Website Traffic Acquisition Strategy 101: How to Get More Traffic to a Website

Getting more traffic to a website is the lifeblood of any online business, and increasingly important to bricks and mortar business, too. In the past, it was all about SEO, and sometimes over-optimising a web site in the process, just to get a jump on the competition.

These days, however, there are many different options:

• Organic traffic (i.e. basic SEO and keyword research);
• Paid traffic (i.e. AdWords and/or Facebook ads, paid inclusion, banners, etc.);
• Social traffic (i.e. Twitter / Facebook / YouTube / Instagram ...)

In the spirit of keeping things simple, we're going to assume that traffic can only come from one of the above sources. It will give you plenty of options to get started.

However, the first question to ask is...

What Kind of Traffic do you Need?

If your answer to this is 'any traffic is good traffic', then think again.

The relentless pursuit of traffic at any cost is bad for the nerves, and bad for business. Usually, getting the right kind of traffic is a much better strategy than the hit-and-hope approach of old. Even for mass market products and services.

The focus should be on getting traffic that comes with an intent that is in line with your customer acquisition strategy. That's not always about money; sometimes it's about taking some kind of action.

Often, different strategies can be used to bring in different kinds of traffic.

For example, if your goal is to get people on your mailing list so that you can later send them a message with a different call to action (CTA), your strategy will be different than the one you use to pull in paying customers through online advertising.

Then again, if brand visibility is at the core of your customer acquisition strategy, then pulling in traffic that is hungry for information, and firmly in your target market should be the priority.

Not just any traffic at any cost.

Are You Willing to PAY for Traffic?

Let's get this one out in the open: paid traffic is not a dirty concept.

Here's an adequate cliché to go with it: sometimes you have to speculate to accumulate.

Payment, however, can take different forms depending on how you want to get your traffic. The traffic source is also closely aligned with the kind of traffic you would like to attract.

When you think of paid traffic, you usually associate it with various forms of direct advertising;

• Paid search inclusion;
• AdWords / banner advertising;
• Etc.

However, it's also possible to buy traffic that has been redirected from domain names that are no longer in use, and pay people to create forum posts that link back to your site; not to mention paying people with loads of followers to plaster their timeline with your advertising message.

A lot of these actions you could also do yourself. Or, to put it a different way: pay yourself to do.

But, the investment in time that is involved will often mean that the opportunity cost of building up a following of fans just to sell them a single product during the holiday season isn't going to work out.

It would be a better investment to hand that off to someone else, someone whose actual calling is in creating a stream of traffic for you, while you get on with actually running the business, and delighting your customers.

How Will You Know If It's Working?

Let's pull these together.

You need traffic, you'd like organic traffic, but are willing to pay if it is demonstrably profitable.

If your traffic goal is instant sales, then advertising bubbles up the list a bit, because it is very easy to divide the cost of acquiring sales by the value they generate in order to determine the return on investment.

Likewise, it's also very easy to track the conversion rate (how many sales for how many visitors) in order to improve it by fiddling with the sales message.

Modifying the landing page, and acquisition channel (including the wording on the sidebar ad, paid inclusion summary or AdWords advertising panel) all give you the opportunity to improve these ratios.

For those taking a longer term view, relying on instant sales data is meaningless: if you are trying to attract visitors to your content, in order to get them on a mailing list, and sell them a hefty annual subscription, for example, the lifetime value of a customer is much more important.

However, the basic ratios are still the same.

Here are some tips for maximising your traffic acquisition success:

• Do your keyword research properly, or get an expert to do it for you: keywords aren't just for organic search and SEO, they're a method of communication -- your buyer's intent towards you, and your value towards them;
• Never be afraid to experiment with new messages and ways of delivering those messages, but make sure they remain in line with your core values;
• Track everything by using metrics reflecting how you acquire traffic, and what component of your strategy is delivered by that traffic;
• Track the metrics.

To get started, I recommend taking the Free Keyword Research Tutorial from The Keyword Coach: it will not only help you appreciate SEO more fully, but also has some great processes that you can use to determine audience intent: are they clickers or buyers?

