Build Site Traffic with Error Marketing

So What Is Error Marketing?

Error marketing is like a mixture of Wikipedia and Orbitz Games. It's a technique that allows web site owners to enter their site's text into a game that web users play. The site owners then pick and choose types of errors they would like players to report to them. Web users visit the site and hunt for a chance to win a small monetary reward for being the first to report instances of spelling errors, grammatical errors, punctuation errors, missing graphics, broken links, or whatever error types the site owner specifies (there are a lot of error types to choose from).

The web users compete against one another, while carefully reading, comprehending, and digesting the content of the web site. They stay on the web site for a long time, and absorb the full impact of the sales pitch. Every offer and communication is read thoroughly, and the site is boosted to a new level of professionalism through the eradication of errors that are difficult to find.

Site owners essentially trade what they don't want (web site errors) for what they do want (the web users' undivided attention). Of course, the number of errors on any web site is limited, so traffic increases while payouts decrease.

And at an entry price of less than $10 at TypoBounty (and no doubt other competing services will begin popping up with comparable fees), error marketing allows web site owners to use the game technique without breaking the bank.

Using error marketing, web site owners prepare web users to read every word and view every graphic of their web site prior to the users' actual arrival at the site. Priming the web user like this is invaluable. It's different than trying to attract them with a banner ad, then using your web site to convince them to stay -- these visitors want to stay on your site before they even get there. It doesn't matter how small or large your company is. They want to read every word you've written.

What does this do for the web site and the web site owner? Plenty! Irrespective of whether your web site focuses on one of the hottest topics on the Internet, or compares toilet paper sheet counts, the web site receives attentive visitors who are willing to read every word offered.

To the individual web site owner, this review is invaluable. Remember, the longer you can get a web user to remain on your web site, and the more of your content the web user reads, the greater your opportunity to express your point, and the more likely you'll be to make the sale, or establish true communication. While looking for errors, the users catch the full impact of your sales pitch.

This system offers other benefits to web users scouring your site. As errors are reported, you can identify problems and fix them before they can damage the web site's performance, image, or credibility. Openly showing consumers that you're striving to provide them the very best in products, content, and usability is a great public relations move for any organization. An award graphic placed on the web site signifies a web site's participation in the program.

The Battle For Attention

In the battle to secure more attention for your web site, site owners need to be innovative. Sparse web site traffic and low conversion rates do not necessarily reflect the quality or desirability of your products and offers. It can, however, suggest that you're using the wrong strategy.

Traditional advertising methods are great, but leveraging new tactics early is often what proves to be the most powerful way to help web site owners reach their goals. As the understanding of web user behavior grows, advertising and marketing methods adapt to provide the owner with more for less money. Error marketing continues that trend.

In a pay-per-click advertising campaign, getting clickthroughs that don't result in a sale, or a thorough communication of the site owner's information, is the equivalent of throwing money away. So, the focus on genuinely interesting the web user in the site's content prior to their actual arrival must take precedence over the focus on simply gaining clickthroughs. Many unsuccessful web marketers have left the important task of generating interest to the banner ad. With the banner ad's decline in effectiveness, it's no wonder that site owners who rely solely on this strategy have become frustrated with their ROI.

It sounds backwards to many, but before you entice web users to come to your site, you must give them incentive to stay. Here's the reason I say this.

Long time website owners have usually outgrown the excitement beginners initially experience after getting a clickthrough. Veterans of the advertising game understand that obtaining a clickthrough is really nothing more than a preliminary step toward the goal that his or her site was developed to accomplish.

For most web sites, obtaining 10,000 clickthroughs in a single day would mean a great jump in traffic levels. However, if these site owners went to their web site logs and found that the average visitor only stayed on their web site for five seconds, those glorious clickthroughs would quickly be put into perspective. Unless you only have a single graphic that you want the visitor to see, or only five words that you want them to read, each of those clickthroughs will have provided minimal benefit to the site owner in terms of truly communicating with the visitor and gaining a sale.

The core reason for creating a web site is to communicate a message that the owner wants the visitor to understand. If that isn't being achieved, the number of clickthroughs won't matter. Regardless of whether the desired end result is to make a sale, or to pass on knowledge, most web site owners want their sites to be read, remembered, accepted, interacted with, and revisited.

Five-second visits meet none of these goals. Getting your information deep enough into the minds of web users to truly get their attention and trigger a desire to buy -- or a desire to remember the information provided -- requires that you somehow attach your message to something that the user likes and wants.

The Early Bird

Adopting new techniques early is the key to reaping large benefits on the Web today. Think of most enormous success stories, and you can usually track that success back to someone who used a given technique early. Others that pile on late in the game usually see less impressive results because, as techniques grow in popularity, they eventually trigger the "been there, seen that" response from visitors, and the technique's performance drops off or generates a backlash.

Remember when flashy web sites, popup ads, and popunder ads were the order of the day? These techniques were once great ways to catch users' attention. Then everyone started using these techniques and now, in many cases, they have a negative influence on a web site's performance, rather than the intended positive one. Web users have developed resistance to these techniques, so you'd do well to avoid them.

Since error marketing is a passive technique (encouraging users to do something they like to do) rather than an aggressive technique (attempting to force information down users' throats), it doesn't induce a negative response from users.

Summary

Employing a technique like error marketing, which encourages a web users' commitment to actually reading and comprehending your web site, is an excellent way to increase web site traffic and raise conversion rates.

Sites that implement error marketing provide more incentive for web site visitors to stay longer and pay closer attention to site content, thus increasing a site's opportunity to experience true communication with its users. In the end, a web site that can draw attention and truly communicate to its visitors will have a better chance of accomplishing its goals -- whether they be to sell a product, provide a service, or simply increase the number of quality visitors.

If you haven't yet done so, I strongly urge every web site owner to list his or her web site on TypoBounty.com. At a price of less than $10, this service proves invaluable in helping web site owners on a budget clean up and polish their sites, maintain a site's professional appearance, gain traffic, and gain insights to their customers, and it's a great PR move. Gaining over $5,000 worth of web site services for less than $10 dollars is a major step in doing more with less, and ensuring that your profit margin grows.