a resource your target market can use and benefit from.  If you can create an online environment where other people can market themselves, you’re doing great.  Now, for some people, this is counter-intuitive because the people marketing themselves on YOUR website are often your competition.  So why help your competition?  Well, don’t worry about it.  At the end of the day, it’s still YOUR website and everybody knows it.  The competitors marketing themselves on your website are endorsing it at the same time.  And besides, these “competitors” are contributing valuable unique content to your website.  In fact, that’s one of the biggest advantages of having your own blog.  It ensures your website is constantly being updated with fresh unique relevant content, improving its ranking with the search engines.

Believe me; the days of feeling threatened by your competition are long over.  You need to make yourself useful.  That’s priority ONE.  And if you’re successful in doing that, you will ALWAYS attract your competition.  They will always try to hang on to your coat-tales.  Get used to it.  The bottom line is; if they’re trying to hang on to YOUR coat-tales, you’re obviously doing something right.  Let them come.  Let them try to make a name for themselves on your website.  That’s fine.  Net net, they’re still making YOUR website more valuable by adding content, and your target market will appreciate it.  You still get the steak dinner all to yourself, even if they get a few table scraps along the way.

I hate to say it that way but it’s true.  You can’t go into modern internet marketing with a scarcity mentality.  You can’t go in with a selfish hording strategy.  You have to have an abundance mentality.  That’s the driving mantra behind today’s marketing gurus.  They all say the same thing.  Build a resource.  Make yourself useful.  And don’t worry if your activity benefits your competition along the way.  If you’re the one taking action, you’ll be the one reaping most of the rewards.

This all relates to the third strategy for building organic website traffic and that is to give people an incentive to visit.  Give them a reason to come; not just once but again and again.  Include something of value; something your target market can benefit from.  Try to include something that gets updated on a regular basis, something your visitors will want to come back for.  Of course, a blog is a perfect such incentive.  In fact, you can include an RSS feed onto your blog so people can actually SUBSCRIBE to your regular content updates.  That means they’ll get notified every time you (or someone else) updates your site with new information.

So, let’s talk about that for a second.  I mentioned RSS feeds before and now I’ve mentioned them a second time.  What am I talking about?  Well, I mentioned this as well in the last chapter on podcasting.  RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and it allows someone to construct their website in such a way that visitors can subscribe to the content you post.  After they subscribe, any new updates or posts you put on your website are fed directly to their computers.  It shows up in their web browser in the same area as their favorites.  That way, they can open their browser and see immediately if your website has been updated with new information.

RSS feeds are a powerful tool to connect with your website visitors but it also increases the pressure to post good quality content.  Believe me; if the content you post is weak, you’ll lose subscribers quickly.  And once they leave, they probably won’t come back.  So take it as a challenge and earn the trust and loyalty of a new internet audience.

In fact, let me say one more thing about this.  While it’s definitely true that you should develop some traffic before you launch your own blog, it’s also true that people DO find good quality content online, even from obscure sources.  When I first launched my “Beyond the Rate” podcast series, I didn’t tell anyone it was out there and the audience grew every single week.  Even today, I’m getting new first-time listeners and I haven’t posted a chapter since June of 2006.  So if you’ve got good quality content, you WILL eventually attract an audience.  The trick is to do it quickly.

But back to incentives.  Think about websites displaying stock quotes or interest rates on their homepage.  Why do you think they’re doing that?  The reason they’re including updating informational features like that is to encourage their visitors to come back again and again to get the latest data.  They’re trying to get their visitors to come back more often.  Think about websites that offer daily horoscopes, updating calendars or daily tips.  These are all strategies to keep your online visitors coming back.  They’re all ways to keep a captive audience.

The things you can offer as incentives will depend on your business but the objectives are the same for all of us, so let’s look a little deeper.  Now, this may all seem a bit obvious but you have to sit down and really think about what your target market could use.  All your competitors are trying to do the same thing so you also need to think about what you can offer that would be a bit unique; something that would make you stand out.

In my mortgage broker business, I used to put together a monthly report called “pillars” and it displayed 20-year graphical charts for 5 economic pillars of the economy: the stock market, P/E ratios, interest rates, crude oil prices and the value of the US dollar versus the Euro.  The charts were all stacked one above the other so you could easily see what was going on in all 5 areas over time, and the effects one variable had on the other four.  It was a fascinating report and nobody else was providing anything like that.  In fact, I’d love to bring it back as part of my Financial Audio series because it was truly unique and I had a lot of great comments on it.

