Traffic Troubles

Steps to draw traffic to your site through effective advertising...

Mr. Gupta had heard a lot about the Net, e-commerce, et al. One fine day, he decided to take his cloth business on the web. This is what Mr. Gupta did: Got a VSNL connection and hired an Internet solutions provider to set up a home page. It didn’t end right there! He took the business further by tying up with other suppliers and distributors.

Three weeks later…

No business enquiries. No results from surfers who were checking out his site! That got him really upset. After all, he had spent a huge amount of money on the site and here he was with nothing. Mr. Gupta sat in his cabin wondering: “Where did I go wrong? After all I hired the best web designers …”

This situation is not new to most marketers in India who want to zoom into cyberspace. How do you pull traffic from another site to yours? What can you do to promote your site?

E-tailers have tried and tested the formula of combining bricks and clicks! Similarly, in Netvertising, the traditional marketing mix must include the web as a major media component.

Here are a few steps to draw traffic to your site:

1.Use E-mail

Agreed that the World Wide Web has been hogging the limelight when it comes to advertising, but e-mail may still prove to be useful to pull the audience and promote your product and site.

2.Soft Sell

Do not blatantly display your products and services! Get the consumer into a discussion and offer useful information. That permits the consumer to compare products on the site. For instance, colorplus.com allows surfers to exchange notes between each other.

3.Integrate the Net with other Elements of the Marketing Mix

Let there be a mix of the net and other means of communication! Integrate your online appearance through the traditional means such as billboards, television and radio. There is a huge explosion of website addresses like www.rediff.com and www.indiainfoline.com on hoardings across Indian metros and mini-metros.

4.Leverage the Web as a Medium

Use PR (Public Relations)! Publish news releases, newsletters and corporate information, remembering that content is what sustains the surfer’s interest. Use the power of the web to provide thought-provoking and enduring information to the customers. Remember that word-of-mouth promotion is the best promotion, which in turn will be done by satisfied customers!

5.Devise Effective Ad Banners

Surfers usually avoid ad banners. Make them exciting! Effective banners should be colourful, easy-to-download, animated and above all, updated regularly. Banners should be proactive with directives like “Click here”, “Check this out!” and “View for free”.

6.Ensure Repeat Traffic

Why would customers keep coming back to your site? What should be done to retain them? Interact with your customers! Publish their responses and opinions, making them feel part of a greater community. The content must be updated regularly and should be of value. Yahoo cleverly has set up sub-sites in the US and country-specific sites across Asia and Europe, in English as well as other languages to draw traffic to the site.

Online advertising today may form a very meagre fraction of most corporate promotional budgets, but the crystal ball predicts, “Netvertising will rule the World”!

Further Reading:

“Everything you wanted to know about the Net but were too scared to ask”
The Brief: Exclusive