You wouldn't drive somewhere without directions. You wouldn't build a house without blueprints.

And you shouldn't launch a campaign to increase web traffic without a strategy. 

Without strategy, you'll keep shooting aimless messages out into the world, from which you'll get plenty of impressions and few results. But with strategy, you can integrate your marketing efforts to not only attract more web traffic – but also secure more business. 

Just ask yourself these three questions:

1. What is my goal?

What do you want your customer to do once they are on your website? It depends on your specific product or service. For instance:

• Retailer? Add to cart. 
• Manufacturer? Find a retailer. 
• Service? Call for a free estimate. 
• Nonprofit? Donate or sign up to volunteer. 

Determine your website's call to action (called the "conversion" in web talk), and ask your customers to do it. Make it a giant button on every page of the website. Make it the goal, directly or indirectly, of every marketing message you create. 

2. Who is my customer?

Marketing isn't about forcing people to buy things they don't want. It's about finding the people who need you and introducing yourself, in their language, at exactly the right time and place:

• A billboard for car air conditioning repair as they sit sweltering in rush hour traffic. 
• A plumbing business on page one of their Google search for how to fix a toilet.

Also consider the length of the buy process – how long it takes to "convert" them. If you sell clothing, the process can be as little as a few minutes, from grabbing the customer's attention with an image of a cute dress to getting them to click "Process Order." If you're a university trying to attract students, however, the process can stretch over months or even years as your customers weigh their options.

Throughout a longer buy process, find ways to stay in front of them. This might involve using softer calls to action to funnel them closer to your ultimate goal. For instance:

• Inviting them to tour the campus will guide them closer to the primary conversion of completing their application.

• Enticing them to subscribe to your blog for free advice lets you prove your knowledge and helpfulness while they decide whether or not to pay for more extensive services.

3. Who is my competition?

If you follow the tips listed above, chances are you'll already be a step ahead of your competitors. But you can go the extra mile by:

• Targeting their customers. For instance, when buying ads on search engines, add your competitor's name to your keyword list, so your business appears on the results page every time someone searches for your competitor.
• Differentiating yourself. Focus on benefits, not features – particularly the benefits you offer that your competitors don't.
• Being more attractive. Study their ads before writing your own and find ways to make yours more compelling – like by offering discounts and free trials.

Pinpointing your goal, understanding your customers and knowing your competition are the building blocks of strategy, and strategy is the backbone of any campaign. Don't leave home without it.

Continue reading: *Designing* for Website Speed
View all: "Driving More Traffic to Your Website" blog series

Traditional advertising is still very much in the picture. But if your goal is to get more web traffic, you have to do more than just add a URL to the end of your outdoor boards, print ads, direct mail, TV commercials or radio spots. You have to make it ultra clear why they want to visit your website. 

Here are a few ways to do that.

1. Make visiting the website your main call to action. On the billboard, TV spot or postcard, literally ask them to go to the website, versus calling a number or visiting a physical location.

2. Tell them how the site will benefit them in the call to action. Don't just say "visit our website" – tell them what they'll get out of it. For instance: 

• Learn more at website.com
• Get tickets at website.com
• Compare prices at website.com
• Get a free sample at website.com

3. Try using a memorable URL. A fun, unique URL is more likely to stick in your customer's mind and entice them to find out more – like:

• WeDoTheRobot.com for the robotic surgery program at USMD Arlington
• SeeTheScrolls.com for Southwestern Seminary's Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition

4. Offer something exclusively online. Something cool they can only get on your website: 

• Promo code discount/downloadable coupon
• Contest or sweepstakes
• Free sample, trial or evaluation

5. Create urgency by limiting the time frame of the offer. ("Hurry – the sale ends Wednesday.")

6. Get them involved. Spark community interaction by asking people to share stories or suggestions. With the Can He Rope It challenge for Justin Boots, we asked people to send in funny roping challenges to trick-roper Anthony Lucia for a chance to win a pair of Justin Boots.

Try some of these out on your next campaign and let us know how it worked for you.

