The phase of acquisition is the most expensive of the customer cycle. It is 40 to 60 % of the total cost. A customer does not limit himself to a simple consumer. A surfer "buys" the company by visiting his institutional site. But it is necessary to enable him to reach this institutional or commercial site and to convince him to buy the product or the service. If not, where is the interest to create traffic?

Because it is at the same time less expensive and more effective than the traditional methods, internet technologies are a quantitative approach of the generation of traffic. Some companies use Spam to create traffic to their site: Spamming is not legal, and sending bulk emails to untargeted prospects (rather irritated by this intrusion in their private life) is the worst way you may use. Traffic generation needs a qualitative approach today to dope its effectiveness. Here some tips to generate a more targeted traffic and to optimize consequently the effectiveness of your site.

1 - Referencement and affiliation to acquire new visitors

According to Forrester Research, 81% of the Net surfers who reach a site for the first time come from a search engine or a directory. Referencement and search engines submission is the first tool to be used when you promote a commercial site. We can estimate the cost of a new customer acquisition at 3 dollars for viral marketing, 1.50 dollars for the affiliation and only 15 cents for search engines indexation. Although more expensive than the search engines, the affiliation brings a qualified traffic since the partners can be selected according to their affinity with the target of the merchant or the institutional site. These two approaches are complementary.

2 - Refine your positioning.

Based on a semantic analysis of the keywords, many softwares allow a real-time follow-up of the search engines indexation (WebCEO). This software calculates the position of the site in the search engines according to the keywords used by the surfers. It makes possible to permanently optimize the ranking. Associated to a professional manual submission, you will put all the chances on your side to generate a qualified traffic.

3 - Make your traffic recurrent using a mailing list

The mailing lists have all the financial advantages of the Spam without its disadvantages. It makes possible to inform the receptive targets about the covered subjects. It is an excellent marketing tool to keep a high qualified traffic.

4 - Viral marketing

Your customers are your best sellers! Once the visitor is transformed into a customer, all is not done. A customer will talk about your company, product or service with his/her friends. Then, allow him to sponsor his/her friends or to send them a link to the site by e-mail. This viral marketing involves a weak investment and can generate great returns.

5 - Measure the impact of the marketing tools you use

The generation of a qualified traffic is a work of every moment because the surfers like the company and his ecosystem evolve/move in time. All these actions without measuring the results has no sense. It is necessary to analyze at least which keywords in which search engines bring traffic to your page. Tools such as Webalizer or PHPOpenTracker carry out these analyses free.