Most people who run a website don’t seem to realize just how valuable their traffic is. Don’t believe me? Then just look at all the websites using Google Ads and similar PPC adverts on their pages. These ads will fill up their pages and literally direct traffic away from their site. But all they’ll get in return is usually a measly few cents. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that if those advertisers are willing to pay that much for your visitors, they must be worth more than that.
While PPC might be a good way to make some easy cash from your visitors now, it’s far from the most effective way to generate profit from traffic in the long run. A much better thing to do with your web traffic would be to get visitor sign ups to a mailing list. In return, this will allow you to bring them back to your site again and again. You can then promote any products or services you have to them directly. But how do you get visitor sign ups? Here are some tips on how you can get your visitors to willingly give you their contact details and permission to email them.
Get Visitor Sign Ups by Giving Something Away
One sure fire way to help people become more open to the idea of giving away their details is to give them something in return. The easiest option here is to offer a free report or eBook which works well because it’s free to copy and doesn’t require any additional costs. If you aren’t a prolific writer then don’t worry, you can easily create an eBook by compiling a few of the articles on your website (it’s free after all) or by commissioning someone from a freelancing site to do it for you.
To benefit even more from this, you should make sure to include your brand and URL in the report or eBook. This way if your visitors decide to give the information away and share it with others, it will continue to act as a good promotion for your site and products. Of course, you can also tastefully pitch some of your related offerings throughout the content – again it’s okay to do as you’re not charging anything for it.
Please Note, you should make it clear that your visitors are signing up to your mailing list and not just giving you their email address so that they can receive the report or eBook. If you skip getting their permission to send them marketing material, you will find that they will be mentally much less open to your messages and will be far more likely to just delete them when they arrive.
Design Your Site Around Your Mailing List
The average site with AdSense ads on it will place the incredibly prominent and regular ads front and center in order to get the maximum number of clicks on them. Getting visitor sign ups to a mailing list is no different. So, if you want to maximize the number of leads your site generates, you should make sure that you have a sign-up page somewhere prominent and that you offer it at every available opportunity. If your site is built to sell a product or service and you value lead tracking and generation, then you should turn the whole site into a ‘funnel‘ that directs your traffic to this capture page.
Ask yourself these questions:
What is the main action you want your visitors to take when they land on your site?
What process do you have in place to make sure that happens?
