6 Best Practices to Generate Web Traffic for MSPs and VARs

An essential component of digital marketing is sending traffic (visitors) to your website for added exposure. One challenge with traffic generation is ensuring you’re getting the right visitors to your site. But how do you know who the right visitors are? Plus where will you find them? And finally, what will convince them to visit your site instead of all the others in the world? Good questions. To answer them, we’ve put together a list of best practices in driving targeted traffic to your website as an MSP or VAR in the IT channel.

Before we dive into the key elements of traffic generation, let’s make sure we have the fundamentals in place. Here’s a quick overview of the essence of digital marketing for MSPs and VARs.

Commit to Consistency

As you create blogs, newsletters, infographic, white papers, videos and other digital assets for your business, it’s important to create and publish your content on a regular basis. Organizations that start and stop digital marketing efforts rarely see tangible results.

As you consistently create solid content that truly offers value, you’ll see more organic (unpaid) traffic to your website and more positive attention for your brand overall. This also sends a message to you audience that you’ll bring that same level of focus and consistency to serving them and their needs.

Understand Your Core Audience

Another key component of digital marketing is knowing exactly who your target audience. This helps as you delve into traffic generation efforts which include:

• Creating compelling offers

• Targeting social ads to your group of ideal customers

• Finding the where the audience ‘lives’ online.

You can use the last element in that list ‘finding where the audience lives online’ to research and remain current with what’s most important to them. This helps with future content creation and it helps you become a stand-out ‘voice’ in your industry. When you know what your audience listens to and responds to, you’ll be able to easily set yourself apart with the information you provide.

Ensure Product Offerings Speak to Needs of Core Audience

Once you have an understanding of your audience, it’s time to create offers that help them solve problems they may face in their industry. Whether it’s a white paper, infographic, podcast, ebook, or long-form blog what you create needs to solve a problem or a address a challenge to provide high value for your audience. The key here is to identify with certainty that biggest challenge your audience faces. That’s where the value comes in.

To Generate Targeted Traffic, Optimize Your Website

Now that you have an understanding of the fundamentals of digital marketing, let’s take a look at the best ways to get targeted (ideal customer) visitors to your site. You may think the first steps involve going outside of your website to bring visitors in, but the opposite is true.

Any conversation on developing web traffic for MSPs and VARs has to begin with keywords.

Keyword: (n) fundamental to the search process. These words are what people using search engines type in to find answers to their questions. When sites place keywords properly, search engines are more likely to show their pages on search engine results.

Years ago, using a keyword or a series of keywords on a page multiple times would get search engines to rank a website highly on its results page. That’s just not true anymore. Now it’s all about quality and using keywords where it makes the most sense.

For example, if you’d like your site to appear on the search engine results page (SERP) for the term ‘Azure cloud applications’ then you’ll need to include that term throughout a page on your site. There’s no magic formula for the amount of times you should include it on the page, but the term should appear:

• In the URL of the page (title tag)
• In the title near the top of the page
• In the description of an image on the page
• Two or three times in the body copy, and
• In the meta description of the page.

Here’s an example from our friends at Moz:

Make sure you also have an individual page for each product and service you offer. This helps with the structure/architecture of your site to make it attractive to search engines. There’s an added bonus of making it clear to your audience exactly what you offer so they can make an informed decision about working with you.

Traffic Generation Techniques for MSPs and VARs

Now that you have the basics of digital marketing in order and your website is optimized for search, let’s explore how to get targeted traffic to your site. Here are a few key considerations:

1. Embrace paid social media. As you develop blog articles, white papers, infographics and other compelling offerings for your audience, it’s important to promote it. Paid social media on platforms such as LinkedIn, gives MSPs and VARs the chance to ensure the right audience sees your messaging and has access to the valuable information you’re sharing.
2. Use organic social media. When you publish a blog or launch a full digital marketing campaign, it’s important to develop the practice of sharing the information on the major social media platforms, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. This builds your credibility and shows off the fact you are being consistent in your content development. This also helps you create a sense of community when your content is so compelling that people comment on and share your content.
3. Develop compelling headlines and subject lines. A magic bullet for generating targeted traffic is placing headlines on your content that draws the right readers in. We’ve seen many organizations write about headline and title generation but one tool we use is the Hubspot Blog Topic Generator. It serve the dual purpose of providing a blog idea and a title based on the keyword you enter into the system. Note: It’s ok to tweak what the system gives you. It’s just a great way to create ideas and begin the title generation process.
4. Link to content on your website. When you create a blog or add a new page on your site, be sure you include links to other pages on your site. This makes your site more attractive to search engines and keeps visitors on your site longer.
5. Link to content outside your site. Some may find this a bit daunting but it’s ok to link to sites other than yours, especially in your blog posts. This doesn’t take away from your authority in the eyes of search engines. In fact, it enhances the reputation of your site because it shows you’re establishing the site as an authority and a useful resource for your audience. Note: A handful (two to three) of these links per blog post or page is fine.
6. Leverage email marketing. No matter what anyone says to the contrary and no matter how many new technologies appear, email marketing remains at the core of any strong digital marketing strategy. It’s also essential to traffic generation. When you have a permission-based list of contacts, you can simply send that list an email to alert them of your latest campaign. If your campaign is truly targeted and valuable, the best response will come from your very own email list.

Final Takeaway: Measure Your Results

Keep in mind traffic generation doesn’t happen overnight. That’s why consistency is so important in this process. But, as you keep plugging away at providing the right information your ideal customers, you’ll discover more and more visitors to your site. But how do you know what’s working? You’ll need to look at several metrics including:

• Which pages received the most visits?

• How long do visitors stay on the most popular pages?

• How many visitors signed up for your email newsletter or filled out a form?

This is by no means a comprehensive list. The amount of metrics you can measure are endless. But as you explore the process of reviewing the results of your traffic generation efforts, you’ll get a feel for which measurements provide the most insights into how well you’re doing.

We know this process can be a bit daunting for busy organizations with a focus on providing the best products and services for their customers. But if you’re looking to bring in a steady stream of qualified leads to your business through digital marketing, Presh Marketing Solutions is here to help. Click here to continue the conversation about digital marketing and web traffic generation.