How Obsessing Over Traffic Is Stopping You From Building A Profitable Company

When creating a website, we are taught that traffic is king. We are always chasing after higher traffic numbers because we think that makes us successful. Today, I am going to talk about why you shouldn't obsess over traffic for your business. In fact, I am going to argue that obsessing over traffic is stopping you from building a profitable company.

Traffic Doesn’t Build An Engaged Customer Base

Traffic doesn't build an engaged customer base. Just because people visit your site, doesn't mean you will have a bunch of customers banging on your door to buy from you. An engaged customer base comes from more than building traffic.

To build an engaged customer base you need to understand who your customers are, what they need, what they want to buy from you, and then you need the discipline to create that thing. More traffic isn't always the answer. The answer is being smart about understanding the potential customers you already have.

Let’s focus more on one statement, “what they want to buy from you." Your customers might be a group of mothers. You could sell them baby clothes in a boutique, but what do they want from you. If you are a career coach, they want career coaching advice. If you are a boutique, they want clothes. Don’t try to be everything to your audience, focus on what you are good at.

You Are Not A Lifestyle Blog

When I am not working with my clients, I am working on building my lifestyle blog The Happy Arkansan. On The Happy Arkansan, I am a stickler for numbers. I am always trying to get my numbers higher because that's what's important on that blog. If I don't have the numbers, I am likely not reaching my affiliate sales and advertising goals. Furthermore, if I am not reaching my numbers, it's going to be hard to convince brands to work with my blog.

On Amanda Cross Co., my goals are very different. I am not focused on the numbers. I am focused on building a community here that will lead to sales of content packages. I don't need thousands of views here; I just need the right views.

You don’t need all the views because you are not a lifestyle blog. Your goals are different.

I don’t want to negate the importance of traffic. More people coming in at the top of your sales funnel is always great, but don’t think that more traffic will increase sales automatically. You’ve got to do the work to sell your product and build your email list too.

Some Goals Make Much More Sense For Where You Are As A Business

When it comes down to it, some goals make more sense for your business and the content marketing that you do for it. Put a lot of thought into the goals that you have for your website so that you can put the right kind of effort into building your company blog.

5 Goals For Your Company Blog

Next, let’s chat about five goals that you can have for your company blog (besides traffic) that will make more sense for your brand.

Build Your Email/Text List

When it comes to marketing, you can't always make a sale on the first visit someone makes to your website. Sure, some people will purchase right away, but most people need time to decide if they'd like to buy something.

Building your email or text list is the perfect way to keep in contact with your potential customers and sell your services to them over time. You can continue to communicate with them as time goes on and promote your services, latest blog posts, et cetera.

If you want to utilize content marketing to build your email/text list, start with where you are. Write down your numbers in a document. Where are you when it comes to email subscribers today? Promote your email/text list across your website and on every blog post. Utilize lead magnets to build your list and get people excited about signing up.

Keep tabs on where your email list stands after every month. If you can dig deeper, figure out which blog posts are leading to more email signups. If a blog post is underperforming, go back and change things around until you optimize it for email list signups.

Schedule Product Demos

If you own a software company, you may want to schedule more product demos. Even physical product companies may want to schedule more product demos depending on your product. Start by getting your numbers down: how many product demos are you scheduling right now?

Create a plan of attack to promote product demos for your company. If you want to schedule more product demos, you may want to experiment with pre-recorded videos versus one-on-one demos. If you do switch to a more impersonal demo structure, create a way for potential customers to email you detailed questions or set up a system for your salespeople to email anyone who requests a demo video in a specific timeframe (say, within 72 hours of requesting the video demo.)

Product demos have changed a ton over time, and you can utilize your blog to schedule more demos today.

Sell Products/Software Packages

Next, you can use your blog to sell more products/software packages.

We all know that the rule of seven can stop us from making sales right away. People want to visit your site and get to know you a bit before they purchase a product. That doesn't mean you should stop trying to make money on your blog, however.

Pushing certain products or services on your blog is okay. You don't want to avoid selling altogether, after all. You never know, someone visiting your blog might want to buy something right now, but what do they purchase?

Do you have a small item that you can put up for sale? Maybe you have an old webinar that you can repackage as a paid product or a trial that you can monetize in some way? When it comes to selling in your blog posts, keep it simple and never sell more than 1-2 products per post. Too many choices can give people anxiety and make them decide not to purchase at all.

Build Authority/Name Recognition In Your Niche

Another goal you may have is to build authority and name recognition. Being an authority in your niche will help you a ton when it comes to acquiring customers, speaking at the best conferences, and creating a company excels online.

Building authority is about more than pushing out content, though. It's about creating creative content that grabs people's attention and gets people talking. What will people say about the content you are producing on your website?

Create innovative content that puts a new spin on concepts in your industry. You don't need to produce content to cause controversy, but don't be afraid to make a statement. Don't regurgitate what everyone in your industry has already said. Your blog is your time to shine and showcase your company.

Improve Search Ranking For Your Website

Last, but not least, one of your goals may be to improve search engine ranking.

Ranking in search engines is a great goal to have because it helps you find customers who might otherwise not know you exist. Being friendly with Google will never lead you astray. Many people think that search engines are complicated. They are not simple, but they are far from difficult to manage.

It takes discipline. You have to be willing to sit down and learn the best practices associated with search engine optimization. I rank for many keywords on my blog The Happy Arkansan. One of the most critical parts of that process for me was familiarizing myself with Google Search Console. Once I found out what Google Search Console was and how to submit my site on it, my ranking started growing steadily ever since.

Conclusion

Today, on the blog, we talked all about traffic and why obsessing over it is stopping you from building a profitable company.

Once we established that traffic isn't everything, I spent some time detailing five other goals that you could have for your business blog besides traffic building.

Traffic is still vital to the growth of your company, but you shouldn't obsess over your traffic numbers. There are better ways to build a successful company, and I wanted to help you realize that today.

Business, BloggingAmanda CrossFebruary 4, 2019