Now, that’s obviously not a daily thing.  I would never update a report like that daily.  It wouldn’t make any sense.  But I could definitely post it monthly and let my subscribers know it’s available.  Based on the feedback I got when I did it before, I know certain types of people really appreciate that type of information.

Anyway, hopefully, you get the idea.  Take some time to think about this.  Think about what you could offer.  Think about what your audience could truly use.  And then add that to your web presence so your visitors can come back again and again to get the current version.  These types of incentives can quickly build your website traffic, not necessarily with NEW visitors but with visitors nonetheless.  And if you make the incentive truly fascinating, your visitors may pass it along within their own circles all on their own!

The forth strategy I’d like to discuss is email newsletters.  We’ve talked about building an email list and that’s obviously step one.  But once you’ve got a list in place, you need to stay in touch with your list regularly and provide real value each time you click “send”.  Obviously, that last part is the hard part.  And it relates to what I was saying before about incentives.  You really have to sit down and think about this.  You have to decide what you’re going to include in these newsletters – not only what the value proposition is but also what will set you apart from your competition.

Now, before we get into that too much, let me draw a quick distinction.  There are two very different ways of staying in touch via email.  The first is to have a standard and consistent email newsletter format.  This is what most of us think about when we think about email newsletters.  Obviously, the content IN the newsletter is different each time but the format and layout is always the same.

The second is a more personal and completely inconsistent format and a lot of email marketers use it.  Why?  Because it works.  These emails look like a regular email being sent by a friend.  They’re usually in text format with no fancy graphics and the content is very conversational, usually selling one product or another.  In many cases, the subject line will have your name in it, making the email that much more appealing.  So let’s talk about both of these strategies a bit more.

There’s no question the consistent format looks more professional but it’s also true these newsletters are read less because they’re so obviously standardized.  They’re like an electronic form letter.  They LOOK like a newsletter and it’s much easier for people to click delete before they’ve read a single word.  In fact, research shows only 19% of newsletter recipients actually read the content.  So taking this approach adds to a professional image but it doesn’t do much for communicating specific information.

The second approach doesn’t really look like a newsletter at all.  It’s just an email and in most cases, the content is casual and conversational.  These emails usually focus on a single product being sold and the content is little more than a sales pitch.  Not surprisingly, these emails don’t exactly add to a professional image but the ARE quite effective.  If the subject line is captivating and the opening line or two are well written, the odds of having the email read are much higher than the other approach.

And by the way, THAT’S one of the primary distinctions.  The standardized newsletter usually has a standardized subject line and a boring introduction.  A recent study found that over 65% of newsletter recipients never read the boring introductory copy.  The personalized emails generally do NOT have a standardized subject line and the opening lines are designed to grab your attention.  So maybe that’s where the learning point should be.

Write your newsletters with the intent to captivate your audience.  Use creative subject lines and begin with some strong positioning statements or questions.  Let your recipients know right away what they’ll be getting from the newsletter.  Narrow the focus if needed and try to give them one clearly identified benefit in each newsletter.

And most importantly, don’t give them the full benefit in the newsletter itself.  ALWAYS leave part of the benefit on your website and include a link guiding them to the right place.  In my own case, I always get a surge of visitors in the 48 hours following my newsletters and that’s what we’re after!

Please visit TacticalExecution.com to get an itemized list of things you can do TODAY to start getting results.  It’s a FREE 1-page PDF file in the members-only section so you have to register and log in, and then you’ll find it under the “Resources” tab.

You can also view upcoming topics by clicking the Marketing tab under Podcast Chapters.  If you have a suggestion for future topics, please use the Contact form to let us know.  And finally, all the websites referenced on this podcast have been included on the Links page.

Okay, thank you very much for listening.  If you like what you hear on these podcasts, please tell a friend about them.  Modern technology like podcasting can help elevate new and innovative thinkers but we all have to play our part to help spread the word for those who deserve our endorsements.  If I am deserving of yours, my thanks.

I DO offer workshops, seminars and keynote speeches as well as consulting services so please email me at Patrick [at] TacticalExecution.com for more information.  I’m also doing an extensive podcast series on stock market investing, real estate finance and the economy.  It’s called Financial Audio and you can find it on iTunes.

Stay tuned.  There is a lot more to come.  In the meantime, think big, take action and market strategically.  Bye for now.