10 ways to increase your website traffic 10 times

This article mainly shares ten ways to help increase official website traffic, providing ideas for partners in the marketing department. It also provides data support for the establishment of brand image and the ability to acquire customers.

Colleagues in the marketing department are worried about increasing official website traffic every day. Under the B2B business model, the official website is a very good channel to help customers establish brand awareness and obtain potential customer leads. Among paid, owned, and earned media, the official website belongs to owned media, which is a promotion platform managed, maintained and updated by the enterprise itself.

First, we need to position the official website. Then you may ask this basic question: what role does the official website play in digital marketing? What is its function? The underlying logic of marketing and sales is actually the same, and the essence is the insight into human nature.

Mr. Yu Feng, President of Honeywell China, is a very experienced manager. During a chat with him, he said, "There is a saying in sales that customers like to make their own decisions and hate sales pitches. Sales must first clarify the question: Who am I? What can I do? Then understand the customer: Who are you? What difficulties do you have? In sales work, customers usually have very limited time, especially decision makers. It is critical to impress them with a few simple words, arouse their interest, and then have the opportunity to follow up further."

I was deeply inspired by these words. The same goes for marketing. The role of the official website is to objectively present its brand story, product solutions, industry cases without obvious sales pitches, and to provide customers with practical inquiry services.

Users first see a brand advertisement on the media, or come into contact with the brand through various channels such as offline activities. If it happens to coincide with their pain points and needs, then the best way to understand the brand is to go to the official website to view information. So if media advertising is to establish users' initial understanding of the brand, then the official website is a marketing touchpoint that plays a very important role when users reach the "interest" stage.

The first step is to clarify the core issues that the official website content should address: Who am I? What can I do?

The second step is to have online customer service on the official website to provide real-time service. The role of online customer service is to ask clearly: Who are you? What difficulties do you have?

When the needs in the first and second steps match, a Lead is formed, and there is further opportunity for business conversion.

Generally speaking, the number of B2B customers is much smaller than that of B2C, because the nature of B2B business is corporate decision-making. Therefore, how to capture the already small amount of user traffic and achieve growth is a considerable challenge, which is also a common pain point for B2B marketers.

For example: Our Honeywell official website has a lot of traffic every year, reaching millions. Our website was launched with a new look at the end of October 2021. The new website has greatly improved the user experience while increasing the attractiveness of content for more user retention. It can be said that the project to launch the new official website has been a great success. At the same time, we are also actively promoting more business units to merge their independent websites into the technical architecture of the official website to further enhance their integrated brand image and user experience, focus on integrating traffic, and enhance industry brand influence.

Based on my experience in launching and operating official websites, I have summarized ten methods here to help official websites achieve a tenfold increase in traffic.

1. Media Placement

Media placement is the most direct, effective and fast way to increase traffic. Brands can place advertisements in various paid media channels such as vertical media, portals, mobile apps, social media, etc. The typical user journey is as follows:

The brand owner or the media placement company commissioned by the brand owner places banners, videos, keywords and other forms of advertisements in the media. Once users become interested, they click on these different forms of content and will be redirected to the brand's official website. Users can further browse brand-related information on the official website, such as news, product solutions, obtain more services, and leave information.

The premise of this method is that the company must have a media budget investment, and can purchase media advertising space to divert traffic to the official website. Usually the media charges in the form of CPM or CPC. The former refers to purchasing spots based on advertising exposure, and the latter is charged based on clicks. When a user clicks, the media will charge the brand owner a certain fee.

Some strong brands that are more concerned about the effectiveness of their advertising will require a CPL payment method, that is, cost per leads, which means charging according to the number of leads. In other words, the number of potential customers brought in by the media, the potential customers leave information on the official website, and become trackable "leads". After completing this step, the brand pays the media for advertising. This media billing method is very common in the automotive industry where I used to work.

2. Search Engine Marketing (SEO/SEM)

Search engine marketing is divided into SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing), which is search engine optimization and keyword purchase. The two work together to help increase the traffic of the official website in the search entrance. The common principle is to increase the ranking of the official website in the search results, increase the exposure of the official website, and attract more people to click, so as to achieve the purpose of increasing the traffic of the official website.

1. SEO

However, there are significant differences between the two. The former SEO is achieved through long-term technical optimization, such as modification of Meta title (official website title), description (description), optimization of official website content copy, increase of external links, and creation of series of content based on search engines, such as Baidu Knows, Baidu Encyclopedia, Baidu Love Purchasing, etc. These contents plus the official website's backlinks can increase the number of official website pages included in search engines, thereby increasing the corresponding weight. When users search for related keywords, the official website's ranking will be improved, thereby increasing clicks and then increasing traffic.

