How to drive online visitors

I always enjoy looking at lists like this, because it reinforces the point that although social media marketing might mostly be “free”, it is an incredibly hard and work intensive process that needs a sound and clear strategy.

Garrahan identified six main drivers to a website:

1. online advertising
   
2. Google and other search engines
   
3. referrals
   
4. social/viral marketing
   
5. offline marketing
   
6. registered users
   

But these six are the general methods: each can be broken up into many more categories. These are some of the ones Garrahan mentioned:

• SEO (search engine optimisation - making it easy for Google to send you relevant visitors)
  
• SEM (search engine marketing)
  
• Affiliates
  
• Advertising online
  
• Simple display
  
• Video
  
• Sponsorship
  
• Email
  
• Customer email
  
• Joint promotion
  
• Sharing contacts
  
• Digital marketing
  
• Podcasting
  
• Newsletter
  
• URL promotion (advertising your site's web address)
  
• Rich media
  
• Blogs
  
• Bookmarking
  
• Social shopping
  
• Brand monitoring
  
• Content aggregation
  
• Fan sites
  
• Crowdsourcing
  
• Discussion boards
  
• Events meetups
  
• Mashups
  
• Twitter (microblogging platform)
  
• Online video
  
• Organisation and staffing
  
• Outreach program
  
• Photosharing
  
• Public relations
  
• Ratings and reviews
  
• Social networks

And just in case you think you can ignore all this because it might just over-complicate your life, Garrahan finished off with some statistics that are always mind-boggling once you really take the time to analyse them:

• There are over 100 million videos viewed on YouTube each day.
  
• One in 40 people has a Facebook profile. (Not one in 40 people online, but 1 in 40 people overall)
  
• Windows Live has 460 million users. If it were a country, it would be the world's third largest one. (This reinforces the fact that geographical boundaries are losing relevance).
  
• The 18 - 24 year-old age group is the keenest user of social media, but half of the 35 - 40 year-old group are active users, too.
  
• Two-thirds of teenagers worldwide use social media.
  
• In Europe, the fastest growing population sector of social media users is women over 55 years. In the last year, the sector increased by 237%.

• Bizcommunity.com is a media partner for The Marketing Show.