What is targeted traffic?
Let’s say I’m selling some high-quality Sony headphones. We can compare the different headphones by selling these headphones in a physical shop. When a customer comes in, he sees we have 10 different products, and out of these 10 products, product number 5 is the newest released headphone we want to sell. The rest are other electronic related electronic products.
When a client is entering the shop (we would call this traffic), they come to have a look. The reality is that what they are really looking for is to buy the headphones, (product 5), but me, as a sales person, I’m very enthusiastic about selling any product I have in the store and I randomly start pitching them product 7, let’s say it’s Amazon Kindle.
Now, this client is a potential buyer. He is coming to see the shop, but he is also looking to buy the ultimate Sony headphones. Me as a salesman, or a desperate marketer, I’m trying to sell particularly item number 7 (Amazon Kindle), and not product 5 (Sony headphones), which is actually the one he is looking for. Even though product 7 might be good, this is not in the interest of the client in that moment. So, this traffic (the client) that entered the store is irrelevant right now, even though the store got some traffic through this client, it was irrelevant traffic, and they didn’t buy the Amazon Kindle in that moment, he just left. So, this is the way we should understand targeted traffic.
So if I have 2 products in that moment (Headphones and Kindle), and I am showing 20000 people one particular item, say the Kindle, and I have no clue whether those 20000 people are really interested in buying the Kindle or not, let’s say I could make around 30 sales. But If I knew that say, 200 people are looking to buy product 5, the headphones, and I show these 200 people this particular product, then out of those 200, I might get 60 sales.
So even though product 7, the Kindle, got more traffic, versus product 5, the headphones had more sales. So, this is what we mean by potential traffic or potential targeted traffic. Basically, the headphones got more potential targeted traffic than the Kindle in particular.
Inside traffic we have 2 lanes:
- Inbound Traffic: Typical example is the online path that leads you to an information site you want to know about, from the moment you start from Google search for example, until you finally get to the information of interest. This would be then potential customers going to you.
- Outbound Traffic: Normally referred to subscriptions through newsletters, YouTube channels… Once you subscribed notifications will be sent automatically to you. In other words, this is business reaching out to its potential customers.
It’s really all about engagement with the customer. In order to sell we first need to know who to approach. At Mondo Marketing we try to make the customer understand the importance of inbound marketing, because this will help us know who our real target audience is. Then we can propose and sell our services to the right people.
On the other side, outbound marketing can be more conventional marketing, but on many occasions, you are approaching a much wider range of people, and besides being more expensive, most of these people are not really interested in what you offer.
So, remember that in order to increase your chances of selling, a major first task will be recognizing the right targeted audience that are the ones that in digital marketing generate the potential targeted traffic.