Impressions - April 2015 - 45

The most valuable trafﬁc for our industry in 2015
comes from Facebook. It's still relatively cheap, does not take
a lot of time to engage, is highly targeted on multiple levels,
can be scaled almost inﬁnitely and converts well.

to develop, and sometimes we would only
get a few hundred visitors a week.
That may sound like a lot, but it isn't.
I've since learned that "money loves
speed." This means the more trafﬁc you
can generate, the more buzz you attract.
This, in turn, creates more trafﬁc. In today's socially driven online atmosphere,
speed and buzz are essential. In fact, speed
generates buzz.

SEO & GOOGLE ADWORDS
The most traditional method of attracting website trafﬁc is search engine optimization (SEO). From 2000 until about
2014, it was one of the top methods of
geting visitors to your site.
Using this method, you would optimize
your page for free and get to the top of
Google's search results page. The free trafﬁc ﬂowed and the orders poured in. Google
let everyone get comfortable and happy
with these free rankings - for a while.
Then, they changed the ranking formula,
causing site owners to freak out when their
pages vanished overnight. The cure was for
business owners to instantly start spending
thousands of dollars with Google Adwords
to get trafﬁc back to their sites.
Last year, Google made more than 500
changes to its ranking formula and had
three big updates (Google Slaps). Most
site owners today have become annoyed
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and distrustful of Google, and have, thus,
moved away from SEO as their main
source of site trafﬁc.
That being said, Adwords is the quickest
way to get instant trafﬁc to your site. Trafﬁc will arrive within minutes of posting a
live ad. It's also one of the most expensive
methods. If you have a site that converts
well, Adwords is an excellent choice for
quick trafﬁc (and orders) when you have
peaks and valleys in production.

FREE VIRAL OFFERS
Viral offers are becoming increasingly
common. If you're using WordPress as a
website platform, there are a number of
plug-ins that make viral sharing easy. One
of my favorite methods is to offer something really cool for free. It might be a
discount coupon, premium or deep discount on an order.
For customers to get the offer, they
would need to share the site with their
friends, and get their friends to come to
the site and register for the premium. Registration is the key. I usually set the referral
number at three to ﬁve. This is a reasonably low and attainable number for a visitor to achieve. If the number is too high,
they won't share.
This is an explosive way to grow a list
and potentially get thousands of visitors to
come to your site during a promotion. For

this to work, your premium has to truly be
worthy of someone sharing it.

CONTENT MARKETING
In the past couple of years, content marketing has moved up the list as a method
of driving regular trafﬁc. Examples would
be Hufﬁngton Post, Yahoo! News, Gizmodo,
Sploid and UpWorthy. The idea is to provide great content around your subject area.
If you're a small local company, make
your website blog the single community source for information on decorated
apparel and how it's being used in the community. You also could do school proﬁles
and show how they are using your apparel
for their spirit or community campaigns.

SOCIAL SITES
The big social media sites are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest,
and for 2015, Pinterest and Instagram are
the two hottest properties for decorated
apparel. Not only are they fantastic ways
to connect with your prospective audience, they're also rich resources for ideas
on what's popular and trending.
There are thousands of T-shirt boards,
by subject area, on Pinterest, which began
as a crafting site primarily used by women.
That has changed; major brands, as well
as just about every genre and niche, are
represented. You can start multiple boards
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Impressions - April 2015

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