2. SEM

SEM is a shorter, flatter and faster method. Brands purchase brand-related keywords and bid for ranking. The higher the bid, the higher the exposure position in the search results. Many companies with money will purchase brand-specific areas, which means that the first position on the homepage of search results has an exclusive display of the brand itself. It is usually more expensive, but you can choose to purchase in the area where the brand wants to focus on promotion according to your needs.

It is best to take a two-pronged approach to both. SEO focuses on long-term technical optimization, while SEM can help brands quickly increase traffic in a short period of time, achieving the best results in the short and long term in parallel.

3. Integrating Marketing

The total marketing here includes the company's employees and partners related to the company, such as distributors, agents, investors, etc. They are the core stakeholders of the company and play a very important role in B2B marketing. Due to the limited budget and vertical audience of B2B, the circle of friends of these company-related personnel such as sales, marketing, supply chain and other functions usually have many highly relevant target audiences, so it is particularly important to fully mobilize the enthusiasm of employees and other stakeholders to let them help with communication.

For example, if a brand promotes a short video through its own WeChat video account or official Douyin account, it will appear very formal and the effect may not be that good. However, if the content is good, employees are willing to promote it. For example, a multinational company has 5,000 employees in China, and 10% of them are willing to forward a video (with an official website link or QR code in the video) to their Moments, that’s 500 people. Each person has 500 friends, so 500*500=250,000, which is a considerable amount of exposure, and this does not include the effect of secondary forwarding, that is, forwarding by friends of friends.

Assuming that 10% of these 250,000 exposures have touched users and want to learn more about the brand, then logging on to the official website will become new website traffic.

Due to the vertical and precise characteristics of employees' circle of friends, employee marketing has become one of the core contributions of the B2B marketing department in increasing official website traffic. The most important benefit is that employees have a sense of pride and this marketing method does not cost money.

4. Content Promotion

When users are attracted to a website, the presentation of content directly determines whether they leave or stay, and whether they will come back to visit. Therefore, the content structure design of the official website is very important, and it is usually the first step in starting a website project. The content architecture diagram of the website is called a "sitemap", also known as a "website map", which includes what the first-level navigation is, what the second-level, third-level, fourth-level... navigation is, and what content is contained in the different sections of each level of navigation.

The content of each company’s official website varies greatly, and specific needs are formulated based on the company’s business objectives.

Usually good content design must meet the "Golden Circle" rule: Who? How? What? That is, figure out who your target customers are and what information you want to convey?

The classic golden circle rule is Why? How? What? The first step is to understand the characteristics of your potential customers' user portraits. Based on the insight into the target customers, think clearly about why you want to provide products and services and other related content, and then how to present the content. This is the method of content presentation. The outermost layer is what specific branch content supports the entire website? After the website is launched, long-term refined operation and maintenance of the content is equally important. To increase the customer return rate, that is, the customer return rate, there is a core indicator in the monitoring of website data, which is return visitors VS new visitors. The higher the return visitors/new visitors value, the higher the proportion of traffic from old users returning to the website to view the official website compared to the traffic brought by new users. It also shows that the website is more attractive to old users to return to the website, which is inseparable from the long-term maintenance of website content and the improvement of technical performance.

5. Free Multi-Channel Traffic Distribution

Marketing activities are usually rich and varied, with focused goals, but in various forms and with many touchpoints, such as offline events, summit forums, company executives’ PPT presentations, WeChat public account tweets, videos, employee signatures, printed materials such as product manuals, technical documentation, etc. Many of these touchpoints that may be easily overlooked at ordinary times can become potential sources of traffic for your official website.

You can attach the QR code of the official website in appropriate places on these event venues or related marketing materials. However, since these materials or activities are not entirely hosted by you, this multi-channel free traffic diversion method requires more effort upfront. Communicate this initiative in advance with the people in charge of these matters in various departments and obtain their support.

At the same time, current technical monitoring methods are already very mature. For activities in different occasions and different forms of materials, a "unique" QR code can be added to monitor the differences in traffic brought by different channel sources.

6. Event Marketing

The above is about multi-channel traffic diversion, including offline activities. So how can activities further help increase official website traffic? Event marketing can provide more than just guiding users to scan the official website QR code to increase traffic at the event site. It can also increase official website traffic in the early preparation, mid-term hosting, and later event review stages.

Specifically, during the early stage of event preparation, online pre-registration is also open. You can create an event registration form on the official website and guide users to log in to the landing page to view event details and click to register. When users register, they have an increased chance of browsing more web pages and further interacting with the brand.

On the day of the event, various materials on display and presentation PPTs should be attached with the official website QR code, referring to Article 5, to fully convert the traffic at the event site. When reviewing the event later, whether it is news reports, WeChat tweets, video summaries and other post-promotions, the official website link should be attached to facilitate users to jump directly to the official website.