Continue reading: Strategy: Don't Launch a Campaign Without It
View all: "Driving More Traffic to Your Website" blog series

Retargeting is one of the most innovative (and some would say creepy) ways of getting more traffic to your site. You’ve probably seen it before and didn’t know how it worked. Here’s how:

1. You visit a site, say a travel site. You search for flights to Chicago.
2. You don’t end up buying a flight to Chicago.
3. A couple of days later, you are on another website and see a banner ad that says, “All flights to Chicago, now on sale!”
4. You think to yourself, “That’s great! I’m looking for a cheaper flight to Chicago.”
5. You click the link and (hopefully, for the site) you buy a ticket to Chicago.

What you just experienced was retargeting. This is an advertising technique that allows websites to follow you around the web. It works pretty simply for the advertiser:

1. The advertiser places a small piece of code on their website that puts a cookie on your computer.
2. That cookie is linked to an advertising network.
3. When that advertising network sees the cookie on your computer, it triggers an ad to appear on the page.
4. When you end up making the purchase, there is a piece of code that shows up on the website that deletes that cookie and makes sure the advertiser doesn’t advertise to you again.

The first thing that people think is, “Wow! That’s creepy!” But let me assure you, the advertiser has no idea who you are. The advertiser anonymously installs that cookie and never knows who they are advertising to.

This is a great way to reach your customers. Most people that visit a website don’t make a purchase on their first visit. Having a constant reminder follow the user around the web is a great way for customers to come back to your website — not to mention it is a much more targeted technique than blanketing the internet with your ads.

Continue reading: Tips to Drive Traffic to Your Website with Facebook
View all: "Driving More Traffic to Your Website" blog series

People have been saying for years that mobile is the future. It is no longer the future, it is the present. In fact, more Americans own a Smartphone than a "dumb phone". On top of that, there are more cell phones than people in the U.S.

How can you reach all of these customers? Easy -- mobile advertising. Mobile advertising makes the most sense for companies that have specific locations, but it can also be valuable for overall branding.

Let's take the example of a store that sells shoes. There are a couple of ways that the store could choose to advertise: 

Mobile Search Advertising

Most cell phone users use a search engine (like Google or Bing) to make purchasing decisions on the fly. Within Google AdWords, you can target mobile devices and geographic locations -- allowing you to hit your target at the time (and place) they are searching for a place to buy shoes.

Mobile Display Advertising

Just as there are both search and display advertising on the desktop -- there are also both on mobile. Most free games and apps are supported by display ads. Depending upon the advertising network, you can target based upon contextual information (for example, showing restaurants in an app like Yelp) and location. This will reach customers that aren't necessarily searching for your product or service -- but still be targeted. 

App Sponsorship

Another possibility is to sponsor an application. That's exactly what The North Face has done with their Snow Report application. Obviously, the app is very connected to their brand -- but the key is that it provides something useful to their customers.

It's essential that the page that the ad leads to is mobile friendly. Some advertisers simply don't have the budget to create a mobile website -- but it's simple to create a one-page landing pages that will work on a mobile phone. This means that the site can not use flash and be formatted, so you don't have to zoom in on the site to read the content.

With mobile use growing at a very quick rate, maybe it's time you start advertising on mobile devices.

Continue reading: How to Drive Traffic to Your Website: Facebook Ads
View all: "Driving More Traffic to Your Website" blog series

Search Engine Optimization. SEO. First of all, what exactly is search engine optimization? It simply means Google (and Bing and Yahoo) can find your website.

Over the years, it has turned into a snake-oil business full of smoke and mirrors. But I’ll let you in on our secret SEO strategy: produce great stuff. While that sounds incredibly simple, it’s incredibly difficult.

A lot of companies that provide SEO services outsource a lot of “link building” to Third World countries and, for all intents and purposes, spam unrelated websites. We are working with a client that hired an SEO firm to help them, and we found they had posted the link on over 2,000 other sites that had no relationship to our client. They were garbage sites full of other links. These SEO firms will also try and repeat the keywords you are trying to rank for all over the site - most of the time, it looks sloppy and doesn’t make any sense.

Google is getting smarter than that. It is now able to separate the wheat from the chaff.

