Case Study: I have a customer with a pretty decent offer on their site but very low sales.  There are a number of ways to increase traffic profitably, which results in an improved website ROI.

"Pat" has a website in a decent niche that would seem to be profitable. Pat has a significant background in the field, is passionate and provides information that can significantly improve circumstances for site visitors.  Like many information marketers, Pat would like to increase sales of monthly membership and related products and services.

But Pat is busy and may not have the desire or resources to spend significant dollars promoting the site, so what could Pat (and others) do to increase the number of prospects entering the online sales funnel?

Let me count the ways!

1) Pat has a goldmine in a Goldmine database – nearly 1,000 names of people who have done business with Pat.  Some may just be fans or others within Pat's network, but 978 names and almost as many addresses is a significant resource.  Pat should consider sending letters to them announcing the benefits of the site.  And for additional 'frequency' (see below), I recommend that Pat send out postcards to this list.  How big is your goldmine?

2) Pat could also ask these brand loyalists to refer their contacts to Pat's website.

3) Pat is a pretty decent writer and has a whole hard drive of resources that could be re-purposed into articles that could be uploaded to free article submission sites like www.ezinearticles.com.  Each article has a resource box that would link back to Pat's website.  The inbound links might help with search engine optimization, but traffic from sites that post Pat's articles will add peeps to the funnel.

4) Pat could post free articles on the site, which would improve Pat's online offering, but also provide more link bait for search engines to find, therefore improving Pat's reputation and rankings with the search engines.

5) Pat might improve natural search engine results with a modest Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program.  It's one thing to guess at the terms people use to find a site, but it can be really illuminating to competently research what people are looking for.  An example is a customer who wanted to be found for "telephone installations," but research showed that people hardly use the word 'telephone' in a search – they use "phone."  Another client is a guerrilla marketing coach, but people have come to his site by mis-spelling "guerilla marketing" and "gorilla marketing."  The downside? You need to understand what you're doing and SEO can take several months to build rankings.

6) Sites can get immediate traffic using paid search (also known as "Pay-Per-Click" or PPC.) One of the other benefits of PPC is that you can set up campaigns for very specific keywords that might not be broad enough for SEO, but collectively account for dozens or hundreds of visitors.  Again, proper research is the key, and managing the bids is important to keep costs under control. It's probably more cost effective for Pat to hire someone to do this.

7) Sometimes, just submitting your site to the major search engines, can improve your rankings.  Try these:

Google          MSN          AskJeeves

Just understand 3 things:

1. The services that offer to submit your site to hundreds of search engines for a modest fee (say $39) rarely help build your ROI.  The big search engines will not accept automated submissions.  And while some niche search engines may be effective, especially in some vertical markets, your efforts are best spent trying to rank in Google, MSN, etc.
2. Even when you submit your site to search engines, it could take weeks before you see a benefit.
3. Search engines put alot of creedence in sites that are updated frequently.  You need to freshen it up weekly for best results.

Pat can re-purpose more of the stuff on the hard drive into blog posts.  Search engines love blogs and blogs can easily be updated by nearly anyone.  It might take a commitment of 30-60 minutes a day, or Pat could develop several posts on the weekend that could be scheduled to go out a regular intervals.  Blogs are often read in news readers by subscribing to the blog's RSS feed, a free service that distributes site content.  RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.

9) Pat can develop another revenue stream and initiate a system by creating digital content and selling it on sites like Clickbank, where information and other digital products are sold by others for a healthy commission.  The buyers of, say a $7 or $19 e-book can then be upsold to the monthly membership product or other higher priced products or services.

9b) Pat could offer Clickbank products for sale on Pat's website too!

10) Inbound links improve search engine rankings and the sites that link to you can also provide traffic.  Pat should consider contacting other sites for a link, especially "authority" sites.  I'd recommend that Pat use the best keywords that were researched for the SEO and PPC suggestions above in the links the other sites post to Pat's site.  Pat would also benefit from using free link popularity tools that can be used to determine who is linking to Pat's competitor sites and asking for a link.

11) Pat should also link OUT to authority sites as that can improve search engine juice too.

12) Public speaking is an excellent way of promoting a website and hundreds of organizations need keynotes, workshop leaders and seminar presenters.  Some will even pay!  We've built websites for public speakers and almost all of them book more business as a result of public speaking.  Back of room sales help too!

13) Hosting a radio program, either online or on-air, can be an effective means of building your brand and filling your funnel.  But Pat might also benefit by being a guest on a radio or TV program.  Sending letters or emails to program hosts and producers should net interviews.  (I was in major market radio for 25 years.  I have some tips and tricks to help get more bang our of an interview.  Maybe I should jsut blog about it!)  Pat should shoot for Oprah or the Today Show.  Anything is possible. 

One speaker we know tries to schedule a media appearance anywhere he speaks in the country.  His approach? "Hi, I'm going to be in your town speaking to (whoever) and would like to offer (my valuable expertise) to your (listeners, viewers, readers, members.)"

That's 13 good ways to build online business!  Pat may also get even more ideas from reading any of the dozens of guerrilla marketing books that are available.  Guerrilla marketing is all about low-cost or no-cost marketing.

But, it's important to test a number of ideas to see which ones work best.  They can easily be done in your spare time, but serious marketers think about promoting their products and services daily.  And repeat, repeat, repeat.  You'll have much more success promoting to someone on multiple occasions that just once.  It's best to do it 5 times to a list of 100 then just once to a list of 500.  Use your initial success to ramp up the program.

But, by all means, put together a plan.  If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.  And if you fail to do anything, with or without a plan, you will (and should) fail.

* I feel like a sequel to this post will be coming soon.  There are just too many inexpensive, but effective ways to market your website than what I've presented today!

Got any ideas of your own?  Share them!

– Kurt Scholle, the Website ROI Guy!