Getting more people to your website won’t necessarily create more business if the people already visiting aren’t taking the next step.
THIS WEEK’S RAMBLING
“We need more traffic.”
I hear some version of this pretty regularly when talking with businesses about growth, and sometimes they’re absolutely right.
But before I recommend spending more money on Google Ads, LinkedIn, SEO, social media, or anything else designed to get more people to a website, I want to know what is happening with the people who are already there.
Let’s say 1,000 people visit your website every month and 10 of them become leads.
You could spend more money trying to bring another 1,000 people to the website, or you could figure out why 990 of the people you’re already getting aren’t taking the next step.
Because if you can turn those 10 leads into 20 without generating a single additional visitor, you’ve doubled your results before spending another dollar trying to increase traffic.
Of course, I’m oversimplifying the math a bit, but I think the point is important.
More traffic only becomes more valuable when the system receiving that traffic is working.
That’s why when I’m looking at a digital marketing program, traffic is only one piece of what I’m interested in.
Where are people coming from? Which pages are they visiting? Where are they leaving? What are you asking them to do next? Is that next step obvious? And are you giving different types of prospects appropriate ways to engage with you?
Then there’s another part of the equation that often gets overlooked.
What happens when somebody actually does raise their hand?
Maybe they fill out a form, download something, register for an event, schedule a consultation, or simply call the office.
How quickly does somebody respond? Where does that lead go? Who owns the follow-up? What happens if they’re interested but aren’t ready to move forward today?
You can have a great website and a successful advertising campaign and still lose opportunities because the process behind them isn’t working.
This is why I don’t think digital growth should be viewed as a collection of individual marketing tactics.
Traffic matters. Conversion matters. Follow-up matters. Measurement matters. And they all have to work together.
There are certainly businesses that need more traffic and eventually almost every growing business is going to want more people entering the top of the funnel.
But before you spend more money getting them there, make sure you’re doing everything you can with the people who have already found you.
You might discover that your biggest growth opportunity isn’t generating more traffic at all.
It’s getting more value from the traffic you already have.
A FEW MORE THINGS I’M RAMBLING ABOUT
ONE THING I’M WATCHING
The cost of getting attention continues to make conversion more important.
Whether you’re paying for search, social, content, events, sponsorships, or simply investing the time required to create organic visibility, getting in front of the right people has a cost.
That’s why I think businesses are going to have to pay more attention to what happens after they earn that attention.
Generating 20 percent more traffic sounds great, but improving the percentage of existing visitors who become actual opportunities can sometimes have a much larger impact on the business.
The organizations that understand the entire journey from first visit through follow-up are going to have an advantage over the ones that simply keep spending more money at the top.
ONE THING I’D QUESTION
Do you actually know what happens after someone visits your website?
Most businesses can tell you approximately how much traffic their website receives.
Far fewer can tell you which pages generate inquiries, which calls-to-action people use, where prospects leave, which traffic sources generate actual opportunities, and what ultimately happens to those opportunities.
Traffic is easy to measure.
Understanding whether that traffic is creating business is a much more valuable question.
ONE THING WORTH TRYING
Follow one prospect through your entire digital journey.
Pretend you know absolutely nothing about your business and arrive at your website the way a prospect might.
Can you quickly figure out what to do next?
Then actually do it.
Fill out the form. Download the guide. Register for the event. Schedule the consultation.
See what happens afterward and pay attention to how long everything takes.
You may discover that generating more traffic isn’t the first thing you need to fix.
Your reputation got them interested. What happens next?
Let’s look at whether your digital presence reinforces the trust you’ve already earned, or creates a negative impression at the moment it matters most.