So, how do we use SEO for our clients? It all starts with research. The first thing we do is use Google Keyword Tool to find out what people are searching in relationship to our client’s product or service. Then we compare it to Google Analytics to see how people are currently finding their website. We then compare the two to see where we could add content to match what users are searching for.

For example, let’s say we are working with a candle company. We notice in Analytics that users find the site by searching for things like “best candles” and “apple scented candles.” That’s great. When we look in the Google Keyword Tool, we realize that people are searching a lot for “How to get rid of dog odors” and “Best candles for setting the mood.” Those are a great fit with our client, so we write a blog post or create a page that talks about each of those two topics. We also make sure to include links to the candles that would be the best fit for the post and make the post factual and even entertaining (if we can). Then we link to the posts from Facebook and Twitter and we might even post the articles to StumbleUpon or Reddit if we think it’s relevant.

Providing solutions to the problems your customers search for is a much more valuable strategy than loading up your site (and others) with irrelevant links and spam. 

It’s also important to build your site correctly. If your site is not built correctly, all of the above work can go down the drain. Keep these technical tips in mind:

• Make sure the site is not built completely in Flash - Google can’t read Flash. Google is a robot, not a real person.
• Google also can’t read the text in images, so use images for photos and illustrations, not text. There are plenty of fancy-text alternatives (http://www.google.com/webfonts) to avoid using text in an image.
• Put your company name in plain text (not an image) in several places on the homepage. We have had several clients that weren’t even ranking for their company name because there was only a photo logo on the homepage.
• Have search-friendly URLs. For example, Google can read http://balcomagency.com/blog/the-best-article-about-seo-ever better than http://balcomagency.com/storyid=123423221.
• Use alternate text (alt-text) wherever possible. Google can see the alternate text of images, which helps.
• Install Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools to make sure you can measure how people are coming to your website.

While this is not a definitive guide to SEO, it should serve as a great primer to get more traffic to your website by using search engine optimization.

Continue reading: Using Ad & Video Networks to Drive Website Traffic
View all: "Driving More Traffic to Your Website" blog series

When it comes to increasing your site traffic, you've got to give a little to get a little. And that's where content marketing comes in. It's all about providing valuable, relevant content to people – content they want to share, content that keeps them coming back for more. Done right, it can turn prospects into loyal customers, create brand ambassadors, even do wonders for your search engine rankings.

Think it through
To provide high-quality content, you've got to have a strategy. Do you want to position yourself as a thought leader in your industry? Then providing a series of white papers might be the way to go. Do you want to create a community? You can host a forum for like-minded people to get connected, find expert advice and share stories. Want to raise brand awareness? Try a super-unique video series. No matter how you deliver it, your content should always be relevant – to your audience, and your business. Cat videos may be popular, but if your business has nothing to do with cats, posting cat videos will be a pretty transparent ploy for traffic. (That is, unless you've figured out a way to connect the two. And it can be done.)

Freshen up
With content marketing, it's never one and done. You have to keep a steady stream of fresh content on your site to stay relevant. It helps to create an editorial calendar so that you're prepared for a few months out, but don't plan too far ahead. Work some flexibility into the schedule so you can capitalize on trending topics. The goal of fresh content is to keep people coming back for more. The key term here is engagement – you want to create an ongoing relationship with people that goes beyond you shilling your products. Give them valuable content. Then give them some more. Rinse, repeat – you get the drill.

Share and share alike
The sure sign of quality content? Shares. Whether it's getting posted across Facebook, distributed through email or tweeted and retweeted, content that's good enough to share will inevitably drive traffic. But don't just create the content and sit back and wait. Make it easy for visitors to your site to repost your content by adding sharing buttons. You should also develop a robust social media presence to jumpstart the process of socializing your content.

The traffic circle
In terms of driving site traffic, content marketing is closely tied to search engine optimization. That's because the more traffic you get to your website through valuable, relevant content, the higher you rank on search engine results pages. And the higher you rank, the more traffic you'll get. Content marketing: the gift that keeps on giving.

