There are two parts to any good internet marketing plan: driving traffic to your site and converting that traffic. Many of the most glamorous Internet marketing strategies center on driving traffic, such as Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click advertising, affiliate programs, link exchange programs, and even e-mail campaigns (if not properly conducted). The neglected side of internet marketing is conversions.

The Other Side of the Coin

Internet marketing is like a coin—it has two sides, and you can’t have one without the other. You can get all the traffic in the world, and if your site doesn’t convert, then you are not going to make very much money. If you have a site that will motivate every visitor to purchase but no traffic, then you will be as poor as a church mouse.

So How Do I Increase My Conversion Rate?

There are lots of tactics to increase the conversion rate of your site. One that seems obvious but is often neglected is to include calls to action in your Internet marketing materials—ads, landing pages, web pages, e-mails, etc.

Call to Action? What’s a Call to Action?

You may think that your site’s visitors know exactly what to do and when, but you’d be surprised. It’s not that they’re stupid—they’re usually anything but stupid—they just don’t know your site, your offers, your business, as well as you do.

So give your visitors some clues of what they can do, of what there is for them on your site. When you write your marketing copy or build your web pages, tell them what to do. Call on them to perform an action.

Use action verbs in a imperative (or commanding) tone. Read our free whitepaper. Click here to view products specs. Buy one, get one free. Sign up for our weekly newsletter here. You get the idea.

Appropriate Calls to Action Help Your Visitor

By including appropriate calls to action in your marketing materials, you can help your visitors and customers to understand what to do. Help them find the offering, the service, the product, the information that they need. Don’t worry about the commanding verbs—your visitors will thank you for them later. Those who didn’t follow your calls to action weren’t interested anyway, and you’re not interested in them.