Growing website traffic to acquire new customers is usually a predominant concern for most Marketers. Here are 5 proven online marketing tactics that will enable you to maximize your reach and continually increase traffic on your website:

1. SEO & Content Marketing

Goal:
Acquire traffic through Search Engines such as Google and Bing by ranking as high as possible on search results pages.

How it works:
A website’s content is at the heart of the way a Search Engines understands and ranks a website for search on specific keywords. However the way this content is shared and interacted with on Social Media provides a new dimension for Search Engines called “authority”.

Search Engines now take authority into account to rank a website and give it a competitive advantage in search results. Author of articles also have their level of authority through service like Google Plus, and so the author’s authority over a subject matter also influences Search Engines.

Search Engines rank a website based on these criteria:

  • Relevant keywords related to the products, services, an utility of the blog articles.
  • How many other websites link back to the site (page rank).
  • Density of articles and frequency at which new content is published.
  • How many times the website’s content has been shared and interacted with on Social media.
  • The authority, or popularity, of the author of the article.

Successful tactics:

  • Keyword research to select most popular keywords to focus article titles and content on (using to Google AdWords Keyword Planner for example).
  • Regularly publish articles on the website with relevant keywords (at least once a week, ideally several times a week).
  • Share articles on social media properties and create engagement (likes, shares, comments).
  • Monitor SEO performance and traffic performance on selected keywords.

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2. Advertising with Search Engines (Pay-per-Click)

Goal:
Acquire traffic by publishing an Ad on the first result page of Search Engines.

How it works:
Search Engines like Google and Bing enable advertisers to create campaigns that link an Ad to a set of keywords. Advertisers are charged only if a user clicks on the Ad and goes to the website. Hence the term “Pay-per-Click”. Ranking of campaigns on a given keywords go through a bidding process where the more the advertiser is ready to pay for that click, the higher up the Ad will appear on the search results page.

Successful tactics:

  • Keyword research to select most popular & most affordable keywords to focus Ads on.
  • Create different variations of an Ad campaigns to do A/B testing and figure out the right Ad components to optimize the campaign.
  • Monitoring and optimizing campaigns to maximize click though traffic and minimize costs.

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3. Advertising with Social Media

Goal:
Acquire traffic by publishing an Ad on the social network’s user page (or “Wall”).

How it works:
Social Media platforms such as Facebook or LinkedIn enable advertisers to create Ads and position them on targeted users’ profiles. Facebook and LinkedIn particularly enable advertiser to narrow down the target demographic by selecting attributes of their profiles.

There are usually two fees models on these platforms:

  • “Pay-per-Click”: Advertisers are charged only if a user clicks on the Ad and goes to the website.
  • “Cost-per-Mill”: Advertisers are charged a fee for every 1000 displays the Ads has on these platforms.

Another method is to boost the reach of a message posted by a marketer on the social network. Facebook for instance enables marketers to pay a fee to make a Post appear as an Ad on the network user’s pages. This practice tends to yield stronger engagement performance than the classic Ads.

Successful tactics:

  • Create different variations of a campaign to do A/B testing and figure out the right Ad components to optimize the campaign.
  • Create posts on Facebook Page or LinkedIn Page and boost their reach by paying a fee.
  • Monitor Campaign performance and tweak campaign.

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4. Online Contests

Goals:
Collect emails and demographic information from participants through a contest where you offer sweepstakes rewards.
Boost your social media fan base by publishing viral contests where they can invite their friends.

How it works:
If the prize is right and customers trust the brand, they will likely fill in a participation form, give you permission to send them newsletters.

You can maximize the reach of this initiative by running a viral contest where participants are rewarded when they refer friends to sign up for the contest. The most common reward is to reward the referrer too if the friend they invited wins.

Note: you can’t request participants to become fans of your Facebook Page to participate in your Facebook contest anymore.

Successful tactics:

  • Plain sweepstakes contest form.
  • Viral contest where each participant promotes the contest with a unique affiliate link.
  • Photo or video voting contest where participants enter a sweepstakes draw by voting on photos or videos.

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5. Email Marketing

Goals:
Collect email addresses from people interested by your products and services. Create returning traffic by inviting subscribers to regularly come back to your website.

How it works:
Enabling people to subscribe to your newsletter gives them a way of expressing interest in your products and services, and enable you to reach whenever you have something of interest to send to them. When sending out newsletter regularly with a mix relevant content teasers (information, education, fun facts, deals, coupons, contest, etc.), you then create returning traffic to your website.

Successful tactics:

  • Send out a newsletter with interesting content regularly.
  • When you reach a large subscriber base, start segmenting your audience, and target each segment with different newsletter to maximize relevancy.

The Webtarget Guide to Digital Marketing

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