Continue reading: Why You Need a Blog if You Want More Web Traffic
View all: "Driving More Traffic to Your Website" blog series

Back in April of 2009, Google decided to add “Page Speed” to its list of things to measure when determining search result rankings. Page speed is simply how long it takes for your website to load. But how important is page speed when it comes to SEO? It’s actually not very important it turns out. Page speed is just one of over 200 different variables that are calculated when Google considers page rankings and is given a low/moderate importance value.

So why is page speed so important? While page speed doesn’t have a significant impact on page rankings, it does have a significant impact on conversion rate. Here are some statistics for you:

• Shopzilla increased page load time from 6 seconds to 1.2 seconds and increased revenue by 12% and page views by 25%.
• Amazon increased revenue by 1% for every 100 milliseconds of improvement.
• Yahoo! increased traffic by 9% for every 400 milliseconds of improvement.
• By reducing website speed by 2.2 seconds Mozilla estimates that 60 million more Firefox downloads occur every year.
• 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less.
• 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
• A 1 second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions.

Sources: Strange Loop Network, KISS metrics (very cool infographic)

I could continue to produce more statistics, but I think you get the point. People are impatient and don’t like having to wait for anything. If your website is taking longer than 3 seconds to load, almost half of the people viewing it are just going to leave. This has a massive effect on how people will use you site and how willing they are to use it again.

Getting up to Speed

In July of 2011, Google came out with a service called Page Speed Online which is an online service that automatically speeds up loading of your web pages. Here’s Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site from Yahoo that has a lot of good and detailed information.

A few other tools to help your speed your website:

• YSlow
• Pingdom
• Pylot
• GTmetrix

There are hundreds of tools out there to analyze page speed and these are just a few to get started. Even the smallest increase in speed can make a pretty significant difference.

Continue reading: Nice Sites Finish First
View all: "Driving More Traffic to Your Website" blog series

First. Speed is the greatest Keanu Reeves movie ever.

Second. I'm not going to write about how to program a fast site. I am going to write as a designer and how to think when you are crafting that website masterpiece.

I know what you're thinking. 

"I'm the designer. I don't need to worry about speed. That's up to the programmer."

Wrong. Your design has a dramatic affect on the user experience and site performance.

The good news is that designing a super-cool, yet efficient and fast-loading site, is not that hard.

There are three rules to remember when designing speedy websites:

• Efficiency
• Simplicity
• Size

Let's break these three rules down further.

Efficiency (in general describes the extent to which time or effort is well used for the intended task or purpose.)

• Design your navigation using HTML fonts and not graphics
  This is a no-brainer. You'll want to be able to easily update navigation and add/edit pages from your CMS.
• Design as much text as possible to use HTML fonts
  Less images to load means faster load time. Use Typekit or Google Fonts for a wide variety of HTML fonts.
• Reuse design elements
  Avoid redundancy by reusing design elements throughout the site design.

Simplicity (is the state or quality of being simple)

• Don't use images for everything
  Where you can, think of how you use CSS for colors, gradients, curves, etc
• Avoid a lot of drop shadows
  Drop shadows can eat up bytes to render. You can still use them, just don't go crazy. And keep them consistent.
• Use the "Bonsai" method
  Start with a complex design and trim away elements you don't need till you're left with the perfect balance of design and function.

Size (it does matter)

• Optimize your images before uploading to a CMS 
  Don't let the CMS auto-resize your images for you, or use HTML to adjust the sizing. This can really affect the speed of a website.
• If using large images (full browser images) make them as small as possible in Photoshop. Less than 200k is a good rule of thumb.

Remember, It's really not that hard to think about speed when you are designing a website. Keep the rules above in mind as you craft your next website.

Good luck!

Continue reading: The Need for Speed
View all: "Driving More Traffic to Your Website" blog series

Email has been around a while, but that doesn't mean it isn't effective. It's still one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to drive traffic to your website. Whether you're a business sending a monthly newsletter or a retailer announcing a sale, it's time to rethink your email marketing strategy. 

