on webpages typically with animated graphics. Ad banners are traditionally sold on a Cost Per Thousand basis (which the industry refers to as CPM). Advertisers pay for the ads whether a consumer clicks on the banner or not.
Email List Rental – web publishers are skilled at getting people to opt-in to receive email. Publishers will rent-out their lists to advertisers who can send advertisements to subscribers in the form of a solo email or a newsletter ad.
Co-registration – Email publishers will promote an incentive to people in exchange for signing-up for various email newsletters. The email list publisher benefits by grouping their offer to join a newsletter with other newsletter publishers, as the costs to attract Visitors is shared among several advertisers. Incentives typically offered by co-registration companies include free downloads, sweepstakes or valuable information. The quality of email lists created by co-registration marketing can be a bit suspect as the people signing up are primarily motivated by free goods or a chance to win a big prize which often can be completely unrelated to your product/service.
Incentive Offers - Luring Visitors to your website with a compelling and targeted incentive is a proven method for attracting traffic to your website. The more targeted your incentive, the more targeted your traffic. The incentive serves the dual purpose of also capturing information in exchange for the incentive. When planning incentive offers for a marketing campaign, spend time picking the perfect incentive to stimulate desire with your audience versus a need. An example of a targeted incentive is giving away a popular video game when seeking a target audience of young males 18-25 years old. The young man may need a tank of gas, but he desires the value of the entertainment experience.
Social media sites – User generated content has taken the web by storm. Several significant historical events in the social media scene include News Corp’s $580 million purchase of MySpace.com, Google’s $1.6 billion purchase of YouTube.com and Facebook’s multi-billion dollar IPO (Initial Public Offering). Social media sites enable consumers to publish personal information and build communities around special interests. A few interesting companies in the social media space include Facebook, Linked In, Twitter and YouTube. Marketers can take advantage of social media trends by getting involved in relevant ways with your audience. To see how talented marketers are using social media, spend some time looking at how big marketing companies like Nike and Coca-Cola are using this form of media.
Blogs – coming from the term web log, a blog is a website published using easy self-service tools featuring text, graphics and videos on subject-matter important to the blog creator. Blogs typically include short commentary or news on a particular subject and are extremely important in engaging your audience. Blogging is also a great method to generate traffic from search engines.
Offline Marketing – an economical and often overlooked method of driving traffic to a website is publishing your website address in strategic locations offline. Traditional retailers have a strong advantage in converting store traffic into online traffic via signage, register receipts and shopping bags. Where can you publish your website to drive traffic offline to online?
Word of Mouth – referrals from friends, colleagues and relatives serve as the single, most-influential source of traffic to a website. Some marketers call this “Viral Marketing” as the word about your website can spread like a virus. This is a good thing! Respected referrals are the most effective method of driving sales conversions.
Conversion Loop Step 2 – RSVP
Once visitors become aware of what you do and the goods you offer on your site, you can confirm their desire – or get their RSVP. In the Conversion Loop, this is called Data Capture and Permission to Engage. People who opt-in to get email from your company have elected to receive information from your company.
Getting email permissions or Fans/Follows/Likes is key.
In Conversion Marketing, we call these people Interested Visitors. This process weeds out those who aren’t interested or aren’t able to come to the party. It gives you a pool of resources to work with and a way to maximize your focus. It gives you an audience to tell your story to.
Once you’ve acquired Permission to Engage, you’ll need to apply certain techniques when collecting your visitors’ data. You want to ask your visitors for enough information to target your marketing, but not so much that it intimidates them.
“Data acquisition increases only up to a point.”
People are often glad to give you their first name and email address. Asking for personal or lifestyle information can sometimes have the opposite effect of what you want to achieve. When the questions you’re asking become too invasive, participation drops off, and there’s a sharp decline in traffic. By asking non-personal questions, you can get more data from Visitors and a stronger likelihood that they’ll come back to you. Here are a few questions that are okay to ask in an online survey:
 | First Name |
| Email address |
| Zip code |
| Gender |
| Preference questions, such as likes and dislikes. |
Once you’ve captured data from your Visitors, you can segment your email list into groups, enabling you to send the most pertinent information possible to the interests of each group. For instance, if you operate a sporting goods store, you may not want to send weight lifting product offers to the golfers in your email database. The goal is to maximize the rate that your emails are opened to get return visits to your website. Targeting your audience with relevant information or product offerings will move people to pay attention to your messages.
Conversion Loop Step 3 – Confirmation
You’ve attracted people to your website. You’ve narrowed down your prospects to include only Interested Visitors, and you have their permission to engage. Next comes the engagement, or confirmation. In the Conversion Loop, it’s called Repetition. Less than two percent of first-time visitors purchase on the first visit to an unfamiliar website.
Less than 2% of first-time visitors purchase on the first visit to an unfamiliar website.
Establishing a bond of trust takes Repetition or a series of repeated exposures to your messages, brand or products. Your Interested Visitors have to get used to the idea of owning your product. It has to become comfortable. In fact, it has to be downright cozy before they’ll part with their hard-earned cash. Traditional branding studies show that it takes several branding exposures to achieve trust. This means that in order to trust you enough to buy from your company, your Interested Visitors must have repeated exposures to your message to build that relationship. Odds are they won’t do purchase on their own. You need to confirm with your visitors, using repetition, to stimulate purchase intent. You need to engage them again and again.
You have their permission and your audience wants to hear from you – they gave it to you back in Step 2. If you invest the effort in your Interested Visitors, they become