What is Traffic Acquisition Marketing (TAM)?

New industries have a habit of ushering in new buzzwords, and internet marketing now has a new one - following 'traffic acquisition', we now have 'traffic acquisition marketing'. But what is traffic acquisition marketing?


New York based Forward Branding & Identification, reference it a list of job requirements for a Web Project Manager:

"Experience in online consumer media, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, with success in online traffic acquisition marketing."

So, it's clearly something to do with social marketing and Web 2.0, and Miami, Florida's Apparent Internet Marketing would seem to agree:

"Apparent offers an array of white hat online traffic acquisition marketing services, in addition to strategic website and landing page optimization efforts, to help our clients build a loyal audience following."

So, what do we glean from these? Firstly, traffic acquisition marketing seems to be about generating traffic through a marketing message geared towards awareness and loyalty over advertising and traffic purchase.


It's also clear from Apparent that it's not about search engine optimization or landing pages, nor is it about straight up advertising. It's about generating (or acquiring) traffic because that traffic wants to visit the site, out of loyalty or brand attachment, and not just because they need to buy something.


Google returns around 13,000 pages that use the exact term, and using their Keyword Tool to research around the topic, another well-known phrase comes up : customer acquisition marketing.


Suzanne Taylor, a marketing consultant with clients including Adobe, Yahoo! and PayCycle, and member of Stanford University's faculty, defines customer acquisition marketing as having three main aspects:

• Awareness - does the target market know you exist?
• Learning - what does your market know about your benefits?
• Persuasion - do they want to buy from you?

She also notes that it's part of a model that she calls the 'Customer Experience Model', and notes that:

"It is driven by the other two elements of the Customer Experience Model—Product Wow and Customer Retention."

Putting all this together, we have a workable idea to answer the leading question - what is traffic acquisition marketing?


My summary would be as follows : Traffic Acquisition Marketing pulls in the target market by giving the marketing message an online personality, that can draw in, delight, and retain a loyal following online.


It's no longer just about the product. Now you also have to deliver a reason.

Techniques to Drive TAC Costs Down

TAC, or Traffic Acquisition Cost, is a measure of the amount of money required to buy in traffic. It is usually calculated on a percentage basis, using either revenue or visitor numbers to yield a figure that can be measured over time.


For example, if you pay out $5 to Google in AdWords fees, and receive 1,000 visitors, then the cost per visitor is 0.5 cents (actually, it's more common just to say that the cost is $5 per 1,000 visitors, otherwise known as CPM).


Others may choose to measure it in terms of revenue - if you sell an eBook for $15, and pay $100 in advertising fees to sell 500 copies, then you have generated $7,500 for $100 of advertising. That's quite a margin!


Actually, these numbers might be a bit optimistic, and so helping reduce TAC costs is usually high up on the list of priorities for online entrepreneurs.


One method might be to hunt after JV's (Joint Ventures) where partners each get something out of the relationship. An eBook can be exchanged for the traffic that this might bring, for example - one partner offers the eBook to their list, and the eBook contains links to the other's online store.


Or, a software manufacturer or online service provider might pay a third party to pre-install software on a piece of hardware, or even supply software with certain settings that provide an opportunity for third party promotion.


This last example is use by advertisers to buy advertising in applications (so-called adware), which is a method that works, but can be costly and obtrusive to the end user.


When formulating your TAC cost reduction strategy, remember one thing - it's much better to offer something of value if all you're after is traffic; otherwise it may end up costing more than it brings in.

Reducing Traffic Acquisition Costs using Destination Sites

Traffic acquisition costs are probably one of the highest direct costs for online businesses. Anything that you can do to reduce traffic acquisition costs must, almost by definition, be a good thing - but there's a right and a wrong way to do it.


Like the hotel industry, the web is split into two kinds of page - destination and everything else. Budget hotels that people use whilst traveling offer a very different experience to so-called destination hotels, which have to give customers more than just a bed for the night.


