The Third Missing Element in Online Marketing

In prac­ti­cally every major mar­ket­ing teach­ing, course, or sem­i­nar I’ve come across, I have found that almost all suc­cess­ful mar­ket­ing on the Inter­net really boils down to two essen­tial fac­tors: traf­fic and con­ver­sion.

Sim­ply put, vis­i­tors and sales.

In fact, I’ve been to two-​​day Inter­net mar­ket­ing sem­i­nars and work­shops, where the first day focused on gen­er­at­ing traf­fic and the sec­ond day on build­ing sales.

That’s all well and good. How­ever, I believe there’s one more key com­po­nent. It’s one that’s grow­ing not only in pop­u­lar­ity, but also in need and impor­tance. It’s the one fac­tor on which the other two hinge. And it’s one that seems to be the least talked about.

In my career, I’ve seen the proof again and again. If you incor­po­rate this third ele­ment into your busi­ness model, chances are you’re going to see sub­stan­tial, con­tin­u­ous growth in your busi­ness — with a lot less effort than you’ve orig­i­nally thought possible.

What is it? What is this third, miss­ing element?

First, let’s talk about traf­fic for a moment. I’m sure you’ll agree that one of the most com­mon and largest source of traf­fic is, with­out ques­tion, the search engine.

But when I hear mar­keters talk about search engine strate­gies, opti­miza­tion tech­niques, sub­mis­sion soft­ware, etc, it befud­dles me to see there are still some mar­keters out there who rely heav­ily on them. And for a few, only on them and noth­ing else.

Don’t get me wrong. Search engines are impor­tant and they are an essen­tial part of a marketer’s strat­egy. Learn­ing and apply­ing SEO are undoubt­edly cru­cial and necessary.

But search engines — or any other traffic-​​generation strat­egy by itself — are not, and should never be, regarded as your sole source of traf­fic. While mar­keters must never dis­count the search engines, a savvy marketer’s port­fo­lio must go beyond them.

Mar­ket­ing requires an invest­ment of time, money, and energy. And like all other invest­ments, the key is to diver­sify. You should look at man­ag­ing your mar­ket­ing port­fo­lio just as you would man­age your finan­cial portfolio.

A well-​​balanced mar­ket­ing port­fo­lio con­sists of a com­bi­na­tion of diver­si­fied strate­gies that are exe­cuted syn­chro­nously, dili­gently, and intelligently.

Look at it this way: many rep­utable entre­pre­neurs state that the surest way to achieve wealth is through mul­ti­ple streams of income. Online, the surest way to achieve suc­cess is through mul­ti­ple streams of both vis­i­tors and sales.

Your traf­fic must orig­i­nate from dif­fer­ent sources. The adage “don’t put all your eggs in one bas­ket” applies just as much with your traf­fic as it does with your income.

Whether you write arti­cles, buy clas­si­fied ads, adver­tise with ban­ners, bid on key­words, pub­lish fresh con­tent, inter­act in social media, man­age an affil­i­ate pro­gram, or sub­mit to the search engines, your mar­ket­ing efforts must never rely on a sin­gle source.

An indi­vid­ual traf­fic source may gen­er­ate just a small stream of vis­i­tors. There’s also the risk it may even even­tu­ally dry up. But when you invest in mul­ti­ple traf­fic sources and add them together, the total equals a high, reli­able, and con­sis­tent stream of visitors.

On the other hand, a sin­gle source may be more reward­ing and effec­tive than all the oth­ers. But just like a pru­dent finan­cial investor, the key is to diver­sify by invest­ing your mar­ket­ing efforts into mul­ti­ple traf­fic sources in order to reduce your risks.

Makes sense so far? Good.

Sales are no dif­fer­ent. If your busi­ness con­sists of only one web­site, or if it sells only one prod­uct, diver­sify your sales and develop addi­tional streams of income.

There are two ways: in addi­tion to look­ing at mul­ti­ple ways of increas­ing an indi­vid­ual income stream (e.g., through split-​​testing, list-​​building, adding upsells, mak­ing back­end offers, etc), you should also look at build­ing sup­ple­men­tal streams of income, too.

For exam­ple, join third-​​party affil­i­ate pro­grams to sell related, non-​​competing prod­ucts. Mon­e­tize your opt-​​in sub­scriber list with spe­cial cross-​​sell offers. Sell ad space on your blogs. Develop joint-​​venture alliances to bun­dle prod­ucts or traf­fic sources together. Cre­ate con­ti­nu­ity pro­grams and mem­ber­ship sites. And the list goes on.

Just be care­ful not to overex­tend your core fun­nel, dilute your brand, or lose sight of your tar­get niche. In other words, don’t be a jack of all trades and a mas­ter of none.

Diver­sify, but don’t dilute. Stay focused.

Sure, build mul­ti­ple streams of income and traf­fic. But start by look­ing at mul­ti­ple streams of traf­fic for each stream of income, and mul­ti­ple streams of income for each stream of traf­fic. In short, start with what you already have. Opti­mize first. Max­i­mize later.

Nev­er­the­less, if one source of traf­fic slows down, dries up, or depletes entirely, the loss is min­i­mal when com­pared to the whole pic­ture. But if you only have one stream of income and it slows down to a crawl for what­ever rea­son, you’re dead.

How­ever, ear­lier I said there’s a third ele­ment that has become an essen­tial process to build­ing a suc­cess­ful online busi­ness. Why? Because vis­i­tors and sales are not enough.

