Generating Traffic
Every business needs to generate traffic. That’s how you get more people to join your list and how you make more sales.
The trouble is, getting traffic seems so daunting. You may have tried dozens of things before and have found that nothing works.
The trick is that you have to be consistent. Not a day should go by in your business that you don’t work on driving traffic in some form.
I think it’s ideal to use a variety of different traffic sources. Drive paid traffic, article traffic, search engine traffic, social media traffic, and so on.
It’s very helpful for you to create your own traffic-getting system that you can follow every day. Even if you spend just an hour on traffic a day, you’ll be knocking it out of the park compared to what you’re doing right now.
There are so many different things you can be doing on a rotating basis. You can drive article traffic, search engine traffic, Facebook traffic, Amazon book traffic, paid Facebook ads, paid Google ads, affiliate traffic, other social traffic, and so much more.
I’m going to share a sample traffic system and checklists you can put to use right away. Feel free to add your own steps to this list to truly make it your own. It’s not important that you use all of these methods of generating traffic— the only important thing is that you follow through, do what works for you, and do it on a daily basis.
Here’s a sample system you can use:
- Article traffic
- Research popular, frequently shared articles in your niche
- Take notes on what’s popular
- Take notes on where these articles tend to be shared
- Seek guest posting/article posting opportunities on established sites
- Submit articles to niche newsletters
- Consider posting articles in relevant, popular article directories
- Release new articles consistently over time. Direct article traffic to your squeeze page
- Search engine traffic
- Do keyword research for terms related to your niche using the Google Adwords keyword tool
- Search Google for your desired search terms
- Take notes on what’s ranking most highly
- Write articles/blog posts related to popular terms
- Consistently post new content
- Work on getting an active following on your site
- Work on getting a variety of natural links to your sites
- Work on directing social media traffic to your site
- Work on building a site of authority
- Know that ranking well via SEO is more of a long term strategy
- Have opt in forms on all pages of your site so people sign up to your list
- Facebook group traffic
- Research popular groups in your niche
- Come up with an idea people will love for your own group
- Start your group
- Change its settings and description
- Work to drive traffic to your group
- Be present and active daily to run discussions
- Be active in answering questions
- Build relationships with people who join your group
- Drive people to your list via your Facebook group
- Facebook page traffic
- Research popular Facebook pages in your niche
- Come up with an idea for a Facebook page people will naturally “like”
- Consider also starting a Facebook page that’s simply named for your business
- Post relevant, interesting information
- Create shareable images
- Create shareable content
- Be present
- Be helpful
- Optimize your settings
- Link to your website from your Facebook page
- Amazon Kindle book traffic
- Write relevant, interesting books the people in your niche can get excited about
- Research related books that are already published on Amazon
- Take notes on what might be popular/rank well (a lower ranking on Amazon is better) for you
- Put a link to a freebie sign up in your book— make it so it’s visible from the “look inside” feature (so even people who don’t go on to buy the book can get your freebie)
- Put a link to the freebie at the end of the book as well to remind people to grab their freebie— include enticing text so they’ll be more likely to do so
- Work on getting many books up on Kindle— they can act as lead generators
- Paid Facebook ads
- Pay attention to the ads that are displayed in your Facebook account
- Take notes on what stands out to you
- Read Facebook’s tutorials and help pages on running paid ads
- Create an ad
- Set a small budget for your first ad
- Link to your squeeze page or your relevant, interesting Facebook page (one that’s interesting for your niche as a whole, even those who don’t yet know what your business is)
- Test and tweak your ads over time so you pay less and get higher conversions
- Paid Google ads
- Search Google for desired keywords related to the topic of your squeeze page
- Pay attention to the ads that are displayed first and that grab your attention
- Sign in to Google Adwords
- Set a low daily budget to start with
- Test different ad variations and keywords to bid on
- Drive traffic to your squeeze page
- Make sure the ad copy, keyword, and text of the squeeze page are all highly related
- Test and tweak your ads over time so you pay less and get higher conversions
- Affiliate traffic
- Seek out and take notes on the top affiliates related to your topic
- Take note of which products they have out themselves
- Take note of which products they promote
- Make sure you have a great offer they’d be interested in mailing out
- Work to establish a relationship with these top affiliates.
- Work out a special deal for them— a larger parentage of the sale, for example
- Make sure sales of your product are tied to your list— every customer should be added to your list
- Have affiliates mail out for you so you get more names on your email list. These names can become lifelong customers, worth far more than what you’re paying out to the affiliate.
- Get dozens of active affiliates promoting for you and you could have all the traffic you need
- Other social traffic
- Take note of where the people of your niche tend to hang out the most
- Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Tumblr are all options to look into
- If members of your niche are very active on these sites, then you should develop a presence there
- Check in on social media regularly
- Use these sites to showcase your expertise
- Use these sites to establish relationships with the people of your niche as well as potential partners
- Drive social traffic to your squeeze page
- Becoming Known As a Go-To Expert
- If you’re the go-to expert in a niche, you’ll naturally get traffic because people will seek you out left and right
- Be present wherever the people of your niche are present en masse
- Spread your content far and wide
- Wherever people go to research your topic, they should find you
- Use every traffic generation attempt as a way to drive traffic to your squeeze page to get people to sign up for your list
- Work to become a top authority
- Be helpful wherever and however you can
- Share your thoughts and feelings on hot topics… even if it’s controversial to do so
As you can see, it really isn’t hard at all to come up with fantastic checklists and systems for yourself. You can easily add to and adjust the checklists I’ve given you here.
Create step-by-steps for yourself. That way you can do this, then that when it comes to generating a lot of great traffic.
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