Many new businesses are getting online, and businesses that have been online for long are starting to realize that things aren’t as they used to be; some techniques that used to be effective 4 – 5 years ago are completely dead, while some have significantly reduced in value that it won’t be worth it to use them again.

However, some techniques are still very effective, if not more effective, as long as you go about using them the right way.

If you own an online business and want revenue growth, you’ll ignore the following customer attraction techniques at your own peril.

1. Double Engagement from Existing Visits

I’m listing this first because I believe it should be the foundation for every other technique.

Many online businesses have fallen into a cycle of “more traffic”, and they believe that the only way to increase their revenue is by increasing traffic; so they pay for more traffic and indeed get more sales, but their profit margin is significantly low because they have to keep paying for traffic to increase revenue.

The most effective thing you can do to attract more customers to your online business this year is to focus on doubling the engagement from existing visitors to your site; if you get 1,000 visitors and can only convert 10 of them into customers, it will be much more effective – and often easier – to work on converting 20 of those visitors into customers than to try to get an additional 1,000 visitors.

Another advantage to focusing on doubling engagement from existing visits is that it is often a one-time investment; once you optimize your funnels to convert your traffic more, it is pretty much set. So you don’t need to constantly invest in acquiring new visitors.

2. Email Marketing the Smart Way

When it comes to retaining more of your visitors, you need to realize that email marketing is one of the best ways to go about this.

Research has shown that email significantly outperforms search and social media when it comes to converting traffic into sales, and any business not utilizing email marketing in 2015 is way outdated.

Now, the mistake most businesses make, and they feel they are doing “email marketing” when they are not, is to set up an email newsletter, get people to sign up, email them like once every 3 months when they have an offer to make and become surprised when they do not get results.

It doesn’t work that way.

After starting an email newsletter, make sure you are constantly in touch with people who subscribe to your newsletter; send them emails on a regular basis, give them free advice and information, let them know about awesome resources, and always let them know about your offers.

When it comes to email marketing, the marketer who can offer the most value often wins.

More often than not, the marketer who sends the most emails offers the most value; make sure you are always on the radar of your subscribers.

3. Personalized Incentives

Also on email marketing, a major mistake most businesses make is that they have just one incentive that they promote throughout their sites. This is a major mistake.

Take a look at online giants effectively utilizing content marketing, like Hubspot, and you’ll quickly notice that something they do different is that they go a long way to segment their audience.

Interest differs for people who visit your site, and trying to group them all into one place will cost you customers and revenue.

As part of your email attraction strategy, make sure you have different personalized incentives for people depending on the content they are reading on your site; sometimes, this means a single site has as many as 10 incentives or more to encourage people to subscribe to their newsletter depending on what the reader is reading.

Don’t think of this as spending more, think of it as being smarter in how you attract customers and grow your business.

4. Content Upgrades

While it might be a little expensive to keep on creating unique incentives to 0accompany different types of content on your blog, it doesn’t have to be.

A really effective way to get people who wouldn’t have otherwise subscribed to your newsletter, while still ensuring your incentive is tailored to them, to subscribe is by giving them “content upgrades“.

This is basically an advanced version of the content they just consumed; if they watched a video, the content upgrade could be the transcript and key summaries of the video. If they read an article, the content upgrade could be a checklist to accompany the article.

This way, your content upgrade could easily be a 1 – 2 pages report, and you’ll still get people to subscribe based on their unique interests, making it easy to target them and sell what they need to them in the future.

5. Start Leveraging The “Rule of 7”

Most veteran marketers are aware of the “rule of 7“.

In marketing, the rule of 7 states that majority of your potential customers, like 99% of them, need to see your marketing message at least 7 times before deciding to take you on your offer.

People are bombarded with a lot of advertising and sales messages daily, and sometimes you just have to keep reminding them to make sure they are actually aware of what you have to offer.

This is one of the reasons email marketing is so effective, and it’s also a major reason why people are raving about content marketing.

If you want to attract more customers to your business, you need to introduce your business to people more.

6. Effective Blogging

Blogging is just as powerful has ever before, if not more.

Blogging is especially important when it comes to tapping into long-tail money keywords from the search engines; a lot of SEO tactics have been attacked and penalized over the years, but something that is still effective and will be for probably as long as the internet exists is blogging. This is because it is more than just an SEO tactic.

Blogging allows you to educate and inform your audience; in the process, people share your article and link back to your blog, it ranks for relevant keywords and traffic keeps increasing.

Unfortunately, many people have blogs that do not benefit their business, yet they keep investing in it. It just doesn’t work that way.

Remember the rule of 7 above? When you blog, make sure there’s always a path to your services/products in majority of your blog posts. This way, while people learn from you, they will always have a chance to upgrade by buying what you sell.

7. Guest Blogging, not For Links

Ever since Matt Cutts announced that guest blogging is dead in 2014 there has been a lot of frenzy about guest blogging; the interest in guest blogging has reduced, and people are careful about how they go about it.

The kind of guest blogging Matt Cutts declared dead is guest blogging for links; if that has been the sole way you have been approaching guest blogging, then you are doing it wrong. That approach simply isn’t as effective as it used to be, and focusing on guest blogging just for links in 2015 is a waste of marketing funds.

The kind of guest blogging that works today is the guest blogging done for exposure and branding purposes; there’s a real focus on the quality of content and the site that will be hosting that content, and while there’ll be a link back to your business it is just a byproduct of it.

8. Facebook Ads the Smart Way

People have been raving about Facebook ads for years now but businesses will start seeing it as more important in 2015.

If you’re considering any form of advertising in 2015, then Facebook ads will probably give you the most bang for your buck; the targeting opportunities is just endless, and there’s a massive audience of 1 billion people who use Facebook.

What smart marketers do, though, is build a funnel that sends people to their products page while still allowing them to reach out to them or follow up with them in the future (remember the rule of 7 again?). So, instead of sending people directly to your sales page, have them sign up to an email funnel that ensures you are able to build a kind of connection with them before making them an offer.

9. Multimedia Marketing

Multimedia marketing won’t be left behind in 2015.

The internet keeps evolving, and this means it is becoming more visual; in fact, with the recent changes the FCC made to redefine the definition of broadband, we can be assured that multimedia content will become increasingly valuable.

Youtube being the no 3 site in the world is not a coincidence, and businesses can still tap into online giants like Pinterest and Slideshare.

Start investing more into multimedia marketing; take advantage of videos, infographics, slide presentations and other forms of multimedia to grow your brand, increase your reach and attract more customers.

10. Partnerships

One of the best ways to experience explosive business growth is by going on the shoulders of other people.

Partnering with other brands and businesses to help yours grow will become more important than ever in 2015; this can come through doing webinars for their audience, offering their audience a special discount, or even doing some sort of content creation or multimedia content partnership that results in increased exposure for both of you.

Besides the direct resulting traffic from online partnerships this year, a major value will come in form of partnerships solidifying existing brands and increasing the brand value of those involved in the partnerships.

What other techniques do you use to attract customers, that you feel will remain relevant in 2015 and beyond? Kindly share below!

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