The two articles are about buying website traffic from two different methods.
We will discuss two ways to drive traffic straight to your website & demonstrate our findings. The first part revolves around paid inclusion related to newsletters as well as banners/ads on marketing and tech site
- Buying of targeted leads and Paid Inclusion – placement in the newsletters and blasts
- PPC ad campaigns – adwords / google; proven source of targeted traffic
Honestly, there isn’t any simple way for buying traffic. You will find scores of websites & products declaring to get you traffic. However, the reality is it’s pretty hard to make people visit your site, click around & then purchase something.
We have tried three techniques and we are going to share the findings here-
- Count on PPC campaigns
- paid inclusion related to newsletters as well as banners/ads could work if well-designed and strategically placed
- Bulk targeted visitor traffic is usually a scam
P.S. Industry insights regarding lead generation for website is somewhat guarded. Both lead generation & traffic purchase are complicated. You won’t much details regarding these online.
Part 1: Purchasing paid-newsletter inclusion
Research your markets – purchase advertisement
We bought ad inclusion in 2 leading opt-in or subscription newsletters. And both the inserts were for $750 to $1000. We provided banner ad for both the campaigns. The ad had text to be included in a top newsletter that was published online & was sent to varied email lists- comprising of 25,000-500,000 subscribers (opt-in). We’re claimed to expect something like 300-3000 click-throughs. Now from that figure, 10 percent of visitors might possibly go for the free Opentracker risk-free trial. Among those trials, 1% would actually buy site statistics subscriptions. It’s to note, we came up with individual landing pages in respect to each mailing. It was meant to help us find out how many (by URL) landed on individual pages.
Results- data collection
For both the cases, we got lower numbers than expected. In regards to our first mailing, it got us 10% of visitors which we were supposed to expect. However, these visitors flaunted high interest, on the basis of pageviews. In regards to the second one, we did get the number of traffic that we were supposed to expect. But still, less than ten percent of visitors actually went for the trial accounts for our package. The average sum of clicks seemed to be much lower which clearly proved the second group was less interested compared to the first one.
Analysis- evaluation of what is actually happening
Here you will see 3 sample variables that we used for gauging success:
- Acquisition cost-per-lead or cost-per-visitor
- Was the traffic actually well-targeted? The average sum of pageviews that each of the visitors generated
- Conversion: the visitor percentage that followed our CTA and did things that we wanted our visitors to do
Evaluation of variables
- The acquisition cost-per-lead/ visitor was considerably higher compared to our expectation. We usually pay around $.50 to $1.00 on each lead on Bing or Google but we paid up till $4.00 for each lead for the stated lead generation assignment. Now, a lead is always a lead and hence extremely valuable. If you can target them well, they will be worthy of your investment. And that brings you to-
- The amount of pages our visitors viewed. Now, that’s very crucial. There seemed to a huge difference in traffic quality. In regards to first mailing campaign, an average visitor seemed to view 7.5 pages. Thus, s/he was more prone to create our trial account. In regards to the second campaign, an average visitor seemed to view 2.5 pages. The bottom-line is you have to focus more on well-targeted traffic. However, you must be wondering that why one group views more numbers of pages.
- The proportion of visitors that followed our CTA and did what we wished our visitors to do was bigger for first group compared to the second one. We observed that lower is the number of pageviews, lesser is the possibility of conversion.
Best practices for landing page
If the campaign duration is long, you have the leeway to experiment by altering your landing page. This way, you will be able to compare the results. On your right, check out places where people had clicked. In our first experiment, we ended up with extremely low pageviews which meant nobody was actually taking to the target page a.k.a our sign-up page. We have changed landing page as well as directed visitors straight to our trial page. But that meant even further decline in page views.
Put simply, there is no hard and fast rule for the best landing page. Your job is to come up with a strategic well-built page that will be concise, invite exploration as well as point visitors to fulfill desired action. For our case, text-link offered the optimum results.
Text links drive more traffic
This diagram here points out the proportion of visitors who clicked on every link or image on this page. Text links that you find below the page, have attracted the maximum visitors.
Conclusion
You cannot know beforehand the type of traffic you will be receiving through your campaign. In fact, you cannot guarantee whether the visitors would take action. It means, you will require-
- well-targeted traffic
- make the site really inviting
You can’t “force” visitors to visit your site & buy things from you. You have to make your site worthy of visit and exploration. However, people can be paid for browsing websites. We will talk about that later.
What about budgeting?
From our experience we can say, it would need something like $500-$1,500 each month. You should always plan a bigger percentage so that you can keep on buying traffic sources which actually work for the website. Also, save a certain amount for experiments, for finding new sources as well as tapping into fresh marketing avenues.
Part 2: Buying Website Traffic with a PPC (Pay Per Click) Advertising & Campaign Management
Summarized Overview
Subjects & questions that are covered in the article:
- Definition of PPC campaign
- Definition of impressions
- Market leaders of PPC: where and what to buy
- Keyword selection and clickstream analysis
- Cost-per-unit and expected amount to pay
- Tips to evaluate purchased traffic
- Difference between quantity & quality
- Importance of metrics of conversion rate
PPC Advertising
PPC (Pay-per-click) advertising & campaigns are main way to advertise on internet. The three biggest market players today are Google, Bing and Yahoo.
A Pay-per-click campaign enables one to determine the exact visitor for his website. You will just have to pay for the clicks made (on your banner or link or ad) to reach your site. In case, a person just sees the ad link and doesn’t click through, it will be called “impression”.
