The clicks you control vs. the clicks you don't control

All online marketing is designed to get users to engage. And engagement is clicking—clicking your ads, your links, your content, your experiences. You want clicks—lots of them. When users are clicking, things are moving and shaking. But not all clicks are the same. There are those clicks you can control, and those you can’t really control.

Clicks you can’t control are like a busy highway interchange. You optimize the hell out of your content, put it out there and throw in a small measure of hope. If you did your job, you get the traffic.  Where users end up and what they do when they arrive is entirely up to them—your ability to control what they click on is very limited. The clicks you don’t control sort of look like this, which is a good thing:

You want your content out there for users to discover and explore. You want to be well placed so you get clicks (traffic). But there is a limit to how far you can take this. There comes a point when the internet takes over (actually, the users take over) and que sera sera. Some examples of clicks you have limited control over:

• SEO
• Social
• Viral

And then there are the clicks you do have control over, such as:

• SEM
• Display/banners
• Email
• Affiliates

The control here is explicit. You create a message (an ad or content), you place it (your buy), and you are entirely in control of where people land when they click. We often say that a great landing place is marketer-controlled and user directed. Sort of like this:

You can, and should, send these clicks to landing pages that have limited, well-defined choices to get users to move from point A to point B (where B is usually your desired action for the campaign).

Most likely you are paying for these clicks. So seize the opportunity to be in control and craft conversion-focused experiences and optimize the hell out of them. Let “waste no click!” be your mantra.

Have one strategy (and set of tactics) for the clicks you don’t control and a different strategy (& tactics) for the clicks you can control. Leave nothing to chance. Convert your traffic.