While every­one on the Inter­net extols the virtues of dri­ving traf­fic and increas­ing con­ver­sion rates, this one ele­ment seems to have slipped off of many people’s radars. It’s the one ele­ment that prob­a­bly deserves more atten­tion than the other two.

And that’s credibility.

With its vast­ness and lack of one-​​on-​​one, face-​​to-​​face inter­ac­tion, the Inter­net adds this third dimen­sion to the mix that’s often not as appar­ent. It’s the need to develop cred­i­bil­ity, as well as to look at mul­ti­ple ways to com­mu­ni­cate it and boost it.

Don’t just be cred­i­ble. Look for ways to increase cred­i­bil­ity and main­tain it, too. There are a great vari­ety of ways for doing this, from adding seals of approval to your web­site and adding ele­ments of proof to your sales copy, to inter­act­ing in social media.

How­ever, one of the eas­i­est ways to improve your credibility…

… Is to develop and nur­ture rela­tion­ships.

You may have some traf­fic and it might bring in some sales. But if you don’t have cred­i­bil­ity, you have noth­ing. Noth­ing will grow your traf­fic and your sales more than the rela­tion­ships you cre­ate and keep. And rela­tion­ships are built on trust.

So to that end, look at every rela­tion­ship that’s tied to your busi­ness as a part­ner­ship — whether it’s with your sub­scribers, your refer­rals, your affil­i­ates, your joint-​​venture part­ners, your sup­pli­ers, your ser­vice providers, and of course, your clients.

Every per­son con­nected with your busi­ness, regard­less of how they are con­nected to it, is, and should be con­sid­ered as, a part­ner in your busi­ness. And every rela­tion­ship deserves the atten­tion, care, and con­cern that a part­ner­ship typ­i­cally requires.

When com­pared to tra­di­tional offline busi­nesses, online peo­ple are more impor­tant than ever before. Why? Because the Inter­net is cold and imper­sonal, and takes away the human ele­ment from the sales process. So peo­ple are eas­ier to for­get online.

Too many mar­keters nowa­days look at their clients not as part­ners or even as peo­ple, but as hits, click­throughs, con­ver­sion rates, units sold, and dol­lar amounts — or, as my wife Sylvie Fortin would say, as a bunch of “name­less, face­less wallets.”

There­fore, it goes to rea­son that we can use the Inter­net to sup­plant what is often eas­ier to do offline, such as meet­ing peo­ple and inter­act­ing with them.

The more robotic, cold, and imper­sonal our lives become through the use of tech­nol­ogy, the more we will crave, seek out, and use tech­nol­ogy to allow human inter­ac­tion. It’s the rea­son behind the rise of social media, such as Face­book, Twit­ter, and LinkedIn.

(It’s also the rea­son I love social media. Per­son­ally, I don’t use social media mar­ket­ing as a way to drum up traf­fic or sales, but to cre­ate trust and build relationships.)

Trust is also the area on which the other two highly depend. Why? Because it is never enough to sim­ply attract vis­i­tors. And it is never enough to sim­ply sell vis­i­tors, either — as strange as that may seem. If you don’t believe me, ask the following:

Are your vis­i­tors highly qual­i­fied or sim­ply curi­ous? Are they impul­sive and trust­ing, or cyn­i­cal and skep­ti­cal? Are they one-​​time cus­tomers, or buy­ing from you again and again? Are they keep­ing to them­selves, or telling the world about you, good or bad?

So regard­less of the busi­ness you’re in, a suc­cess­ful mar­ket­ing port­fo­lio con­sists of numer­ous strate­gies focused on three core ele­ments, and on devel­op­ing them equally:

1. Build­ing Traf­fic
2. Build­ing Trust
3. Build­ing Sales

You need all three (i.e., vis­i­tors, sales, and rela­tion­ships). Solid, sus­tain­able growth relies on all three key fac­tors. It is no longer enough to sim­ply build traf­fic and con­vert­ing that traf­fic. Today, it is just as impor­tant to build and main­tain cred­i­bil­ity.

There­fore, keep in mind that every sin­gle mar­ket­ing activ­ity you per­form, from search engines to social media, must revert to, result in, or improve upon all those three.

Look at the suc­cess­ful, long-​​term, growth-​​minded mar­keters out there. Many will tell you their suc­cess is not based on a sin­gle source but on many. They are focused on all of the above three areas in some way, shape, or form. You should do the same.

Unfor­tu­nately, the web is also replete with mar­keters who rely on one area alone, on the low­est hang­ing fruit, or on a mere hand­ful of tac­tics that amount to mea­ger results. If they do pro­duce results of any sig­nif­i­cance, they’re short-​​lived at best.

Should you work with only one traffic-​​building source, one income-​​building source, and one credibility-​​building source, chances are your busi­ness will do poorly — either that, or it will be built on a shaky foun­da­tion that could crum­ble at any time.

So, think like a savvy investor.

Expand, bal­ance, and diver­sify your online mar­ket­ing port­fo­lio. Focus on mul­ti­ple ways to build traf­fic, trust, and sales. If you do, you will mul­ti­ply your chances of online success.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

• How to Capture and Captivate Attention
• The Real Problem With The Flaw of Attraction
• Two Shining Stars in an Age of Darkness
• Changes, Relaunches, and Extreme Makeovers
• Superior Value Equals Superior Sales

Other Related Posts

• There's More to Tracking than Conversion
• Computer Geek Discovers Speed Copy Secrets?
• Why Can't Johnny Get Conversion?
• Three Tips For Getting Copywriting Work
• Publicity-Producing Posts Pull People