I placed my Ad on a site with large traffic but I am not getting conversions

The above scenario is an all too familiar one in the digital marketing world. I stumbled on this post and could not help but respond to it for the purpose of others who are in his shoes.

One of the most important metric individuals and companies look for is website traffic. That’s right, sites with large traffic have good rankings in ‘traffic ranking sites’ like Alexa and SimilarWeb and offer great potentials for your products or services to be paid for; when Ads are been placed on them.

However, there is a difference between having ‘quantity traffic and relevant traffic’. Quantity traffic refers to actual website traffic numbers while relevant traffic refers to that proportion of website traffic that will actually convert; that is, those who will finally get to pay for your product or your service. No doubt, Nairaland does have traffic (actually they have over 6 million visits monthly) but the question is: how relevant is the traffic to your business?

Before you place your Ad on any site you need to understand the site’s (website or blog) make-up. You need to have an idea of the site’s demographics (age, gender) and the quality of its audience (in terms of buying power or needing that product/service). For instance, if you were to sell sports accessories where will you likely go? Would it be a Nairaland (it has a ‘sports’ category) or will it be a site like Goal.com? The answer should definitely be the latter due to its traffic quality. Looking at the snapshot below, you can understand why I said so. This is one of the posts from Nairaland’s sports category and it does not seem like these guys fit your profile.

Before you place your Ad on any site you need to understand the website’s make-up.

Or if you were to run professional courses where would you likely go to place your Ad? Would it be a job placement website or a blog like Lindaikeji? I believe you understand my point.

While large sites pose numbers, these numbers are reflections of many people each with different interests that are quite difficult to ascertain. Your duty or that of an expert would be to find ways to get your Ads to a site (not just anyone) that fits your product or service profile so as to better your chances at conversions.

Other likely reasons would be:

• What are you advertising? Is it a product or service that people can readily afford? Is it a new product/service or one that people are yet to accept?
• How long has the Ad being running? You need to give it time for your Ads to be well received by visitors.
• Does your Ad rotate with other Ads or is it fixed. Ads that rotate with others do not get maximum exposure especially when such exposure might even be limited to just one individual per day. However, a non-rotating Ad will likely drive more conversions as visitors get to see it, click and convert.
• Remember the competition. The more the competition the less chances at conversions especially when you are not offering anything special or different from others.
• If you are receiving traffic to your site but little or no conversions, then it is still a good thing. Its terrible when you do not get any of them. This is where you need tools like Google Analytics (GA) as you can monitor how visitors come to your site and from where they left off. Other ways to monitor your Ad performance would be receiving calls or email enquiries. Based on that you can have an idea of what your potential customers want/need and you can tailor your Ad to suit it.

Thinking of placing your Ads and needing advice? Feel free to drop your questions in the comment box and get a solution.