We use a number of different traffic sources to bring customers into your business, we've stated time and again. But what does that mean? What sources exist and which one does your site need? Let's figure it out. This will help you understand where leads can be generated and how to put together an effective digital marketing strategy.
What is a traffic source?
Before launching traffic to your site, it is important to get familiar with the main types and channels of traffic.
The traffic source is the channel from which potential visitors come to your online store. Vladimir clicked on Gmail, and here you are offering a smartphone with a 20% discount. It attracted Vladimir, clicked on the ad, which is placed by your PPC specialist, went to the site, viewed the product. So, contextual advertising in Google in this case - is the source of traffic. To that extent, it is a paid source. And there are also free ones. For the first time you pay for each visitor, in the second case, their visits are free or conditionally free.
Visitors can come from anywhere. They could come from a YouTube ad, a mention in a Telegram channel, a forum, or a directory. The source of traffic can be a Facebook post or an Instagram post, newsletters, media alerts, Yandex and Google search results, or an ad on OLX.
Anyway, a traffic source is a digital space where you can find and attract potential customers to your business. In addition, with the help of analytics systems, these sources can be tracked, tested, and evaluated in order to understand where and when to look for customers.
Where does the traffic come from?
How do you know where people are coming to your site from? To do this, we use analytics systems connected to the resource. For example, let's look at the sources of traffic in Google Analytics - there you can get all the data on conversions and find out the critical points in the resource promotion.
So, we can find information about the sources in the "Overview" section. There will be sites that generate leads beside the visits of guests on the site. For more in-depth analysis, there are additional tools, such as segmentation reports by several categories. For example, the Google Analytics channel report is divided into several groups: Organic search, Paid search, Referral, etc.
Let's look at these groups and the traffic attraction associated with these channels.
Types of traffic
In our articles, we regularly mention various types of traffic, which are also used by analytics systems in their classification. Let's take a look at the major ones.
Organic
It had been mentioned by us all the time. After all, we specialize in promoting e-commerce projects, where organic traffic is the major source of clients. Studies have shown that over 65% of users click on organic sites when they like to buy something.
Search traffic to a site is people who come to you from Google and Yandex search pages. For example, the previously mentioned Vladimir himself wanted to buy a smartphone and asked in the search engine "Smartphone to buy in Ukraine” and he selected one of the options offered by the search engine.
We can call organic traffic conditionally free. Free - because you do not pay anything for the transitions. Conditionally free because in order to get organic search traffic, you must engage dedicated professionals in search engine promotion and the purchase of links.
Is it worth betting on organic traffic?
- Pros: Organic is the optimal method of attracting buyers to a site. It is suitable for all companies that have a product, a demand for the product, and a website. With the competent promotion, you get long-term performance at a minimal cost of attracting a customer.
- Note: In order to get a large and stable amount of organic traffic, you need to get ahead of your competitors in the fight for the top spots in search engine results. This may take time and requires consistent financial investment.
Referral traffic
This is one more channel for attracting traffic, which is worth to be mentioned. These are conversions from the page of another resource, as well as from messengers and applications via a direct link. Vladimir was reading on a forum about chainsaw repair, and one participant recommended your wonderful and low-priced repair kits shared the link. Vladimir followed that link and became part of the referral traffic to your site.
In terms of cost, referral traffic can be:
Conditionally free: link building (buying links on third-party sites), native advertising, guest posts, and custom posts from bloggers. You pay once for the owners of the ad without commission.
Free. Free clicking on links placed.
To attract in this case they use link building, crowd marketing, content marketing, etc.
Is it worth betting on referral traffic?
- Pros: Referral traffic, especially from sources valued by your target audience, both converts very well and build trust in your company. In addition, referral traffic is a search engine sweet spot. The more reputable resources refer to you, the better the site ranks in search. Which positively contributes to the main traffic in e-commerce - organic traffic.
- Note: Implementing a link attraction strategy requires extensive content development. It will not achieve immediately the outcome. The purchase of links - a very effective method for search engine optimization, but getting referral traffic is workable only if you place a large number of links on popular sites. Thus, it is quite expensive.
Paid search
What does paid search mean? It is called ad traffic.
This includes visitors who reach your online store through any type of digital advertising. This can be Google Ads and Yandex. Direct, targeted ads on Facebook and Instagram, etc. The advantage of paid attraction is the ability to control the flow of traffic by various parameters. For example, to decide how many conversions you want to get and at what time. And also - a high percentage of conversion, since the traffic is often - warm. Disadvantage - you have to pay for each transition. And in top competition areas, the price can be quite high.
Is it worth betting on paid traffic?
- Pros: the promotion of online stores without advertising substantially loses efficiency. PPC tools and paid traffic received can allow you to realize high efficiency of sales with seasonal and promotional sales. Search traffic comes at once, which not only makes it possible to sell but also to evaluate the conversion of individual pages, accelerate the promotion to get free traffic from search, test new markets, quickly assess the effectiveness of improvements to the site, and much more.
- Note: The cost of advertising is determined by an auction between all advertisers. Therefore, the cost per click in topics with high competition can be quite high. It is important to trust the setup and optimization only to professionals.
Social traffic
Another relatively free source of traffic comes from social networks. These are links from social networks, but not targeted advertising. The tools to get it are SMM, blogger advertising, etc.
Is it worth betting on social traffic?
- Pros: The major advantage of social promotion is the variety of engaging free formats and tools. In your account, you can place a link to the site and use the internal capabilities of the social network to spread it. This is how many Western companies attract up to 30% of their traffic from social networks.
- Note: they shall carry activity in social networks out with high quality and on an ongoing basis, which requires time and funding.
Conversions from mailing lists. For tracking, as a rule, a UTM tag is created and attached to the address. Or it is added automatically by a mailing service.
Is it worth relying on traffic from mailing lists?
- Advantages: users who are already familiar with your company will come to your site, which increases the chance of a conversion.
- Note: it is essential to take the right approach: in order to get traffic, your mailing list should be regular, your approach should be relaxed, and your offer should apply to the specific needs of your target audience.
Media sources (Display)
Users visit a website by clicking on banners, videos, and other media ads on Google and placing media advertising messages. It is paid for by Google and Yandex advertising systems.
Is it worth betting on traffic from contextual media networks?
- Pros: media advertising is a great tool to promote yourself, tell about your news (new services, prices, promotions), and bring back users who have already been to your site and view products. The relatively low price per click ensures the financial efficiency of the incoming traffic.
- Note: The audience for this type of advertising is cold. Advertising messages are seen by people who are not looking for goods here and now.
Direct traffic (Direct)
Direct traffic is a direct source of traffic, which is a direct link to your site in the browser address bar or the bookmarks. The direct source of traffic is the transition by a direct link to your site, scored in the address bar of the browser or from bookmarks. The source is usually word of mouth or offline ads.
To get more clicks, we recommend working on your branding, recognition, and preferably creating a URL that is easy to understand and remember.
Summary
So, let's resume what we've said:
The traffic source is the starting point to attract your potential customers to come to the site.
We can pay for the traffic, we can get it free and relatively free and can get even from one source.
The most significant traffic sources include search, advertising, link traffic, social and media traffic, and traffic from newsletters.
Data about traffic sources, related conversions, pages, and actions can be obtained using analytics services.
Analyzing the sources helps you find out the best fits your purposes, understand the target audience and adjust your project development strategy.
Study, analyze and test different sources of traffic in marketing and attraction channels! And you will be able to build smart and systematic strategies for getting clients based on actual data. Good luck!