The term “impression” refers to amount of promotional elements that a person has been subjected to. You won’t have to pay a single penny for impressions. You will also get pricing models on the basis of impressions that charge on the basis of per thousand.
You can go for clickstream analysis, It’s a tracking method that will reveal activities of your visitors on your website who have arrived via PPC advertising. Such data are vital for efficient advertisement management as well as for finding best avenues to:
- attain quality traffic
- conversion of visitors into customers
- creation of revenue generating action clickstream analysis.
Keyword selection is the main basis of PPC advertising. A properly designed & managed PPC campaign will draw quality traffic which will help you to obtain your goal.
Quality rides over Quantity
“Quality” traffic implies well-targeted traffic. It means the visitors:
- need service/product you’re advertising
- enter site & look around
- become lead (convert) or complete transaction
- Come from regions or countries you are actually interested in
- return to your website again
Quality traffic brings in higher success, in regards to seeing visitors complete transaction or else subscribe to your service. Analysis of conversion rate will enable one to determine the traffic sources that are converting visitors to leads & sales.
Conversion rate refers to the stats which reveal visitor percentage that has been converted from mere visitors to leads/customers. Good quality traffic translates to higher rate of conversion. Rate of conversion helps to understand your ROI (Return on Investment) as well as acquisition cost on each visitor.
Tips for using tracking for evaluating PPC Campaigns
Tracking service allows to:
- Check efficacy of clicks so that you can adjust your campaigns accordingly
- check the search terms & keywords that are getting more visitors
- learn about most effective advertising copy
- know about search/source engines that produce best results at right price-per-click
- determine set goals & conversion rate
- Accountability: check whether actually getting results worth your investment
- traffic source
- How long they’re staying and the number of pages viewed. Number of page views may vary from one search engine to another.
It’s extremely vital to be pro-active with the management of PPC campaigns. You should regularly update the keywords, vendors, campaigns as well as bids.
What does Tracking System reveal about traffic quality?
Poor quality traffic is a complete waste of money, time & resources. It can overload the servers, spike traffic & leave you frustrated. Tracking systems will show if or why the traffic seems to be of poor quality.
- Is it coming from a place that doesn’t represent your market?
- Do your visitors visit your homepage yet leave the site without clicking further? Now, visit duration makes a vital statistic that reveals whether or not your visitors found your website interesting
- Pages visited or explored by visitors
- Do the visitors get a link directing to your website while they make search online for related search term? It’s called “phrase-matching”.
Where to buy Website Traffic traffic for PPC advertising?
There are various sources from where you can purchase clicks. We will recommend you to check out multiple services for a comparison study. A lot of sites take to search results that originate from small search engine number. Such a system is referred to as “content network”.
Leading PPC vendors like Google or Yahoo also focus on content in their own respective networks. They place ads alongside related content.
PPC vendors tend to distinguish between placements of “Content Match” and results of “Sponsored Search”. Content match rests results close to articles, forums, email content etc. Based on our experience we can say, higher rate of conversion can be attained with the sponsored searches. However, that will be costly.
Now, stats on subject of location of searches may vary broadly. For Google, the biggest search engine giant, the estimate can be something like 80%.
Companies that sell paid PPC traffic
The names include Google, Enhance, FindWhat, Overture, ePilot, Kanoodle, Search123, LookSmart and eSpotting.
Now, the list here is actually old and may contain some names that don’t exist anymore. So, please do another round research to find out the “hot” markets at present.
One of the best benefits of paid traffic is you will be able to implement your campaigns immediately most of the times. It will take long hours to set the first account though. Based on your specific budget, you may invest in a higher ranking and check your ad online in an hour. But the con is you will need to pay each time someone clicks on the ad.
Thus, we suggest that all Pay-Per-Click campaigns should be accompanied by constant endeavors to enhance Google page rank as well as optimize site for the search engines. Such results are available for free & can’t be purchased directly. However, you may hire a firm to conduct ( SEO ) on the website.
Tips to start PPC ( Pay Per Click ) campaign
It would be smarter to conduct some PC accounts as well as run campaigns for definite time period to get a comparative study. Here are the points for the setup procedure:
- create account and deposit funds
- receive confirmation regarding the activation of your account
- choose needed keywords and text
- keep watch on traffic for right evaluation of your selection of words and text
- adjust your budget/bids accordingly
Most of the PPC campaigns enable marketers to bid on their position. It implies, you will be able to bid on #1 position in sponsored listings section. Bidding here is usually competitive and advertisers may pay more than $5 on each click. Consider the price in terms of acquisition cost-per-customer. Keep in mind the overall website management in long term.
After a visitor lands on your site, you have to guarantee they will get here what they have in quest for. In fact, you have to guide him subtly to complete your desired actions, such as:
- place an order
- complete a transaction
- make a reservation
- become a lead
- sign up for newsletter
Studies have shown that if a visitor buys from a website and becomes a client, he is likely to come back again. This way, you will be able to justify a high cost acquisition, especially when you will perceive it from the angle of ROI.
It’s true that PPC ad campaigns seem to be really daunting initially. However, if you can research a bit, you will be able to design & manage your own PPC campaign that will help you to reach out to a broader range of target niche. Whether you are planning to conduct the campaign on your own or contemplating to hire a professional, we would love to hear your thoughts and extend our advice.
Related Article: Buy Website Traffic: Tips to Avoid Getting Scammed