“How do I drive more traffic to my website?”
At some point, that thought crosses the mind of every digital fundraiser. Whether you’re trying to attract your first or 1000th donor, generating more traffic to your website is a crucial part of growing your charity. If your site is properly optimised for conversions and you have a clear understanding of your audience, getting an increase in web traffic could mean more contributors and more donations.
We’ve gathered below a list of high-impact tips to help you achieve that:
Tip 1: Using analytics data.
Measurability is what sets digital marketing apart from other traditional marketing channels. The accuracy of data collection through Google Analytics or Tag Manager plays a vital role in online marketing because it allows fundraisers make better decisions, and for digital marketing campaigns to have better directions. Web analytics has 4 major uses:
- Collect
- Measure
- Analyse
- Optimise
When it comes to attracting more visitors to your website, it is important to first gain a full understanding of which type of content currently drives traffic to your site. Google Analytics can easily provide you with this information:
Go to your Google Analytics account and choose: Behavior –> Site Content –> All Pages.
This will show how your content strategy is performing and answer two important questions: What type of content is most effective when building traffic? And what content is converting visitors?
Collect, measure, and analyze all your site traffic data. Divide your content into categories. For instance, personal stories, petition, about us, campaigns, just to name a few. The data will tell you which content on your website your audience interacts with the most. The final part is optimising – start creating more of that content your audience finds relevant.
Remember, if you are not tracking the traffic that is coming to your website, you’re wasting your time marketing online.
Tip 2: Attract visitors with content marketing.
Now you have gained a deeper understanding of what type of content performs well. When you are giving people content that piques their interest and fuels their curiosity, they will keep coming back for more. In other words, the more interesting your content is, the more engaged your visitors will be.
This creates loyalty and community among your existing supporters and attracts new potential donors to your organisation. When executed with a clear purpose, content marketing can form the backbone of your online presence.
Great content turns organisations into storytellers and audiences into donors. To give you an idea of where to dig your heels in, here are 3 types of web content you easily work into your content marketing strategy:
Blog post:
A blog is the primary platform where you can create lots of content. Most blog posts are primarily written content, but other media can also be used. Use your blog to share relevant news about your organisation, success stories, and remember to update your blog section continuously.
Infographics:
Visual information works very effectively online, and if you can get important information across in a visual way, it is going to have a significant impact. Show, don’t tell – this is the whole point of an infographic.
The data needs to be represented in a visual way that tells a story. Stick to maximum 3 colors: one for the background, and two to break up the content. If you share your infographics on your social channels, consider creating a blog post that you can link to in the post, where you further elaborate.
Video:
Unlike a photo or written content, in a video, you get to ignite the viewer’s emotions using both audio and visual. You do not necessarily need to buy the best equipment or spend a lot of money on production. In tip #3 below, we describe how you can easily utilize the benefits of video content.
Tip 3: Video content.
Video continues to be one of the most effective elements in a digital marketing strategy – and with good reason. Cisco recently declared that by 2022, online videos will make up more than 82 percent of all consumer internet traffic – 15 times higher than it was in 2017.
As we mentioned, a major benefit of video marketing is, without a doubt, the fact that it is a highly effective driver for website traffic and a high click through rate. But don’t forget, it is important to avoid doing videos just for the sake of creating video content. Like all content marketing, creating relevant and quality content is the best way to drive traffic.
Here are 2 important tips to consider when making a video
Create 2-minute videos
“Short and on point” is a safe strategy when creating video content. Assume that your viewers are busy. Two minutes is usually the right length for a video to maintain engagement. After that, the drop-off in engagement is significant. But don’t sweat over a few seconds here and there.
If you’re new to video, start testing different lengths. This will help you get a feel for what resonates with your audience. Personally, I have great experience with short videos around 30 seconds with a very clear CTA.
Use your smartphone:
You do not need expensive video equipment to get started. One of the most powerful video tools is right in your pocket – your smartphone. Most smartphones today can record very high quality videos.
There are also many video-editing tools available, which you can find online, and some of them are free. One tool that is popular is Adobe Premiere Pro, which can create everything from simple to more professional videos.
Tip 4: Distributing content.
Once you come up with great content, the next step is sharing it in the right way in order to drive more traffic to your website. You can use your own channels – newsletters or your organisation’s social media accounts. Your content can also be promoted through paid ads on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc.
Unless you have a big marketing team, you should aim to choose tactics you can do consistently. If you spread yourself thin trying too many platforms at once, you are not going to see results. Do not spend too much time on organic Facebook posts or other platforms if it does not drive the needed traffic.
Tip 5: Use SEO to increase your discoverability.
Optimizing your content and landing pages for search engines is a valuable and worthwhile practice. There are many ways to optimize your SEO. One way is to analyze your site’s keyword traffic to determine where your visitors are coming from. Identifying keywords is simple and can be done in Google Search Console.
When you know which keywords are sending you the most organic traffic, you can create useful content around these keywords in order to boost your search engine rankings and site visits. If you are an organization that helps refugees and the keyword which drives most traffic is “Refugee Aid”, you should try to include that in your content.
While traffic itself is great to have, it will be useless if you do not have a payment platform capturing those potential donors dropping into your website. Additionally, it is also important to make sure your online fundraising platform is optimised for browsing on smartphones, tablets and computers.
You want to improve your fundraising strategy on mobile devices? Check out iRaiser's article: 5 steps to optimize your mobile fundraising strategy.