subject: Why Should You Pay To Get Web Site Traffic, Isn't Seo Enough? [print this page] Perhaps there's a clue in the last questionPerhaps there's a clue in the last question.
What other options are there?
You have 3 basic choices to get traffic to your website:
1. You pay - using PPC, ezine ads, banners etc...
2. You borrow - constructing Joint Ventures and endorsed offers with partners
3. You grow your own - with natural search engine optimisation
So which is the best?
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Well they all do a different job and have different characteristics, perhaps the best information source you could hope to find on the subject is found here:
* Target buying customers and those most likely to buy through correct keyword targeting
* Test different offers
The last benefit above is perhaps the most important. Remember a page on a website doesn't have to stay recorded online forever...
Just because you've completed your site in terms of the pages you want to add (although in truth you'll never be finished as you can continually add more related content), this does not preclude you from testing other pages...
The value of testing
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Simple scenario: You want to test 2 price points for a product/service. (Yes you can do this and people don't have to know about it so don't be worried).
With a PPC campaign you can have your normal web page (Page A) sitting as normal at the well known web address with all of your normal links pointing to it.
You 2 price point test pages (Page B & C) are a different kettle of fish - they sit off to the side and you push traffic to them using PPC to quickly determine which is the winner.
You can do this for any test you dream up, the bottom line is you can quickly determine what is working and what is not in your marketing.
Knowing what's not working is more important than what is (particularly if you are sailing close to the wind) because you SAVE money you would otherwise have thrown away.
The Affiliate Advantage
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When you have a website that is converting well, you will be able to attract many affiliates (and even super affiliates if you are doing a good enough job and providing a good enough incentive package).
Affiliates can make your business explode overnight if you have done your homework and have the site converting well.
If you have not you may attract them, they may pump some traffic and then they will disappear to pastures new when they see you are not doing a good job.
In summary
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If I could give you one reason why you should use PPC and in particular Google Adwords as part of your internet marketing campaign it would be this:
"Feedback fast, feedback cheap"
Yes you may spend a little money up front, but you can save yourself a whole lot of heartache on the back end.
Most people put popup ads and Spam in the same category; they genuinely don't believe in their effectiveness.
However, marketing statistics show that popup ads are powerful marketing tools that can significantly increase your sales and subscribers to your opt-in list or newsletter. On the flip side, popup ads are the third most hated entity on the Internet, behind Spam and adware. This is because most popup ads are the rude interrupting variety that traps the user into an unending loop.
It is possible to produce Popups that provide relevant information to users in a non-intrusive way. You just need to be sure that you are providing relevant information to the visitors to your site (information that they are already actively looking for.
If you are using conventional popup ads on your site, you may have noticed oh, in the last year or so...that your opt in list has been continually declining. You can attribute this decline to the advent of the popup blocker. Just in case you're not familiar with pop-up blockers, here's the short summaryover the past year, a lot companies, even the major ISP's (Internet Service Providers) such as AOL, Google and Yahoo have been releasing software designed to block pop-ups, so that anyone who has the software installed can control how many pop-ups they see from what website or even block them totally. In lots of cases, the average Internet user doesn't even know that they have a popup blocker installed on their toolbar.
There is new technology available now that lets you create a new type of popup ad. This ad is an animated floating ads that look and behave like pop-ups but are essentially a part of the main web page, so popup blockers can't stop them.
Unlike conventional popups, which open new browser windows, these ads are part of your web page.
Using this new technology, you can:
Conduct polls and surveys to can get useful feedback from your visitors/aid your marketing efforts
2. Capture email addresses from visitors by offering them free information
3. Use your thank you pages to introduce your visitors to your other products. Since they are already in a buying mood, there is a pretty good chance that they will be receptive.
4. Add "tips of the day" and change them every so often to generate interest.
As a smart internet marketer, I'm sure you know that by capturing the visitor's email address, and then following up with them via an effective auto-responder campaign, you can more than double your chances of closing the sale. By using the new popup ads, you can do exactly that!
