Quality traffic has a lot in common with a flawless diamond.
You’re at Harry Winston’s shop on 5th Avenue in New York City. On the counter before you are two diamond rings. One showcases a quarter carat flawless stone. Next to it is a ring featuring 3 stones. Each is a full carat. You discreetly eye the price tags. What’s this? The ring with the small diamond is much more expensive. Exponentially so!
Welcome to the world of flawless. It’s a glittering example of the value taught by pursuing quality instead of quantity. You want to apply this concept to your search for traffic to your website.
More isn’t better
Let’s get back to Harry’s diamonds. Okay, you’re not totally in the dark. Most people know the value of a diamond is only partially related to its weight (size) measured in carats. And yes, Elizabeth Taylor-sized diamonds are rare, so they cost big bucks. We’ll push her rocks out of the equation.
That small(er) flawless quarter carat diamond is as close to perfection as you can get. It’s colorless, making it of the highest quality and grade. Even if you borrow Harry’s loupe, you’ll detect no flaws in the diamond’s interior. Harry shows you that the diamond’s cut – or shape – is neither too shallow nor too deep. The careful faceting allows it to reflect more light.
Everything about this diamond is optimal. That’s why its value is multiple times the amount of the collective value of the larger diamonds in the ring next to it.
Successful organizations apply a version of these valuations to the people they want to visit their website. They’d rather attract a single visitor whose prospect profile fits like a glove, as opposed to 3 visitors representing low sales conversion prospects.
The law of attraction
Harry Winston is not the least bit concerned with casting wide marketing nets. But he still markets. He knows that the most successful marketing has passionate storytelling at its core. So instead of shouting out at everybody, he carefully crafts opportunities to display his products. The stories they tell push through the noise. We all pay attention when a celebrity makes a public appearance adorned in his diamonds.
You take a crucial step toward attracting highly qualified website traffic when following Harry Winston’s selective approach.
How to find flawless diamonds
You’re not Harry Winston and you’re not attracting prospects with gemstones. What have you got that lures in the Elizabeth Taylors of your industry?
Content.
Is your strategy to shovel a bunch of words on to your website to attract as many eyeballs as possible? Please stop. Right now. Not because Harry Winston would wrinkle his nose at you – but because you are creating extra work that returns no value. You’re also disappointing your existing customers.
We’re almost done shopping at Harry’s place, but let’s use those two diamond rings on the counter for one last pertinent analogy.
The Harry Winston guide to content creation
You’ve just hit the save button, and there are three pieces of content ready to add to your website. You created them from the standpoint that they’ll generate 3x the opportunity to attract more traffic.
Meanwhile, your competitor has focused on a single piece of content.
- The topic was selected based on criteria matching a carefully crafted customer persona. Everything about this piece of storytelling will resonate with a visitor who will read it and say, “Hey, that’s me!”
- It started off as a much larger article, but it was meticulously faceted until its value proposition was able to shine through with sparkling clarity. Fluff was mercilessly deleted. In fact, several other pieces of content were deleted outright after being found guilty of providing no value.
- It’s the right color and shape. Huh? This piece of storytelling connects with prospects by matching their language usage, and it uses examples that readers can easily fit into their worldview. It was crafted just for them.
- It respects the effort readers invest by rewarding them with an actionable solution that requires no further research. It’s self-contained.
You and your competitor will now post your content. You’ll likely see a measurable bump in traffic numbers. Good luck with seeing a comparable jump in sales.
Like Harry Winston, your competitor prefers not to attract unqualified visitors. They gobble up your bandwidth and distract your customer service folks from closing sales. It’s like Harry serving champagne and caviar on fabulous little toast points to people who don’t even know who Elizabeth Taylor was. “Um, does she have a YouTube channel?”
Harry Winston works hard to attract only people who are qualified to purchase his diamonds. Even so, all are welcome to come into the store to look. His staff will treat you with great respect and provide you with the education that’ll help you decide if you’re the right kind of customer for the store. Which is to say that if Harry Winston was a website, he would also offer specific content that makes zero-based assumptions about you but helps move unqualified prospects into the sales funnel through a process of discovery. Remember that scene in Pretty Woman where the storekeeper thought that Julia Roberts couldn’t possibly afford to buy anything? Exactly.
We’d love to buy some of Harry Winston’s bling. Maybe someday. There’s one area, though, where we beat him at his own game. Our team of storytellers, designers, writers, journalists, subject matter experts, editors, and animators craft content with the same prerequisite talent and skill as the most sought-after diamond cutters to be found anywhere.
Harry Winston fondly calls diamonds “stones.” We call what we do “bacon.” Want some?
