One of the most common questions I receive from storeowners is, “How do I increase traffic on my website?”
My answer—it may come down to something as simple as creating a contest.
Creating a contest on your website is an inexpensive, yet effective way to get people to your site and encourage them to stay awhile. If you want to attract new members of your target audience, this is an easy and fun way to accomplish that.
One way to do this is to create an electronic fishbowl where prospects can drop in their “virtual business cards.” You just add a form in the Springboard, which allows visitors to fill in their contact information. This information will be sent to you and you can add these prospects to your list of marketing contacts—a great way to beef up your e-mail marketing campaign.
You can draw one winner a month out of your electronic fishbowl and award that person with a free lunch or some sort of gift card, or you can offer them a special promotion from your store. Whatever you choose, be sure it’s something that will catch people’s eyes and make it worth the time they spend giving you their info. When you do choose a winner, voila—there’s an instant sales opportunity. Hand-delivering the prize gives you a moment to promote your products and services and ask how you can better meet their printing needs.
Another contest that will encourage visitors to peruse your site for a while is a “Where’s Waldo?” type of game. Tell your visitors that their challenge is to find a specific object somewhere on your site—it may be a landmark of some kind, a picture of a staff member or perhaps a local celebrity. Whatever you choose, add that image to a page on your site and announce that the first 10 people to spot that image each win a prize. It doesn’t have to be anything big, but it should be an attractive enough incentive to keep people looking. This is a great way to keep people on your site for a while and introduce them to products and services they may not have known about.
Whatever type of contest you choose, you’ll need to promote it well so that it actually generates the traffic you want. Create a custom spotlight on your homepage and link it to your promotions page where you can outline the contest rules in full detail. Also, modify your collateral—this is a great way to spread the word about your contest. Include the contest information in a callout box on your statement stuffers, direct mail pieces and in your e-mail marketing campaigns.
When you do choose a winner(s), be sure to announce him or her in your In The News section.
If you’re not convinced yet, consider these benefits to creating a contest:
• They’re easy to implement. I’ve given you a few ideas, now all you need to do is take a few minutes to set it up.
• Contests create TOMA, or “top of mind awareness.” This means when people think “printer,” they’ll think of you first.
• A contest engages your customers and prospects, encourages them to interact with your website, and strengthens that all-important customer relationship.
• Contests will get visitors continually coming back to your site, either to re-enter or to check to see if they’ve won. You’d be amazed by how much attention the promise of a free lunch can generate.
• When you hand-deliver the prizes, you have an instant sales opportunity.
To see if your contest is successful, simply pull up an analytics report to view which of your website’s pages were hit the most. You’ll be surprised by how much your traffic can increase when you take a few moments to personalize your site with something as simple as a contest.
