1. Social Networks
Utilizing social networks is still one of the best ways to increase website traffic. You can never go wrong when using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc as a tool for increasing traffic. Among all these social networks, Facebook is dominant. Facebook alone can deliver massive amounts of traffic to your website when used correctly. The sweetest part about Facebook is it’s FREE – and forever will be.

2. Social Bookmarks
Who says social bookmarking is dead? As a matter of fact it is very much alive. There are a lot of social bookmarking sites out there and more are created every day. Highly trafficked social bookmarking sites are Digg, Delicious, Reddit, and Stumbleupon. You can bookmark your blog posts to these sites and if it makes it to front page of a popular site, then that means a massive amount of traffic.

3. Articles
Sharing your expertise through articles is really fun. What you are trying to do is to build your reputation and show that you are an expert. One strategy you can utilize is to submit your articles to Ezinarticles.com and make sure each article has a link back to your site. Chances are if your article is very good a lot of users will read it, and voila, Instant traffic.

• Where your visitors are coming from – very important if you’re targeting a specific audience.
• How your visitors found your website – this is very important for determining which of your efforts are paying off. It shows if visitors found your site directly, through a referral from another website (ex: Twitter, Facebook), or from search engines.
• Web browsers used by your visitors – knowing which web browsers your visitors use allows you to know which browsers you should be focusing on.
• Operating systems used by your visitors – the technology used in developing your site/blog may only work in a certain operating system, therefore it’s important to take note of the different operating systems your visitors are using.
• What keywords were used by visitors in the search engines to get to your website – this is very crucial for SEO. Knowing which keywords people are searching for to get to your site determines if you are on the right track.

1. Go to www.adwords.google.com and click on Start Now
2. Use the buttons to indicate the username and password you’d like to use with AdWords.
3. You’ll need a Google account to sign in, so use your existing one or create an account.
4. Click Create Your First Campaign.
5. In the Setting tabs: name your campaign, then select your other settings: audience, language and location, network settings, bidding and budget options, and any applicable advanced settings. Click save and continue.
6. Enter your ad copy (keep it simple!)
7. Enter your keywords. I suggest you use Google’s help with finding more keywords. Enter your placements.
8. Next you’ll need to enter your billing information, set the time zone for your account, and agree to the AdWords terms and conditions.
9. Click save and activate once you’re ready!

Tip: If you don’t want Google to continuously charge your card for unlimited clicks, create a budget with a limited amount of funds Google can pull from.

The top four things that you MUST have on your site:

• Analytics to track your stats (Google Analytics is our recommendation)
• Email Opt In form (I Contact rocks)
• A phone number in clear view (If you want a 1-800 # check out Ring Central)
• A clear call to action — don’t make people guess what you want them to do

There are many others like: clean coding, good graphics, compelling story etc.  However, these are the top four that have no exceptions.

Is your site missing any of the above four?  If so, make the adjustments – you will be glad you did!

• How many leads did you get from the tradeshow you just attended, even further how many became sales?
• How much money do you make from spending $5000/month on pay per click marketing?
• How many people visited your web site from the ad you placed in Time magazine?  Was it worth the $100,000 you spent?

You need to be able to track every penny you spend regardless of the size of your company.  We’ve got to identify what’s working and what’s not working.  Save some money and cut out whats not working and beef up the campaigns that are bringing in the most dollars for your company.  That follows the golden rules of why companies are in business: to make a profit.  To do so, you need to reduce expenses and or increase sales.

You should be thinking this sounds great, but how do I actually track my campaigns?  

First, you need to identify all the various campaigns you have taking place: online marketing, magazine ads, TV ads etc.  Each and every campaign needs to be tracked in a different way. 

The next step is to get google analytics installed on your web site – contact us if you need help in doing so - http://www.tazsol.com .  Once installed, you will gain a HUGE amount of data.   The basics of google analytics – it will tell you how many people are coming to your web site,  where they came from and what they are doing on your web site.   In another post we will go into more advanced Google Analytics options,  for now, simply get it on your web site!

The last step to tracking your campaigns to dollars is to customize and configure a customer relationship management tool.    We prefer and only use www.salesforce.com Its the most robust tool we have ever used.  If you are dealing with any phone orders or customer service issues you need to use a system like salesforce.com.  This tool will allow you to setup campaigns and then track them thru the entire sales process.  It also allows you to manage quality issues, technical issues and so on.   It will do just about anything you need: you need an English Muffin it will literally hand you an English Muffin (that’s an extreme dramatization, but you get the point)  If this sounds familiar we borrowed it from Geico

Let’s show you an example of how you can use a CRM tool to track your campaigns.  You sell sprinkler systems to schools and just got back from a tradeshow.  You’ve got 25 leads.    Your task is to follow up with those leads.  Our task – to determine how many of these leads became sales.

Using a tool like Salesforce.com, you would enter in the leads in the system noting the lead source – the specific trade show.  Once the lead became qualified (some will already be qualified) , you would change it into an opportunity.  An opportunity is qualified lead that has some sales potential. 

 If you end of quoting that person/company that information would get entered in Salesforce.com along with any other activity along the way: any phone calls that were made, emails exchanged etc.  The last step is closing out the opportunity – did you win it or did you lose it?  If you lost it we want to know why, if you won it great!

Re-read this section to see how we closed the loop.  You went from attending the trade show to coming back with 25 leads to quoting some of those and to winning some orders and not winning some.

If your orders/profits are greater than the cost of the show, you made a good decision.  If your orders does not cover the cost maybe you think about another show!

Keep reading our posts for further information on how to track leads to dollars – allowing you to make more informed and practical decisions!

Have a profitable Day!

 I hope you had a nice new years and that your year is off to a great start thus far!  The year 2008 is going to be a great year for everyone, I can feel it!  

I’m going to start off this year with a mini homework assignment for you. This assignment will be used throughout the year to keep you on track and provide some benchmarks in going forward.

1. Organize an excell file of your web stats for the year 2007 focusing on a few key numbers:

• Number of Visitors
• Number of Unique Visitors
• Total Hits
• Traffic Sources

You want to be able to quickly know how many people on average come to your web site on a given month (unique vistors)  how many pages they look at (number of hits on average) and where they are coming from.

I really want you to pay particular attention to the traffic sources.  Where does most of your traffic come from?   Are they directly typing in your address, or are they coming from somewhere else?  And where is that somewhere else?

It’s our goal at Taz Solutions to not only help you increase your traffic and sales, but also spread out your risk a bit.  You never want the bulk of your traffic coming from one place.

Stay tuned, more information coming back at you soon.