Offline Traffic Generation for Leads
This is one of my favourites and it’s often overlooked. Offline traffic generation means using offline means to promote your online presence. This could include ads in print, radio, and TV media.
It is of course more expensive than advertising online, but if you have the right product or service, it can work well for your business. Offline traffic generation is a good supplement to online advertising campaigns.
For example, we worked with a client in the pest control area in Sydney and they have a print Yellow Pages ad, a full-page Yellow Pages ad. At the bottom of that ad, we’ve also put in an invitation to visit the website and download a free report on termite control.
So if people don’t call, the website address gives the company another opportunity to get a hold of their contact information and work on getting their business – and with a somewhat complex and expensive service like termite control, any lead pays off well.
The basic idea of this process is to drive traffic to your site (as well as to create an interest in it) by using a free giveaway like a free report. When you offer this, you can get the contact information for people who download your freebie and then keep in touch with them via auto-responder. This will make people better educated about what you have to offer and get people contacting you who are truly interested in your products and services.
If you operate a retail business, then you can capture names for your customer newsletter or some sort of offers that you deliver on an on-going basis. Borders Books and Music do this very well. I also noticed the other day that my local running shoes shop has an invitation to join their online newsletter printed onto every sales docket. It cost them almost nothing to do it, but it can add to the incremental number of leads that you generate on an ongoing basis. There are actually tonnes of opportunities to do this with all types of offline marketing.
Name Capture & Follow Up
Using name capture and follow up involves asking for your prospective customer’s contact information so that you can contact them later with other information. This is one of the very best methods of lead generation. If you can get a prospect’s attention, you will find yourself with many more leads that are ready to buy from you.
Now, this is a conversion strategy as well, because when you follow up, you get a higher percentage of visitors converting into high-quality inquiries. It’s also a traffic generation strategy because when you follow up like this, you get more prospects visiting you site more often.
Filed under: Marketing