Looking to increase sales? Even if your site is already generating leads or sales, there is scope to improve it further through campaigning i.e. short promotional activities designed to engage client interest.
In supermarkets we see these as ‘specials’; and we get bombarded with them in TV advertising, so consider using a campaigning strategy to promote your business via your website.
Ideally a campaign will add value for your clients, while not costing you much if anything e.g.
• Seasonal products or services
• Launching a new product
• Engaging a new client segment
• Bundling to create a larger sale
• etc
These are all opportunities to engage and entice your clients. Try to be creative, but avoid discounting! Here’s a few tips to get you started with your online campaigning.
Paid search for campaigns
Paid search is ideal for campaigning because it is quick to deploy and can be highly targeted. Google AdWords is the most popular paid search system because of Google’s absolute domination of search in Australia.
If you want to reach Australian women 25-34 years; Small business owners based in Adelaide or South Australians with interests in a particular hobby or indeed almost any other target segment, AdWords will do this for you much cheaper than traditional marketing mediums.
The Google Keywords Tool lets you select keywords and you can add up to 2,000 into AdWords based on your target and budget.
Control your Google AdWords expenditure with a daily click budget.
If you have multiple segments then setup multiple Ad Groups for improved targeting, and get campaigning almost straight away.
Organic search campaigning
Using organic search for campaigning can challenging, but ultimately more rewarding. It is rare these days to find keywords that are not already being targeted and competitive keywords take months of lead time to gain appropriate ranking.
A good PageRank on your home page really helps so continue collecting links to your site.
There is an inherent delay from adding your campaign content to it being digested by Google so you can’t rely on attracting campaign related searches immediately. Because of this I suggest starting with a teaser on your home page linked to the campaign page.
If you have recurring or seasonal campaigns, leave the related pages active in your site rather than removing them. This allows search engines to index the page and you to cultivate links to improve its ranking ready for the critical period.
Prepare your site early for upcoming seasons and then lure search engines to update your new content by submitting your XML Sitemap.
Measuring your campaign success
As always, I recommend tracking your campaign with Analytics.
When there are no related visitors then you need to revisit how you are trying to attract them.
If you do generate campaign traffic, but no sales don’t be disheartened. Analytics can track visitor activity trends (i.e. click streams) through your website, which is effectively their feedback on your offer.
Click stream analysis is the online alternative to focus groups, only your visitors tell you what they think with mouse clicks. Modify your offer and try again.
Mike Moran’s book title says it all: Do it wrong quickly
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