Attracting website visitors is crucial for the growth of any startup. It is especially important for bootstrapped startups because increasing website traffic can be a cost-effective way to win customers.
However, in today’s highly competitive digital landscape, it is increasingly challenging to win website visitors cost-effectively.
Having worked with many fast-growing startups, we have gained and share now our insights on attracting website visitors cost-effectively.
Driving website traffic has become hard
In today’s business landscape, all marketing channels have become highly competitive, making it challenging for businesses to stand out.
The pressure of less funding has put startups with investments in a tough spot, forcing them to compete vigorously with each other to secure a place in the market. On the other hand, bootstrapped startups have always been facing the challenge of being cost-effective and profitable without the luxury of spending heavily.
Due to budget constraints, paid advertising is mostly not an option in the early days, making it even more challenging for bootstrapped startups to gain traction.
Even organic traffic, once an easy win for businesses, has become increasingly competitive, making it difficult to generate traffic and leads.
Focus on winning the correct kind of website traffic
If you are looking to accelerate the growth of your business, one key strategy is to focus on the visitors that generate revenue.
Don’t just look at the number of clicks your website gets; instead, focus on the number of qualified leads you generate.
In other words, it’s different from how many people visit your website that matters, but rather how many of those visitors are interested in what you offer.
It’s important to remember that it’s better to have a small number of visitors who convert well than many visitors who only browse around without real interest in your product or service. By focusing on generating high-quality leads from the beginning, you will be setting a solid foundation for long-term growth.
To drive high-quality traffic to your website, you need a well-defined strategy. Remember, it’s not just about getting traffic, but about getting the right traffic that will make a real impact on your business.
1. Define your ICPs
Defining your ideal customer profile (ICP) is crucial to achieving your marketing goals. To begin with, you need to identify and list the top 3 types of decision-makers involved in the buying process of your product or service.
After identifying your ICPs, the next step is to discover where they spend their time. This involves researching the digital platforms and social media channels your target audience is most active on. Look into the specific news outlets and publications your ICPs prefer to read and their interests.
This ensures that your marketing messages reach the right people on the right platform and in the right time, increasing the chances of converting them into paying customers.
2. Discover opportunities matching your natural strengths
To effectively win high-quality website traffic, you must consider three key factors: the fit of your audience’s attention, your offer, and your natural strengths.
We have already covered your audience’s attention. Your offer is what your startup provides, whether it’s a product, service, or solution to a particular problem. Your natural strengths are the types of content you have experience in or feel naturally proficient in creating.
By finding the sweet spot of these three factors, you can prioritize the best opportunities for your marketing efforts.
Ultimately, the goal should be to win more customers with the least effort possible. This means minimizing the time and resources needed to invest in learning new skills or platforms.
3. Run experiments one-by-one
When testing the opportunities you have discovered, running experiments is the next step.
The key is to focus on one experiment for a month to see if your efforts will gain traction. This timeframe is optimal as it gives you enough time to evaluate the results without overinvesting in lost causes.
If you don’t see any feedback after one month of work, it’s a good sign to move on to the next identified opportunity. Remember, every startup, product, and audience is unique, so you never know what channel will work best for you.
It’s important to remember that testing is a balance between giving your ideas enough time to test and not overinvesting in any single experiment that may not yield the desired results.
As a best practice, it’s recommended to run only one, maximum two experiments at a time to validate your ideas properly. This way, you can effectively allocate your resources to each experiment and make informed decisions based on the data gathered.
Here are some practical ways to increase your online visibility and connect with your target audience:
- Publish insightful articles on your blog that provide value to your readers.
- Share your articles on Medium to reach a wider audience.
- Post on LinkedIn to engage with professionals in your industry.
- Share your content on other platforms like Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
- Write guest posts on relevant industry news platforms to establish yourself as an expert.
- Create videos on YouTube to connect with your audience visually.
- Release press news to generate buzz and attract media attention.
- Join Reddit communities and participate in discussions related to your niche.
- Become an active member of industry associations to network with peers and learn from experts.
- Partner with startups that share your target audience and collaborate on projects.
- Host webinars to educate your audience and showcase your expertise.
- Develop free, interactive tools that provide value to your audience.
- Publish industry reports containing unique data to establish yourself as a thought leader.
- Become a podcast guest speaker to reach a new audience and share your insights.
4. Scale your efforts on what works
When marketing your startup, discovering a channel that delivers positive results is just the beginning. The next step is to scale that channel to maximize your efforts and get the most out of your time.
To do this, you’ll need to test and evaluate what level of effort is required to yield the best results.
For instance, it’s not worth investing more time into it if you can achieve most of the results with just five hours of work on a particular channel.
Conversely, if you discover that a particular channel is highly effective for generating new leads, it may be worth investing additional time and resources into optimizing that platform.
One example of this is our experience with LinkedIn. We found that posting on LinkedIn was a great way for us to stay connected with our existing customers and network, but it wasn’t as effective for generating new leads. As a result, we limit our time on LinkedIn to focus on other channels.
On the other hand, we had great success by putting more effort into optimizing listing platforms. Even though the competition is numerous, the high-intent audience made it worth investing additional time and resources into this channel.
The key is to find what works best for you and your startup. By continuing to test and evaluate different channels, you can identify the most effective ways to reach and increase your target audience’s website traffic.
Increase website traffic for your bootstrapped startup
In today’s world, increasing website traffic has become increasingly challenging.
This means investing your time, money, and energy into the most effective strategies to attract more visitors to your site and convert them into loyal customers.
If you want personal support in creating a website that can help you win your initial customers, you might want to reach out to us. Our mission is to help B2B startups grow faster and win more customers.