Likewise, destination sites are places people go to for something, unlike 99% of the other random search results which are just places people find themselves almost by accident.


Look at your own mental bookmark list. The chances are that you have a favorite site for social networking, video sharing, even email. There's also a good chance that these don't need to be in your browser bookmark list. You know the URLs by heart.


Now, I'm not suggesting for a moment that you try to become a destination site. That's part of the misconception that people have about the web - everyone wants to be the next big thing, the next mental bookmark, but very few people reach that status.


Mostly, we're all part of the 99% of pages that people visit on their way somewhere else. And that's okay, because it's what makes the web tick.


However, despite the fact that Google AdSense is available on many of these destination sites, and despite the fact that you might be paying for prominence on them, what happens when traffic acquisition costs outstrip the earning power of the target site.


We're in a world wide recession, after all, and people are cutting back spending in the so-called power niches of health, money and sex. Never mind hobbies, dating, and suchlike.


However, the power of the destination sites can still be harnessed by offering content in return for traffic, thereby significantly reducing direct traffic acquisition costs.


Right now, for example, there's a WSO (Warrior Special Offer) that uses the power of YouTube to drive traffic. It's called the Royal Affiliates Banker, and seems to be a process, coupled with some software which purports to drive traffic to a web site with only 15 minutes of real work.


(Disclaimer - that link makes me no money. Zero. I have NO affiliation with the product, and am just citing it here as an example.)


If the Royal Affiliates Banker works, it could significantly reduce traffic acquisition costs, and boost profits. And, it's likely that a very similar process can be applied to other destination sites - it's all about giving potential customers valuable content, and a reason to click through to the target site.


Just like a promotional blog, but potentially with much more power, and certainly a lot more fun to put together!

How do you Calculate Traffic Acquisition Cost

One question that is often at the forefront of people's minds when it comes to generating traffic is how to calculate traffic acquisition cost. Every method of traffic acquisition, be it paid or free, has an underlying cost.

Clearly, free methods, such as using Twitter, a blog, or even a service such as Traffic Swarm are attractive because there is no direct financial cost. However, the traffic that is acquired may not be highly converting, and there is an investment in time, which has an inherent cost.

Let's take a quick example. If we assume that you spend 30 minutes crafting a short Traffic Swarm advert, then another 30 minutes to set it up, and then 60 minutes generating some credits by clicking on other people's adverts, you have spent 2 hours of time.

A copywriter can earn upwards of $200 in that short fraction of a day!

So, any traffic that is acquired has a cost of $200. And that's not the end of the story, because, if you generate 100 credits, that only means that your advert will be displayed 100 times. What percentage of those displays will generate visits? 1%? 2%? 10%?

There is an upside - over time, the investment might be worth it, but only if the cost of other traffic acquisition services are higher.

AdSense CPC Explained

One way to pull in traffic is buy buying clicks through a PPC (Pay Per Click) broker. Google's AdSense is such a service - you can pay them to display your advert whenever certain keywords are displayed on a given page.

(Get the inside scoop on AdSense here with the Keyword Cracker's Free AdSense Report.)

The CPC (Cost Per Click) is the amount of money that you (and competing content providers) are willing to put down for each person that clicks your advert. This can be as low as $0.05, but as high as $50!

Clearly, it is easy to calculate traffic acquisition costs in this case. If you want 100 visitors, based on a keyword that costs $1 per click, it will cost you $100. Now, this compares favorably with the analysis we did above for Traffic Swarm, but there's a problem.

Highly converting keywords often cost much more than $1 per click.

In such cases, free and low cost traffic acquisition models will be more favorable, but in order to figure it out, you need to know how to calculate the cost of traffic acquisition. Something you now know how to do.

A final note : if you are selling a high ticket item, like a used Ford SUV, then the commission on that sale might make PPC worth your while. If you're selling a $17 eBook, it surely will not be, unless you find a highly converting, long tail keyword phrase, at a low cost.

The Keyword Cracker was designed with that in mind, and is highly recommended by all who have used it to better their traffic acquisition strategies.