7. Social Media Marketing

WeChat official accounts, video accounts, Douyin accounts, Bilibili, and even Xiaohongshu, the amount of information on social media has exploded in recent years, and most brands have opened their own official accounts on some of these social media platforms.

Since there are so many promotion platforms, why do we need an official website? If you look at the website data, then in the B2B business model, according to my experience, among the data indicators of official website browsing through different devices, PC (computer) browsing may account for more than 80%, which means that users are more inclined to log in to the website through the computer in a professional environment to query the information they want or obtain related services.

The rise of these social platforms is an inevitable product of the change in mobile Internet technology and user media consumption habits. Social media has unique advantages in delivering interesting and entertaining content to attract attention, easy to spread, and secondary diffusion. However, for customers to deeply understand the brand and promote the user decision-making process, the official website is still indispensable. Therefore, it is an important means to attract user attention through early social media promotion and seize the opportunity to guide customers to the official website.

Social media has a large number of users and a wide audience, but brands need to think about how much effort is needed to maintain and operate social media, how high the return on investment is, how accurate the users attracted are, how high the quality of traffic is, and whether they can be converted into potential customers. This requires data collection, tracking, and analysis to make judgments later. However, social media marketing is still a very effective way to help the rapid growth of official website traffic due to its own natural advantages.

8. Create an excellent customer experience

Improving user experience is the core goal of all marketing activities. The operational definition indicator of the "customer-centric" marketing strategy we usually talk about is "improvement of user experience and user satisfaction." After users view the homepage or landing page on the official website, what other pages do you want to guide users to view in order to achieve the purpose of retaining information is about user experience design.

Regarding this point, the main means to guide users to browse more pages is to increase the attractiveness of the content and to increase internal links. For example, after introducing the main product on a product page, you can add links to surrounding related product pages, product-related activity pages, and so on.

Therefore, the design of the website structure can be very complex. The more internal links there are, the stronger the logical correlation of the pages, and the more complex the website structure. However, once it is designed well, it can also bring more Page views, that is, page views, and thus the indicator page view per visitor, that is, the number of page views per independent user, increases. This is a commonly used indicator for improving user experience.

Other ways to measure the improvement of user experience include bounce rate (the lower the better), average dwelling time (the longer the better), etc.

Improving user experience requires brands to carefully design around the typical user journey. In the early stages of the user journey, the website can be mainly designed to allow users to gain awareness, such as brand history and about us pages. In the consideration stage, it is the product page, technical document downloads, form filling, customer service inquiries, and other pages that combine information and services. In the purchase stage, whether the website should have its own online shopping mall and payment functions, or jump to a third-party e-commerce website to guide users to purchase are all part of the customer journey design.

In order to create an excellent user experience, it is a good idea to regularly invite users to complete questionnaires on the website about their experience of using the website, so as to understand the user experience in real time and make corrections.

9. Send Email (Email Direct Marketing)

EDM, or email marketing, is the main means of cultivating and incubating potential customers. In China, email marketing is not as frequently used as in foreign countries, but it is still not to be ignored. The difference between it and the above-mentioned means of increasing official website traffic is that EDM marketing is a way to attract known potential customers, so for such customers, it is very important for the official website to present customized content.

For example, if we know a customer's email, it means that he left his contact information in a previous marketing event and we have obtained his consent, so we can communicate with him further by email. This type of customer usually has established a basic understanding of the brand. For example, the brand will soon participate in the China International Import Expo, where new products will be exhibited, and there will be customers present to jointly release an industry white paper. In this case, sending an email to potential customers to inform them of the latest events and trends of the brand is very timely and will definitely add points.

Please note that "sending emails" are not product promotion emails, nor are they product education for customers. No one likes to be educated or sold to. In the customer journey, once someone sells to you, it will be a minus point for the customer experience. Customers like to make their own decisions. If you tell them via email that there will be exciting activities coming up, opportunities to communicate with senior executives on site, and a series of benefits such as on-site draws, then they will definitely be interested, and then there will be opportunities for further communication with the customer.

10. Providing Media Releases

In the digital age, marketing and communication are highly integrated. Providing press releases to the media is a communication-level category, but it is also an important means to help the marketing department gain more favor from potential customers. Although the effect may not be as immediate as other marketing activities, its authority, ability to help establish the brand image, establish thought leadership, let more potential customers know the latest trends of the brand, and the role of the brand's leadership in the industry is still irreplaceable. For small and medium-sized brands, latecomers to the market with a relatively small size, publishing press releases with official website links through authoritative media is also one of the main ways to enhance the brand image.

In summary, the official website is an important promotion channel for B2B marketing. It has the ability to build brand image and acquire customers, and is one of the important marketing means of "product-effect synergy". Here we introduce the method of combining application scenarios. You need to customize which method is more suitable for you according to your business model and goals.

Author: Zhu Jingyu

Source: WeChat official account "Jade Digital Marketing (ID: Jade_Digital)