You built Google AdWords and Bing Ads accounts, established your monthly budget, confirmed the keyword phrases you are going to advertise on, and created your awesome ready-to-convert landing page.
You push your campaigns live and eagerly await the results – except you learn you’re not in one of the top paid search results. Your quality scores are low, people are clicking on your ads, and probably most of all … you’re not bidding enough to help yourself get one of those top paid search positions in search engine results.
Both AdWords and Bing suggest you raise your keyword bids to increase campaign performance.
Same thing happens: You’re still not in the top spot, your landing page conversion rate is still low, and your boss is breathing fire at you demanding better results. It’s a brutal endless cycle of wasted money and unfulfilled goals.
Getting landing page traffic should not be such an agonizing and frustrating process.
A comprehensive content marketing strategy includes paid, earned, and owned media.
Paid media can increase your landing page traffic, but at what cost? Some industries like insurance and legal services historically experience very high keyword bids. For example, “San Antonio car wreck attorney” is the most expensive keyword in 2015 so far, at $670 per click!
Of course, spending money for clicks like this does not translate to sales a lot of the time. Instead, there are many fruitful ways to earn unpaid landing page traffic, and ultimately conversions.
1. Social Media Engagement
When it comes to social media, the main question you should ask yourself is, “what channels are my audience spending time on?” Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, Vine, Tumblr. Where does it stop?
These channels are “owned media” because brands have full control of their respective accounts and distribution efforts.
One recent survey found that driving traffic to your website is the third biggest reason to use social media, behind increasing brand awareness and enhancing customer relationships.
This makes sense considering the proliferation of social media in our daily lives – plus it’s free to set up an account.
Taking this one step further, Shareaholic shows us that Facebook and Pinterest are the leading platforms to generate referral traffic. Growing your audience on social media platforms can increase your landing page traffic as long as you’re not coming across to the audience as “buy, buy, buy!”
Once you determine which networks to build your brand, how can you establish a presence and a sustainable marketing approach?
Ways to engage your audience:
- Auto-publishing new blog updates on all of your social networks (which have a call-to-action to your landing page)
- Posting “how-to” videos and articles on Facebook (with links and/or a call-to-action to your landing page)
- Starting and contributing to relevant LinkedIn discussions. Given that LinkedIn is considered more of a professional social platform, be careful with promoting your product. Focus more on educating others, demonstrating your expertise, and only posting landing page links sparingly.
- Hosting a Twitter chat or Q&A Webinar with links to your landing page. An added benefit with Q&A Webinars is that they require very little preparation compared to traditional webinars. They also provide a great opportunity to learn about prospects and your customer base.
In the end, social media is meant to be social. But if you do it right, your unpaid landing page traffic and sales can reap the rewards.
2. Email Marketing: Who Said It’s Dead?
You may become irritated whenever you receive a marketing email out of the blue, but there’s a reason marketers continue to use the platform to spread their message and reach a segmented audience: It still works!
Some statistics for you to consider that prove email marketing is far from dead:
- One survey shows that email marketing is 40 times more successful at acquiring new clients than Facebook or Twitter
- 81% of surveyed U.S. digital shoppers were at least somewhat likely to make additional purchases as a result of targeted emails
- Email has the highest conversion rate (66%) when compared to social media and direct mail for purchases made as a result of a targeted message
So the next time you hesitate to send that bi-weekly email blast, just press send.
When to Send
There are countless online resources that show data on the the best days and times to send emails. Yet there is no universally-accepted best day and time to send an email to your list.
Each industry is different, each customer base is different, and there are time zone differences to consider. With that being said, one suggested tactic is to send your email in “batches” and see which day and time produces the most opens, landing page views, and landing page conversions.
Many companies tend to send email blasts to their list during business hours of business days. However, as Forbes explains, sending marketing emails during off-peak hours is recommended (with the intent being to send your recipient to your landing page).
The 1 Email Tactic You’re Probably Not Using, But Should
Email signatures are very under-utilized when it comes to landing page traffic generation. Having your staff include a link in their email signature can be a huge return on absolutely zero investment. Inserting a link under your email signature is a one-time thing, that can deliver repeatedly for you.
This strategy does not even apply to email marketing or newsletters. Literally every time one of your staff members sends an email, your landing page link has click-through potential. Think of the possibilities!
3. Event Booth Traffic Leads to Landing Page Traffic
A common method for businesses to attract booth visitors at events and trade shows is to host a contest or offer a price discount code. Once attendees visit your booth, the only way they can be entered into the contest or be eligible for the discount is to fill out your landing page form.
Tactics like this help demonstrate why 67% of B2B content marketers consider event marketing to be their most effective strategy (helping your landing page earn free traffic and conversions in the process).
The key thing is to differentiate your efforts and experiment.
The above list is certainly not exhaustive on how to grow your unpaid landing page traffic. Pay-per-click advertising is not exclusive to AdWords, Bing Ads, banner ads, or even sponsored ads on Facebook and Twitter.
Hopefully you understand there are many creative ways to generate free landing page traffic. The more you experiment, the greater chance your landing pages will have to earn more views (and ultimately conversions)!
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by Brandon Weaver
source: Instapage
