It’s understandable that a lot of people assume that, if they want to make more money, they need to drive more traffic to their offer. To use a real world example, if a baker wants to sell more cakes they might assume they need to work on getting more people to come into their bakery. But this isn’t necessarily the case. The mistake they’re making is thinking that their conversion rate, meaning the percentage of people that come into their store that actually buy a cake, is fixed.
But it isn't. You can increase your conversion rate which will pay dividends far into the future.
More Traffic Doesn’t Equate to More Conversions
It only equates to increased sales. But a better way to increase sales that doesn’t involve bringing in any extra traffic is to boost your conversion rate, and to do that you need to work on developing your offer. Looking at our baker example again, instead of working to bring more customers into his store the baker could install better signage. He could strengthen his store’s user experience. F\He could feature his cakes more prominently and make them look more appealing.
All of these improvements do nothing to drive traffic because the only people that will see them are people already coming into the shop. Instead what the baker is doing is working to improve his conversion rate. A better, clearer customer experience means more people will buy cakes. If he could convert 20% of his store traffic instead of 10% he would double the number of cakes he sells without adding a single additional prospect into the mix.
For affiliate marketers the parallel is to work on your offer presentation, your site design, your ad copy, your user experience. These improvements will convert more of your existing traffic, making your more sales without any increase in traffic.
Attempting to Increase Traffic Volume Can Get Expensive Quickly
Consider the cost differences between these two scenarios.
Increasing Traffic
Our baker friend contracts to have a television commercial created. He pays to run it on a bunch of local television stations. He also takes out print ads in the local paper. This advertising is expensive and it’s not clear how effective it will be.
Increasing Conversion Rate
Our baker reorganizes his store to feature his cakes more prominently. He has some new, more attractive signage created. He works on training his employees on how to better sell his products. These modifications are free or very low cost and have a much higher likelihood of success.
It’s simply very expensive to drive traffic. Converting a larger percentage of your existing traffic is much more economical.
Providing a Better Offer Will Increase Conversions Which Means More Money in Your Pockets
Consider that if you have a low conversion rate then the incremental value of increasing traffic is also very low. With a 5% conversion rate you would need to bring in 20 new prospects in order to make one new sale. With a 20% conversion rate it only takes 5 new prospects. Thus money invested in increasing your conversion rate not only increases your sales rate among existing traffic, it also lowers the amount of money you may one day need to spend on increasing traffic. This puts more money in your pocket in the present and saves you a good bit of money in the future.
So focus on improving your conversion rate first and only then should you consider trying to drive more traffic.
