If you became involved with internet marketing in the last few years, you might have gotten the idea that it’s your job to sell clicks to other companies. To a degree this is true. But it doesn’t really get into the nitty gritty of the job. You aren’t just sending “clicks” to other websites, you’re sending people. When you analyze your traffic, you have to try and think in terms of what people are doing at your website, and this isn’t always simple to do.

Companies are willing to pay very little for untargeted traffic and much more for spot-on traffic

If the companies think a prospect is hot, they’re likely to pay much more. Many searches are purely informational, and won’t result in a sale, so marketers take this into account. If your website doesn’t warm up the visitors by pre-selling them, you’re probably in the habit of sending flat, non-converting traffic to sponsors.

What are some ways you can pre-sell people? I don’t think you have to necessarily go crazy with content, but rather offer tiered choices to at least help lead people towards a final destination. One way to do this is with a typical directory-style drill down of subjects that gets them closer to what they’re looking for.

At least if you do this:

1) Credit Repair
— Debt Consolidation
— Home Equity Loans

If they pull down two levels to the third level, they’re that much closer to actually buying something, or at least the rationale goes. The better you organize your content around “action concepts” the more likely a visitor will actually pull the trigger on a deal and make you and the advertiser some money.

What other ways can you think of to pre-sell traffic?