If you want to get a sustainable amount of targeted traffic, all you have to do is build a website with great design and load it with your best content (in this case, best coupons), Right?
I wish that were the case. But it isn’t. I’m going to let you in on a little secret.
“Figure out the marketing first, later on, build the product.”
Your design, your best content, it doesn’t matter at all, if no one visits your website.
So, how to get a steady stream of targeted traffic?
Here’s the exact process that I’ll follow to promote online coupon sites & you are free to follow my footsteps to get your way to super targeted traffic:
Strategy #1: Activate & Optimize Your PPC Ads For Each & Every Relevant Search Term
Thousands of people search for coupons every single day on Google. They are ready to buy users searching online about coupons, and the best & quickest strategy would be to reach them.
There are a couple of websites that get it, CouponDunia, CouponKart, & many more are the ones that are actively doing the same. Here are the results that I see when I search for ‘McDonalds Coupon’:
You can do a random search around your relevant keywords to see who all are running PPC ads to acquire customers.
Google Adwords is the platform that can help you run ads in the Google search results.
Try to tap in each & every user by activating ads that revolve around your category. It might be Nike shoes, Adidas Shoes, Movie Coupons, Software coupons, whatever. When someone searches for Nike shoes, your ad should say coupon for 20% off on Nike Shoes.
Choose your keywords carefully, try to steal the best converting ad copies of your competitors and get your ads visible above your competitors.
And do make sure you have a closer look at the ROI too. Scale up the top converting ads and cut down the low converting one. I promise this single strategy can get you thousands of relevant visitors in your pocket depending on the budget you have & the industry you deal in.
Strategy #2: Reach Out to the Relevant Audience Via Facebook Ads
Facebook ads are really giving insane ROI to a ton of marketers every day. And it’s foolish to avoid the platform that can provide you results & put you in front of the targeted audience almost instantly.
There are a ton of targeting options in Facebook ads that can help you drill down the audience you want to reach. You can target especially to people who are categorized as ‘online shoppers’ and show them your coupons & share the joy of saving money that they can by using your coupons website.
Here are a couple of samples ad that I believe are brilliantly done to convey the message:
Carefully test which ad graphics, ad copies, ad descriptions & targeting options are working for you and scale them up. There would be no shortage of relevant traffic to spread the word about your coupons instantly.
Strategy #3: Content Marketing – Attracting Audience Using Words
Content Marketing is great, and it can drive thousands of visitors to your kitty. And that too without being a pushy salesman.
It is all about creating content like videos, articles, podcasts around the topic that can attract your targeted audience, in this case, online shoppers.
RetailMeNot is doing an excellent job with their blog. They publish content around various topics like beauty, natural foods, parenting and attract the audience.
Recently they posted an article, i.e., “6 Beauty Products You Need ASAP” and in the article, they shared various links to their coupons on beauty products. Here’s a snapshot on how their blog looks like:
You should definitely figure out the critical pain points, interest areas of your audience and write good quality engaging content to attract them and then find a way to redirect them to your coupons to buy the stuff.
Definitely worth the efforts if done correctly.
Strategy #4: Content Discovery Platforms
Writing valuable content is excellent, but there is something more you can do to get the eyes of the best in the industry.
Content discovery platforms are the secret that many do not share.
What are the content discovery platforms?
A content discovery platform is a recommendation platform/tool that helps users find compelling content that is relevant to the one they are reading across the internet space.
So, by advertising with these content discovery platforms, we can get our content recommended in some of the big & known websites for pennies and get enormous benefits.
Many companies in the world are offering these services, OutBrain & Taboola are some of them that are doing a fantastic job in this market.
Strategy #5: Build An Email List Of Online Shoppers
Building an email list of online shoppers is definitely the best investment that you can do as you can market to them on a daily basis with the latest offers & promotions.
Still, a lot of the websites don’t get it. But some do, here are some of the websites that are busy building their email list:
Once you have established a nice list of online shoppers, you can send them offers every day, every week and get instant traffic to your website and that too at no extra cost to you (Other than email marketing service).
There are many email marketing services that you can use, the popular one, to begin with, would be Aweber or MailChimp.
Strategy #6: Search Engine Optimization
Understand *how* coupon seekers use coupon sites?
It goes something like this:
- Susie finds something she wants to buy on BigBoxMerchant.com.
- She starts to check out and then sees the box where you enter a coupon code. Oh, no! She can’t be an idiot and buy something full-price,
- So she opens another window and types “BigBoxMerchant coupons” in the search box.
If your site isn’t one of the first three or four on the results page, you’re toast.
I believe the point is self-explanatory on the power of SEO.
But, here’s a neat little trick that I would play on:
- List all the competitors that you have in your market.
- Use SEMRush Tool to find out the all the keywords on which your competitors are ranking.
- Understand their traffic to the core deep and then try to target a bunch of keywords that are giving them the maximum traffic.
This strategy alone would put you in the right perspective from the beginning and would save you countless hours of wasted SEO efforts.
Strategy #7: Mobile Apps – Get Even Closer to Your Customer
If you can get a space in a person’s mobile, you definitely can attract them back to your coupons at any moment of time.
Get yourself a custom app developed & update it on a daily basis to keep it engaging enough.
There are a ton of ways to get your apps installed:
- Promote the app via Mobile App Installs Facebook Ad
- Get organic downloads from PlayStore or Apple Store by using proper optimizing strategies to get your app rank higher in the stores.
- Invite heavy online shoppers to download your app via SMS Marketing. Find a local vendor that offers SMS Marketing in your area and start an SMS campaign.
- Cross Marketing, find some apps in the similar space but not directly competing with you. Make a contract to cross-promote the apps to each other’s audience.
Before we end this article:
Here are some more ways to market your online coupons site:
- Contact Local Directories & Yellow Pages and try to get your website listed.
- Contact bloggers in your market & negotiate a deal with them to review your website. E.g., if you are into Fashion & beauty coupons, find bloggers who blog about fashion & beauty and try to get your website reviewed by them.
- You can set up an active Twitter profile, gather targeted followers about the market and tweet regularly with coupons & exclusive deals.
- Similarly, you can set up a Facebook fan page as well and post regularly about the coupons & exclusive deals. And copy the same trend in other social media profiles too like Instagram, Pinterest, & others.
Feel free to share your thoughts about this article in the comments.
If you own a business and need marketing help, you might want to consider working with me.
