How to Drive More Traffic to Your Website with Content
Use your strategic roadmap to move forward
You’ve evaluated your marketing foundation. You’ve shored up any gaps and made sure you have a solid roadmap for your SMB to move forward with, you’ve worked on your brand and you’ve learned the ins and outs of your CRM. Now, you’re ready to execute your marketing roadmap and drive traffic to your online business front door…your website.
But if you’re struggling to bring more traffic to your website, you’re not alone. One of the top drivers of traffic to a website is content. But not just any content. You’re going to need really good, useful, and most importantly, relevant content.
Unfortunately, many small businesses just don’t have that type of content on their web page. In fact, a recent study by the Content Marketing Institute showed that more than six out of 10 marketing professionals struggle to find content writers who can write the type of content that brings in readers —but it can be done. Making content the focus for your SMB website is something that will improve your efforts at bringing in traffic, getting leads and ultimately making the sale.
Know Your Audience
The first step to attracting more traffic (and to marketing in general) is to know who your ideal customer is. We recommend actually creating a few “ideal customer” profiles for your business. In order to pinpoint what kind of content you need to be focusing on for prospective customers, you’ll need to understand details such as:
- Age
- Gender
- Education level
- Daily challenges
To get started we’ve created an Ideal Customer Worksheet (also referred to as a persona) for you to get started figuring out who you should be writing your content for. Once you create those ideal customers, share them with your staff so that everyone understands and is working from the same set of assumptions.
Create a Content Strategy Plan
Once you know who your ideal customers are and what your brand says about your company, it’s time to create a plan for your content that takes these factors into account. No matter what your goals, your content needs to reflect that so your customers come to know and trust you and your business through the content.
It’s critical you don’t post content that’s irrelevant to your customers or your company, because this could counteract your efforts to attract more traffic. . In fact, using a focused content strategy will attract and keep your customers at all phases of the customer journey—including after they’ve made a purchase.
Hubspot has a great article that looks more in-depth about how to develop a content strategy. It’s worth spending some time thinking about how you will develop your own plan.
Use Pain Points as a RoadMap
Once you understand who your ideal customer is, answering a question or solving a pain point for them is really draws in readers who use search engines to find the answers they’re looking for
If you’re unsure of what a pain point is and how to solve it, consider this example. Say you either sell or repair vacuums, here’s how you could go about pinpointing a pain point.
Step 1. Strategize your Search. Use Google Trends to search for “best vacuum cleaners.”
Step 2. Narrow it Down. From there, take a look at how many people were searching for that search phrase as well as any related terms that people searched for.
Step 3. Follow the Breadcrumbs. From there, you can also see which states have the most queries on this topic and you can also find related topics. From those related topics, you might find out that “how to clean pet hair with a vacuum” is a popular topic. There’s your pain point : customers struggling with excessive pet hair and their vacuums.
If your business has vacuums that lift pet hair, you would have a topic that you could begin writing about for your website that would resonate with customers.
Another way to find out your customers’ pain points is to ask them! How?
- Do a survey,
- Ask your sales staff to talk to their customers.
- Use social media to create customizable polls
There are many ways to find out that they are thinking!
For some ideas about how to write captivating content, Backlinko offers several ideas to liven up your content and make it attractive for your customers (and prospective customers.)
Content Should Reflect Your Brand
No matter what part of your site you are trying to improve with new content, make sure all of it reflects the “personality” that you have created during your marketing foundation work.
Using that unique voice that reflects your SMBs, you will need to offer engaging content on your website and in other channels that shows your expertise. Keeping your Ideal Customer in mind, offer content in such a way that shows your relevant experience and ability to solve a problem or offer information. Your unique selling points are what set you apart from your competition, so make sure you pay attention to them.
Your customers will expect a seamless experience, so your content needs to have the same feel from the front page to a blog to your contact page.
Post Your Content Far And Wide!
Just because you have created some great content on your site, don’t assume everyone will find it automatically. If you have done your digital marketing homework, you’ll know just how to get the word out to bring users to your site. In case you need a reminder, check out this post on how to build your online presence using email, social media and SEO to improve the visibility of your content.
A great marketing foundation (and the strategy behind it) doesn’t just happen. Creating an effective marketing plan that actually moves you forward doesn’t need to be lengthy or expensive–but you do need to put some work into it upfront.
If you have been feeling stuck, take our free 10-question quiz to find out what areas you are strong in and where you need to increase your efforts. And if you still need some help, schedule a 15-minute call with us. We’d love to help you move forward as quickly as possible.
Tomato Fish Is An Indianapolis Consulting Company Focused On Helping Small And Midsize Businesses Make Good Strategic Planning Decisions.
