When we put up a website, blog or even an article, in most cases we do so hoping for the visitor to do a particular thing, take a specific action. Those actions are called conversions. We are converting the visitor into something else, a subscriber, a customer, and so on.
As you know from daily life, getting people to do what you want them to can be tricky. We have our own agendas, we see the world differently, there is also self interest, which can work for or against you.
That is why many bloggers and webmasters take the easy route. They don’t even try to get any real conversions, they are happy to sit at the bottom of the web metric food chain.
The value pyramid looks something like this, but obviously will differ from case to case:
Traffic
As you can see, when dealing with CPM (page impression
based ads), you are only concerned with the bottom two rungs, visits and
page views. They are the easiest to obtain and therefore the lowest
value. Your visitor here doesn’t need to like what they see and might
have been tricked into visiting. Traffic is not a sign of quality.
Click Throughs
Next up is the clicks. If you make money from Adsense or
other pay per click ads, this is where you spend your effort. You might
also try to get many clicks as a way of influencing other webmasters.
When people see a site in their referrers generating a lot of traffic
they tend to take notice.
Another value to take from clicks is if you deal with a
wide appeal affiliate merchant like eBay or Amazon. Those clicks can
eventually turn into sales but the selling is not your problem, all you
need to do is drop that affiliate cookie onto the visitors browser and
the merchant does all the hard work.
Again, clicks are not a sign of quality. The
visitor might be just wanting to get away, to anywhere but here. In
fact, many Adsense webmasters count on just that.
Loyal Readers
Now we are in the zone where a blogger or webmaster has
to earn their money. You don’t get return visits, or subscribers without
offering some value. Even more true with opt-ins as the visitor needs
to trust you not to spam them or pass on the list to someone
else who will. Up until this point you could have been automating,
spamming and churning out pages by the thousand with not a care for
quality.
When you want people to return, that is when you need to get serious about your content.
You need to concentrate on not just demonstrating value
on the first visit, but showing enough promise that there will be value
in future for them to give you another try. Hopefully you will do a good
enough job that they will keep checking in on you and turn into loyal
readers.
Leads and Sales
You will have no doubt heard many times that “the value
is in the list”, and it is broadly true. If you get a lot of people to
want to hear from you on a regular basis, more importantly if you have
an engaged audience, then you should be able to make sales.
A number of times you will have read me say that I would
rather have a smaller and more engaged readership, and now you know
why. Across the properties I own, part own, write for or work with, I
have access to millions of page views. I would give all those page views
up for ten people who really want to hear from me. Just think about that for a second. Wouldn’t you?
Unlike many bloggers, my mortgage gets paid when people
believe in me enough that they seek my advice on blogging, new media and
internet marketing. I love to see a Digg front page as much as the next
guy, and there is a certain value in that, but if people just click or
view pages then my bills don’t get paid.
To make a sale, and even more to get repeat sales, you
have to step right up and show real value and engender enough trust to
overcome the very significant objections of doing business over the
internet. You have to show that not only is your product or service
worth the money, but that you can be trusted to deliver what you
promised.
Plus of course you have to ask for the sale.
Loyal Customers and Fans
When you deliver on your promise, then you have a chance
at repeat custom. Even better, if you delight your customer, you might
just get a fan or two.
In order to do this your customer must experience your
product or service in the most positive way possible. You are not merely
delivering a package and saying “bye bye”. That product has to more
than meet expectations, be more than just “worth what was paid for”. The
customer needs to reap the benefits of what they were sold.
This isn’t always possible, it’s not a perfect world,
but you must try. The pay off is someone who will forever sing your
praises, and the value of someone willing to tell the world how great
you are is beyond measure.
Summary
When you are thinking about what you are doing online,
do not be content with merely attracting traffic and gaining some
clicks. The real value is in the relationships, the trust and the actual
value you can create. Are you truly helping people or are you just
going through the motions and writing the appropriate keywords?
It might be with a smaller audience you create more value for both you and your audience. Worth considering, right?
Chris Garrett
http://www.chrisg.com
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου