Tons of Traffic, but Few Conversions Three Ideas for Repurposing Blog Traffic

Tons of Traffic, but Few Conversions Three Ideas for Repurposing Blog Traffic Did they say that hard work pays?Well, it doesn’t seem to have paid in your case.You worked hard to produce original content for your blog only to get traffic that does you no good.Ok, let’s be a bit positive.Your hard work did pay off. You got lots of traffic. The very thing every blogger and online marketer dreams of.But surely, getting lots of traffic isn’t the end, is it?Your tons of traffic was meant to lead to tons of conversions, right?Yet this isn’t the case. You have the traffic but very few conversions. Obviously something somewhere is not right.You might be encouraged to know that you are not alone in this. You are not the only blogger to experience this. That however is not to mean that you can safely and confidently remain in the situation.You need to do something. Fast.But before you rush to doing anything, slow down a little and understand the problem first.Because if you don’t, you are bound to experience it again.WHY YOU HAVE TRAFFIC BUT NO CONVERSIONSImagi ne operating a retail store and you see many customers walking in. You would be excited, expecting that sales will be high. But what if the customers just walked around and bought nothing?In the same way, from your blog, you should see visitors taking the action you hoped they would. To understand the situation, below are some possible reasons.Your offers are not compelling enough.You have something valuable you are selling. Or at least giving out. But if people are not buying or showing interest in the giveaway, then they obviously don’t think they need it.In case they know they need it but still don’t take it, then it’s an issue of them not being convinced.Simply put, you have not convinced them of the need of what you are offering.If they are not convinced, then the likely problem could be caused by one of two things, or both:Value propositionWhatever you are offering, be it a product or service, it must prove itself valuable even before it is bought. Your readers must see the value they will get from what you are offering. If they can’t see that, they won’t buy.Understand that your readers have a problem. Actually, many problems. But for the one which has brought them to your site, they expect you to help them with it.So, as they read through your blog, they are looking for what will convince them you can help them.The reason they are not buying, might be because they haven’t seen the value of it as described in your blog. They might be sensing too much hype, making them do the opposite of what you hoped for.Your messageHow you communicate matters. You may have a great product but poor communication. And when it comes to online marketing, you really have to invest in stellar communication.This is where you bring in a professional copywriter. If you are the copywriter, you should take this situation to mean you are not writing well enough.If for some reason you cannot hire a pro, then you need to learn how to write great copy.Copy is the materia l which is intended to sell a product or service. This is more like the transcript of an advertisement.If you have a quality product, then you need the right words to talk about it.You are using high-volume keywords.Keywords are key in SEO. If you are to enjoy any success in online marketing, you must know how to implement SEO. At least the basics.With many aspects of SEO being necessary to the establishing of a strong brand, keywords are easily the simplest implementation of them all. Still, there are different kinds of keywords.It happens that the easiest to work with are the high-volume keywords. This is because they are very attractive to marketers and bloggers since they draw in massive traffic.Keyword research tools make it easy to know which keywords are being searched for most. As a result, many people go for those with the highest searches.The reasoning is simple and quite true in theory: the more the traffic, the more the conversions. In reality though, the best that can b e produced by these keywords is a higher number of possible conversions.Be sure to get the difference: more traffic doesn’t guarantee more conversions. It merely provides an opportunity for more conversions.Using the example given earlier of a retail store, more traffic is like more customers in the store. The high number of people does not guarantee purchases. It just increases the possibility of high sales.It is after attracting the traffic that you need to think harder about convincing them to buy.If you are getting tons of traffic but little conversions, then it could be because you used high-volume keywords.Apart from greatly lowering your conversion rates, consider the below potential downsides of these keywords.High bounce ratesHigh bounce rates are one of the things everyone wants to avoid, including you. High bounce rates indicate that there are too many visitors to your site who leave soon after landing there.This can be a big discouragement to you when you are working h ard to build your brand. With a high bounce rate, you will never build trust with your visitors.Also, you will not successfully create awareness for your brand and worse still, may struggle repairing the damage caused.Higher costs for clicksVery few websites exist on the internet without some form of Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. Some refer to it as Cost Per Click (CPC). If you have these running on your site and they are part of the traffic source, you are in trouble.Many people are seeing your ads and clicking them.They may be on the search engine search results page or hosted on other websites.Since you pay for the times the ads are clicked, then you will surely be paying a lot of money. This wouldn’t have been a problem if you were getting what you were looking for. But now that you aren’t, it is therefore an extra cost.An unnecessary cost. This underscores the need to act quickly.Wasted lead generation effortsLead generation is important for your blogging business. You a im to cultivate your prospects and bring them to a point of making a decision. The more decisions are made the better. You therefore naturally put in efforts in this noble task.But when you have a lot of traffic, you will definitely get a lot of irrelevant inquiries. Some people may simply not have seen what they wanted then opted to ask you about it.Maybe even call you.Only for you to realize that the conversation is headed nowhere.You may probably not respond to some of the form submissions, thus saving some efforts.But what about the time it took you to read or skim through them? Your time is just as important as any other resource you have. And when it’s not used for productivity, then it’s getting wasted.You have not achieved authority status.Another reason you may be facing this situation is because your readers are yet to see you as an authority in your niche.The fact that you are having much traffic is not necessarily a reflection of your authority on the subject you blo g about. It could be that you get the traffic simply because of numerous backlinks or some pretty good referrals.For you to make significant headway in your blogging business, you need to become an authority of some sorts. Or, in words which are more blogger-oriented, you need to become an influencer.If the problem is lack of authority, then you have some work to do. It is not difficult anyway. And to prove it, here are six things you can do to become an authority in your niche.Define your niche betterAlthough you may have done this before you started blogging, do not ignore the possible need to go back to it. This could be the difference between thriving and struggling.When you look at how big brands do business, you will learn a valuable lesson about defining your niche. For example, there are car manufacturers who focus only on luxury.Some go ahead and focus purely on the super luxury.If you were to check their sales figures, they would be too low to compare with brands which sel l to the not-so-wealthy customers.For instance, Toyota has a hold on this niche whereas others like Rolls Royce have a hold on the luxury niche.When you understand your niche well, you focus on it and eventually attract only that. Your niche will always pay off.Pursuing a broad niche, like Toyota, can also work. But you will need to come up with some smart ways to push your brand.Know your customerOnce your niche is well defined, then you can study your prospective customer. What kind of interests does he have? What is he likely to respond to? Which words must you use in your writing? What style should you write in? How often should you write?Knowing your customer also helps you solve the very problematic issue of high volume keywords. This is because you will know exactly which keywords to use.Since you have narrowed your focus, this becomes easier.If you are targeting the masses, you can still narrow down your focus and have a sub-niche. For example, if you are a fashion blogger, you could focus on men’s fashion.If there are many in that sub-niche, you can decide to focus on men’s suits.Be uniqueUnless you are inventing something totally new, you will have to make your product stand out. The internet is definitely a crowded place and you need to be unique. This is what is referred to having a Unique Selling Point (USP). This is what you will use to draw customers to your blog. If you want sign-ups, this is what you will use to show your content is very different from what is out there.Here are some tips on determining your Unique Selling Point.Write valuable contentThere will never be enough emphasis about the quality of content you have to write for maximum, or even considerable conversions. Content is primarily what will make you stand out. You may have a great product but the message is what will make it known.Whatever your product is, ensure it is valuable.This value is then what you will sell.Using the right words and writing style, communicating th is value will bring you the results you expect.Join relevant forumsThis is so important that if you fail to do it, you might take years to make a name. People are always talking, although it may not be on the comments section of your blog. It may not even be on your Facebook page.You will need to find out where the people in your niche meet up.Register to become a member then start participating in the conversations.Be careful not to directly market yourself, unless it is the norm in that platform.Since you are after customers, you need to go to open forums where people discuss about your niche. These people shouldn’t just be businesses but there should be customers too.Be on the lookout for questions asked and give very good and helpful answers. If you can be the first one to answer, the better.Gradually, you will be noticed for your expertise and when you link an answer to your blog, the people who visit will do exactly what you want them to do.Use testimonialsLastly, you have t o prove yourself to be valuable. But this you can’t just do using your own words. Let other people say it. Encourage people to share their experience working with you. Or their experience with the advice you gave them.You can ask for comments about the newsletters you send out then include that feedback on your blog.When new blog visitors see the positive feedback from other customers, then you stand better chances of being trusted more quickly.Studies show that feedback influences customers’ decisions. When a customer sees that other customers trust you, then it makes it easier for them to choose you too.This is why online stores   encourage buyers to give product reviews.Generally speaking, products with more positive reviews get bought more than those without.We have looked at the problem and seen how it might have come about. So what next?REPURPOSING YOUR BLOG TRAFFICIf you have been looking at the data and felt frustrated, cheer up. We have some advice for you.Just as junk materials are repurposed to produce more usable products, so can you repurpose the seemingly junk traffic.It might interest you to know that those numbers are not useless.As much as they are not giving you what you want, they provide a very good opportunity.You just have to know what to do with it.1. Redirect the Traffic to a Landing PageIf what you want are conversions, then you can have them. And one of the ways to repurpose the amount of traffic which is not converting is to redirect it to a landing page.Landing pages are a smart way of making conversions. They are mostly viewed as the first step in the lead generation process.The idea is simple: anyone who lands there and makes a move is a potential conversion.How do you know that?Because that is what the landing page is all about. Landing pages are designed to filter traffic. Anyone taking the action