Most online marketers are in a constant state of driving traffic to their website. The problem is traffic in itself is not enough for a healthy site to thrive and grow. Yes, traffic is great and every site needs visitors, but eye balls are only one part of a larger synergistic mix.
Just getting more traffic is not a strategy for success no matter what business model your website happens to be. Getting qualified traffic to your website is only one tactic as part of your overall online strategy. Sadly most online marketers just focus on traffic alone and never look deeper to use traffic as a driver to an overall conversion rate marketing plan as part of a three part strategy.
Any successful online marketing strategy consists of three parts, acquisition, conversion and retention. Most often the two outer parts, acquisition and retention are the ones that get all the attention, yet the strength of this strategy is in the synergy between all three parts. If your just focusing on acquisition, driving traffic, you’re leaving money on the table by not optimizing and improving the conversion rate of that traffic and not focusing on retaining those customers for future value.
By increasing your conversion and retention rate your naturally going to be lowering your cost per acquisition and increasing your customer life time value. As a result you’re going to be using your acquisition budget more efficiently. Imagine a bucket with a few holes in it, no matter how much water you pour in you’re never going to fill that bucket. By focusing on just traffic you’re in a constant state of filling that bucket. Sure you’ll probably see some gains now and again in revenue but without filling some of those holes with a solid conversion rate optimization strategy of continuous testing and improvement you’re wasting money.
Conversion rate optimization requires commitment and dedication to improvement. Getting traffic is easy, just throw more money into search engine advertising and you’ll have instant traffic. That’s probably why it’s the knee jerk reaction of every online organization. We’re all swamped with too many things on our plate and unfortunately that means we’ve slipped into reactionary mode, where quick fixes are what get us through the day. More traffic is a quick fix band aid not a long term solution to a successful thriving company.
Photo Credit: Jan08 407 by Lord Jim. used under Creative Commons License.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lord-jim/ / CC BY 2.0
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