8864978779_998a1d9179_oAccording to statista.com, 41% of internet users worldwide purchase products online. The value of cross-border B2C or retail e-commerce is projected to grow to $1 trillion by 2020, with 900 million people expected to shop online by this year.

Savvy business owners wanting to take advantage of this statistic would do well to invest in an optimally-designed website that both draws customers to learn more about the business and its products, as well as influencing them to make the decision to purchase from that particular organization.

A website acts as a virtual storefront for businesses on the Web, providing a glimpse of the products businesses offer, and attracting customers to browse further. If they are happy with the information provided, they may be able to purchase the goods or services on offer, or inquire further to schedule a sales appointment.

However no matter how well-designed your website is, if you cannot get customers to visit and make a purchase, you will soon be recording losses and may even be forced to close down your business due to lack of customers. Fortunately, there are several strategies you can use to attract customers, drive traffic to your website and begin making the profits you deserve.

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How to attract traffic to your business

The following are the most common methods that businesses today can use to attract customers to their websites:

1. Social media marketing

Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have taken the world by storm and boast a collective user base of 1.85 billion people as of January 2016. Businesses can take advantage of these numbers by setting up active pages on social media to showcase their products and services, as well as to interact with prospective customers and handle any customer complaints in order to improve their overall user experience.

Done well, social media is a cheap and effective strategy that has the potential to drive large numbers of traffic to your website and result in greater sales conversions that contribute to your overall bottom line. However, it often requires having someone on staff who is engaged full-time interacting with people on social and convincing them to visit your website.

In addition, it can be difficult to weed out the serious potential customers from people who are simply online to pass the time and make random comments on your Facebook page with no intention of purchasing anything.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO — or Search Engine Optimization — is the process of improving your ranking on search engine result pages so that your website appears on the top pages based on what customers are looking for.

This means that, for example, if a customer is looking for a shop that sells a certain type of baby clothing, you will tailor the content on your website to align with search engine algorithms that ensures that your site is among the first results the customer sees when they key in what they require.

SEO can be an effective method to drive traffic to your website, but it has one major disadvantage: in most instances, it takes quite a while before you can begin seeing improvements in your website’s rankings in search engine results. Depending on the competition and other search engine criteria, it can take up to six months or more to see the results you want, and can sometimes be simply impossible to rank for your preferred keywords while under a limited budget.

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3. Digital Advertising

Digital Advertising is among the fastest growing traffic generation methods today. Businesses are increasingly turning to paid traffic methods such as pay per click (PPC) and pay per view (PPV) advertising, banner ads, Facebook Ads, YouTube Ads, among many others.

Digital Advertising simply refers to methods of generating traffic that your business pays for. One example of paid traffic is the sponsored digital ads that appear above the organic results you see in Google search results when you type in a query for a product that you want to buy.

Digital Advertising has several advantages to offer businesses, compared to the other methods we discussed above:

  • — Your page will appear on the top or on the side in search engine results. In addition, your website will be shown in the sponsored ads section and customers who are serious about making a purchase are more likely to click on such ads and through to your website.
  • — You can also quickly place your brand on prestigious and highly-visited websites, such as CNN, Entrepreneur Magazine, Business Insider, or any others specifically related to your industry.
  • — You can get traffic to your page in as little as half an hour, which is good news for sites that are just starting out and are looking to attract large numbers of customers to boost their business, instead of waiting and hoping for visitors to come by.
  • — Paid traffic provides you with tools to measure whether your marketing campaigns are working effectively, and use these statistics to tweak your marketing efforts for even greater effectiveness.
  • — Your business will have access to many great features including geo-targeting, the ability to target a certain customer demographic, ad-scheduling (where you can specify which specific days and times the ad may run), and even ROI tracking to determine how cost effective your paid traffic strategies are.

 

What Digital Ads Can Do For Your Business

Quite simply: Digital Ads are one of the best methods to attract targeted visitors to your site.

Some potential challenges you should be aware of include budgetary concerns (especially for small businesses that are just starting out), technical errors, and using advertising channels that in the end are not suitable for your business (because of high costs, your target market not being present, or any other possible issues). However, most of these problems can be ironed out by enlisting the help of qualified and experienced digital advertising professionals.

Based on its myriad advantages, Digital Advertising is easily the quickest method to drive targeted visitors to your business website, and convert them into paying customers.

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