described is essentially saying that they want what you are offering. The trick is in designing the page in a way which will make people take action.When you redirect the heavy traffic to a landing page created to do the job well, you will certainly see results.Since the communication on the page is clear and direct, anyone who is not for your product will leave. But anyone who is for it will surely buy.This option gives you a very ideal solution in which there is no loss at all on your side. If many leave, then no problem. They were leaving in the first place. If many buy, then you have an advantage.You can however be sure of one thing: if you do it right, you will see an increase in conversions. Here are some tips to help you set up a landing page. If you already have one but it’s under-performing, then you can make it better.1.1 Have a killer headline Landing page headlines are important not only for content but also for your landing page. The headline must be a serious attention grabber since it is what will determine whether the visitor stays longer.It must also be short. In fact, as short as possible. Not too short to be unable to provide meaning but short enough to arouse expectation.1.2 Use sub-headlinesYour sub-headline is the slightly-long description of your product. Normally, it comes right under your headline though this is not totally necessary.It’s possible that your overall communication about your offering may not make sense coming after the headline.You can have it above the headline but ensure it doesn’t stand out more than the headline.Choose a few words which will stand out and use them as your headline.Keep the font of your headline bigger than the sub-headline so as to communicate that it’s the headline.1.3 Include visualsIt is always a good idea to include an image. However, this is not a must. It is purely dependent on what your product is. If you think an image will help drive the point home, then use one.Along the lines of images are the use of videos.These can come in handy especially when your product requires some explanations.You can also use a vide o for when you want to include some entertainment aspect to your landing page.1.4 Your landing page should load fastIt is disappointing to click an ad on the search engine results page then watch the screen for more than 5 seconds waiting for the page to load. If this is the behavior of your page, then no-one will wait for your content to load.Ideally, your pages should not take more than 3 seconds to load. If they take anything around 5 seconds, then you need to work on them. Learn how to make pages load faster and improve them.1.5 Include trust signalsYour landing page should not lack any of the various types of trust signals. Trust signals prove to the skeptical reader that you can be trusted.A popular trust signal is Testimonials. These tell the blog visitor that other people have interacted with you and found you to be trustworthy.This makes the visitor confident in doing business with youâ€"whatever the business is.2. Use the Numbers to Show CredibilityAnother great way of mak ing use of the traffic you already have is by utilizing it for building trust. This will prove to be very beneficial regardless of how many loyal readers you already have.However, if you are having a problem with non-converting traffic, then it is possible that you haven’t achieved much credibility in the eyes of your readers.How do you do this?Use any of the traffic analysis tools available online.To make a strong case for yourself, avoid stating that you have X number of visitors every month. That is too general and many bloggers are doing that.Remember that you are working to increase conversions. Even if you are not converting your currently many visitors, build your base afresh for the new visitors. Break down the figures as much as possible. This is for your own analysis.Is the traffic coming only to one blog post? If so, then it means it is only that one post that has numerous backlinks.You can update it and include your numbers to draw in people. You will also use the stat s on your home page. If you have a landing page, include them there too.The idea is to ensure that people know your resources are widely read. That is your first step towards becoming an authority in your niche.If the traffic is hitting several blog posts, then do an average and indicate that individual posts get read by an average of X people.If you are able to get the time the traffic usually gets to your site, then you can also disclose that your posts get read X minutes after publishing them.All these will go a long way in establishing your credibility to new readers. People tend to believe facts and figures and so use these to your advantage. Just keep in mind that you need to up your writing game.Do more copywriting or get a professional to do it because you have to soon start converting your new visitors.If they still get disappointed, then your efforts will have been wasted yet they were meant to rescue you from a bad situation.3. Generate Revenue Using AdsThe last idea we w ill share is to “sell” your traffic. Yes, you can sell your traffic. In fact, many blogs do that. The only thing you should never sell is people’s personal details, i.e. names, email addresses etc.This is closely tied to the above idea of building credibility. In this case however, you are not the one benefiting from your traffic. At least not directly.You will actually be giving others an opportunity to benefit from your traffic. If you for example have 500,000 unique visitors per month, then your blog is a prime advertising platform. There are businesses looking for the right places to advertise.In case you do not know any, do not be afraid of asking. You can start on your blog. Strategically position an ad for advertising space somewhere on your posts. This has to be very visible.Mention some of the figures and ask the people interested to contact “sales.” Create a special email address for this or if you want, let the communication come through your default “info” email address.Designate the size of the banners to indicate the space in your blog you are willing to sell.Unlike someone who is looking for traffic, you already have it. And so, once you implement these ideas, you will instantly see the results.CONCLUSIONRejoice for you now have a remedy to the situation at hand.Implement it and come share the experience with us on the comments section below.