Now you have visitors to your product, but that’s the problem. They are just visitors. You’ve found a way to get them to come to your product, but if this is all you do, then they will bounce at an incredibly high rate. Your goal is to activate them. Activation is the act of getting them to take action in your product that you are guiding them toward. Activation is not just the act of them clicking around randomly and not bouncing. Activation is when they do something that you’ve decided beforehand that they should do, something which furthers your goals. Here are some possible activation goals:
- Get their email address
- Get them to create an account
- Get them to read something
- Get them to comment on something
- Get them to share something
- Get them to buy something
- Get them to fill out something
- Get them to watch something
- Get them to interact with someone
- Get them to friend request someone
- And much more
Some of these activation goals may seem silly, while others seem relevant, but your particular goals will depend entirely upon your product. If your product is a blog that makes money from advertising, then you may want to focus on numbers 1, 3, 4, or 5. If you have an email address, then you can message them in the future about new articles. If they read what is already on your site, they will see the quality of your journalism and want to know more. If they comment on an article, then they will be more apt to come back, especially if others respond to them. If they share your article on Twitter, then it will get you more readers. All of these goals lead to eyeballs that will make you more money with advertisers. A different product will have entirely different goals.
It is also important to recognize that the fewer goals you have, the more likely you are to achieve them. If you have 5 activation goals, then it’s difficult to use the tactics in this chapter to achieve any of them effectively. At a minimum, for a given section of your product, you should have one primary activation goal.
