Traffic to Your Website Doesn’t Matter!

Any classically-trained direct-marketer will tell you that traffic to your website (“hits”) really doesn’t matter — the only thing that matters is qualified new business leads.

I have the privilege of speaking with business owners every day who are interested in growing their businesses. This week, I heard from a partner in an insurance firm who told me that he was about to sign a contract with a company that promised him more website visitors than he would know what to do with. The company said that they would “position him on Google” to get “tons of traffic”.

What is direct-marketing?

The term “direct-marketing” was coined in the 1960’s by marketing legends — people such as Jay Abraham, Mary Kay Ash, Drayton Bird, Claude C. Hopkins, and scores of other brilliant writers and marketers — to refer to the “one-to-one” dialogue between a business and the prospects who were most likely to have a need for the products or services the business had to offer.

Direct-marketing is the opposite of mass-marketing, which refers to messages sent to large numbers of people who may or may not have an interest in the company’s products or services.

Why traffic to your website doesn’t matter

So I asked the partner in this insurance firm if traffic to his website was what he actually wanted. His reply? “No, we don’t care about people who are shopping for insurance rates — what we want is warm, qualified leads,” he said.

Problem is, the agency that he was on the verge of signing with couldn’t offer that!

People don’t do business with companies, they do business with people

Smart business owners never lose track of that fact — if you want to use the Internet to generate warm, qualified leads for your high-cost products or services, you must engage in 1-to-1 dialogue. That’s still how business is conducted, even today.

So, who’s handling your Internet marketing?

Is your Internet marketing (website, social media, email) being handled by a tech company? Is it being handled by a web designer? Is it being handled by an agency that simply re-sells for a larger company??

If you haven’t experienced Internet marketing handled by a classically-trained direct-marketer, you ought to find out what you’re missing.

Before signing a contract, make sure you meet the marketing professional who will be handling your needs. And make sure they understand your industry, your goals, and your buyer personas.