How Post-Click Marketing Can Make You Money

There may be more money to be made from your online store or other commercial web site than you currently realize. Provided your site meets a few basic criteria, you can leverage something called post-click marketing to convert more visitors into customers and increase the value of orders placed by online shoppers.

In this article I will explain what post-click marketing is and how can it increase the profitability of your commercial web site. But first I need to be clear that these techniques work best when your site reaches a certain level of traffic; around 100,000 page views a month would probably be a minimum. And these techniques are only worthwhile if your site deals in events that can be monetized. In other words, can you put a value on what your site is trying to accomplish? It might be sales of goods or services, generating of marketing leads, or achieving certain "time on site" objectives, just as long as you have a way to determine the commercial value of what the site was built to achieve.

Most people know that in order to make money online you need to put a lot of effort into getting people to "click-thru" to your site. This effort might be Google Adwords or other pay-per-click ad campaigns, search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, direct mail or email campaigns, even blogging and article writing. However, for any of these efforts to pay off, you need the people who visit your web site to "convert." For example, if your site is an online store you want to convert visitors into customers who order from your store. If your site is designed to generate leads for your offline business, conversion probably means getting visitors to give you their contact information so you can start a conversation with them that leads to a sale.

A certain amount of conversion will take place automatically. For example, suppose you have optimized your site so that it appears near the top of search results for "motorcycle gear." A certain percentage of people who search for "motorcycle gear" and click on your listing in the search results will convert, i.e. they will buy from you. Exactly how many conversions you get depends on several factors, starting with what visitors see when they get to your site.

If the first page that someone sees when they click through a search listing for motorcycle gear contains no direct reference to motorcycle gear, the conversion rate--the number of people who buy, expressed as a percentage of the number of visitors--will probably be very low. Experience tells us that conversion rates tend to improve with relevance. I can pretty much guarantee that if someone clicks through a search listing for motorcycle gear and lands on a page featuring an eye-catching graphic depicting good-looking motorcycle gear, the conversion rate is likely to be better than if the only reference to the search term on that landing page is a small menu item.

This is why companies create "landing pages" to match their marketing campaigns. They want to ensure that the traffic they drive to the site lands on a page that is relevant. Based on the companies and campaigns that I've worked with, I know this type of landing page increases conversion rates. In fact, a landing page designed to be relevant to a particular source of traffic is a primitive example of post-click marketing, that is, the marketing you do after the click that brought the visitor to your site.

However, while it makes sense to match each search term that brings you traffic with a relevant landing page, search is not the only way people get to your site. Assuming you're using Google Analytics or a similar application to track how people get to your site, take a look and see how many come from Search versus Direct or other referrers. The question then becomes, how do you make sure that visitors from all these different sources are greeted with relevant pages, not just the people who arrive via specific search campaigns?

The answer is some sort of post-click marketing system. You can create this in house, or--if you have enough traffic to justify the cost--you can pay for a service that tracks information about visitors to your site and enables you to present them with relevant messaging.

For example, if you've used Google Analytics you know that it can distinguish between new visitors and returning visitors. What would happen if your home page displayed a special "Welcome" message for new visitors and a "Welcome Back" message for returning customers? Experience tells me your site will perform better, conversion rates will be higher.

Now suppose you add some "local" relevance. For example, what would happen if someone in Seattle were to visit your online store and see this message: "Seattle's best source for motorcycle gear"? In my experience, that sort of messaging significantly increases average order value, even if your actual base of business operations happens to be located in Boston or Philadelphia.

If you have sufficient web site traffic you can get even more specific in your targeted messaging. Consider a returning customer, visiting your site from Chicago, who has bought Harley-Davidson related products on previous visits. What if they were to see a testimonial extolling the joys of buying Harley-related products from your store? The effect would very likely be positive. What if that testimonial was written by a customer who was also in Chicago? The answer is just as you would expect, even more positive. This type of messaging naturally encourages people to buy, and to buy more, at your store.

When you buy a sufficiently sophisticated post-click application, this type of post-click marketing can be completely automated. The product will gather the data, identify the segments into which visitors fit, and display the appropriate messages. For example, you don't have to create 212 different messages to greet visitors from the 212 metropolitan areas in the United States. The software will insert the correct name for you.

You can use these systems to present visitors with discounts to encourage purchasing, or you can rely on the power of messaging alone. Consider the earlier examples, they did not give any discounts, but I have seen such campaigns produce substantially more revenue as compared to a control group that did not see the messages (and incidentally, way more money that the cost of the post-click marketing products and services used to execute the campaigns).

E-commerce has many cost and productivity advantages over traditional bricks-and-mortar business models, so many in fact that companies can become complacent. They don't realize how much more revenue could be produced if the site experience were made more relevant and more personal. That's what post-click marketing does. Frankly, if you're not using it, you're actually "leaving money on the table" by missing opportunities to convert at higher rates and generate bigger revenues. And you've probably learned by now that if you leave money on the table, your competitors will be more than willing to pick it up.