The goal of direct marketing is to get a potential (or current) customer to take a specific action related to your business. It could be anything, like signing up for your email list, watching an opt-in video, purchasing your product, or filling out a customer survey.
When you’re looking to drive traffic to your website it can be difficult to decide on the right form of marketing medium to use. However, regardless of the medium you use, certain direct marketing principles hold true.
Below we highlight six different direct marketing tricks you can use to improve your marketing efforts no matter if you’re going the print or digital route.
1. Make Sure Your Offer Is Compelling
It’s not enough to simply ask someone to visit your website. People have overflowing to-do lists and there just isn’t enough time for them to visit a site for no reason at all.
You need to give them a compelling reason to actually visit. This can be something like a free trial, a free guide eBook, or even a free online course. Frame visiting your website as a beneficial thing in your visitor’s life.
2. Use a Memorable URL
This is especially true if you’re using any kind of print medium. If your reader comes across your ad, or piece of marketing material, and immediately forgets your URL, then they won’t visit your site.
Your URL must be short, related to your offer, and memorable. You can even create a unique URL and redirect it to an existing page on your website.
3. Track Your Traffic Sources
How will you know which direct marketing methods are the most effective? There are literally dozens of means you can use to send more traffic to your site. However, some methods will work better than others.
The only way to determine what’s actually working, so you can focus your efforts, is to track your clicks. You can do this by using Google Analytics, or trackable links through a service like Bit.ly. Also, make sure to only run one direct marketing campaign at once, so you can be sure that your traffic is coming from that source and it’s easier to monitor the results.
4. Have a Clear Call-to-Action
You must tell your readers what to do next. If you want them to visit your site to complete a survey, then tell them. If you want them to go to your site and sign up for a free trial, then tell them.
You must be very specific with your call-to-action. The clearer you can be the better.
5. Use a Landing Page
When sending traffic to your website make sure you send them to a very specific page on your site that’s related to your marketing. Don’t just send them to your home page. There are simply too many choices and it’s easy for your readers to get lost.
Create a very specific page that’s in alignment with the offer and the action you want them to take. This will also help you gather tracking data to further optimize.
6. Use the Power of Deadlines to Encourage Action
If people don’t act immediately, then they probably won’t act at all. Make sure your offer is time sensitive, otherwise there’s a greater chance they won’t even act at all.
When placing your deadline make sure that it’s near your call-to-action, so your users don’t gloss over it.
We hope you enjoying our direct marketing tips that will help to improve your traffic efforts. Implement some of the tips above and you’ll start to see your website traffic grow.
What are your favorite direct marketing hacks? Please share in the comments below.
Kevin Wood writes about technology and human potential. You can find him at his virtual homes Wooden Writing and Counter Culturist.