Don't send just to send
How often you send your email campaigns should depend on the amount of valuable content you can produce. A site with multiple posts a day, like Mashable, has enough fresh content to allow for frequent email updates to keep their readership engaged. A small blog with a new post every month or so does not. Know what your email strategy can handle and if you begin to notice lowered open and click rates or unsubscribes, ease off the gas and reevaluate.

Do your research
To find out what information will be valuable to your readers, start with your email opt-in form – it's a perfect way to gather data. Knowing where readers live, their age and even gender can go a long way in helping you strategize. You can even take it a step further, like Justin Boots has, and ask people to identify the types of content they'd like to receive. As your email list builds, these answers will help you see what will work best, and your email and web content strategies will come together a lot quicker.

Don't show all your cards
Consider replacing lengthy copy with a sentence or two and a "read more" link directing readers to your website. If you "geek out" on email stats, this strategy will also show you which stories are being read and by whom. 

Do be social
Make it ridiculously easy for your readers to share your email content. Popular email marketing websites, like MailChimp and Constant Contact, allow you to add social share and forward buttons (and they're trackable). You should also be sharing your campaigns. Spreading your email content through your social networks broadens its reach and adds more opportunities for people to find it and subscribe. (Tip: Break up your email content into several social media posts to get the most benefit from the content.)

Don't forget the simple stuff
This may seem obvious, but it has to be said. Don't forget to link your logo, header graphic or other relevant graphics to your homepage and be sure to include the full web address in your footer. Featuring a navigation menu of specific areas of your website adds even more click opportunities. Many times these are easily skipped over, but they are an easy opportunity for new web traffic. 

Interested in more email tips and tricks? Subscribe to our Balcom newsletter, The Letter B (GetLetterB.com), or message me directly(@LaurenAshleyTX).

Continue reading: 6 Ways Traditional Advertising Can Drive People to Your Website
View all: "Driving More Traffic to Your Website" blog series

Buying ads on a search engine is one of the most common ways to drive traffic to your website. Google and Bing are the most common search engines.

The search below shows a Google search for “car insurance.” You might not know this, but the listings in yellow and on the right-hand side are ads. The companies (GEICO, Progressive) pay to be listed when people search for car insurance.

Search engine marketing is a huge business -- in fact, advertising makes up 96 percent of Google’s $37.9 billion in revenue last year.

Search engine marketing is a great idea because it allows you to be right in front of the customer when they are searching for information about you, or your product, service or competition. If you are doing research for car insurance, for example, you’re going to go to Google and search for things like “best car insurance” or “car insurance reviews.” There’s a good chance you aren’t looking for a specific brand, but looking for solutions to your problems.

While it could take years to rank up in natural search engine results, search engine marketing allows you to pay for a higher listing.

Search engine marketing is also a complicated business. There are entire books devoted to search engine marketing, but here’s the quick version of how Google Ads work:

• The advertisers decides to run ads on Google. The advertiser will decide what keywords (or search terms) they want to advertise for. While this seems simple, there can be thousands of keywords that an advertiser buys (think of all the products that Amazon sells).
• The advertiser pays for each click on the ad. If a Google searcher sees an ad and does not click on it, the advertiser is not charged.
• If the user clicks on an ad, the advertiser is charged. The cost per click (CPC) is based upon several factors - the biggest being competiton. The more competitive the keyword, the higher the price.
  - For example, “car insurance” is very expensive (about $38 a click). “Fort Worth Advertising Agency” is about $5 a click. There’s obviously more competition for car insurance than ad agencies in Fort Worth.
• The advertiser can target the ads in many ways:
  - Geographically (down to the city level)
  - By Price
  - According to a user’s device (Mobile Phone, Tablet, Computer)

Search engine marketing isn’t without its drawbacks. It’s complicated and needs to be continually optimized. We’ve talked to many clients that started a campaign and didn’t have the time or resources to continually monitor it. The results reflected the effort. Monitoring an online campaign is crucial to success. Prices change, new competitors pop up and the way people search changes.

Search Engine Marketing is a great way to drive guaranteed traffic to your site. Just remember you pay for it, so it pays to monitor and optimize it.

Continue reading: How to Drive Traffic to Your Website: Retargeting
View all: "Driving More Traffic to Your Website" blog series