Tag Archives: online traffic

Get Leads to Opt-in with These Alternative Methods

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No doubt about it … landing pages will undoubtedly give you the best results when encouraging prospective customers to opt-in your lead magnet, but there are a couple of other methods that should not be overlooked.

1. Sidebar Opt-in

  • Great options inside of a blog-based website
  • Form or Graphic
  • Key is to make them stand out
  • fiverr.com or canva.com

2. In Content Opt-in

  • Many options for placement – top of content, in content, bottom of content
  • Form in page
  • Graphics that link out to landing page or popup
  • Great success with these because when they’re done right – you’re making an offer that makes sense. It’s like saying … Hey I hope you enjoyed this article about X, would you like to learn even more – check this out.
  • Great marketing is the right offer to the right people at the right time…this definitely takes advantage of the right time

3. Popup Windows

I know a lot of you aren’t fans of the popup window, but I would ask you to keep an open mind here because it’s not really about what you like…it’s about the customer and people still use these because they work.

The cool thing is, popups have been around forever but they’ve gotten more sophisticated over time. Now we can only show them once every 10 times you visit the site, or after 30 seconds on the same page, or only when you’re leaving the site.

I use what are called “exit intent” popups. My popup window only shows up under certain circumstances and only when you’re leaving the page. So when somebody moves their cursor up to the top of their browser like they’re going to either close the browser window or go to type in a new web address, then the popup shows up and is like … Hey!!! Before you go, don’t forget your free gift!

Again, I am very non-aggressive with these and I’ve seen conversion rates from 7.5% all the way up to 13%. That’s 13% of the people that are leaving my site stop and give me their email address.

Here are some links to some Opt-in Software Programs:

There you go. Now you know some alternative opt-in methods that I recommend you play with – test them out and see which ones work for you.

If you’re generating the right type of traffic you don’t want to let these people slip through your fingers so easily. You’ve already done the hard part of getting them on your website…now you just have to offer them your free cool stuff. Who doesn’t like that?

Now It’s Your Turn

Use the comments section below and tell me what opt-in methods have you tried?

Increase Your Traffic by 700%+ with this One Simple Strategy

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If you’ve followed me for any amount of time you’ve likely heard me say that I’m not a fan of blogging for many small businesses.

There’s quite a few reasons for that but the largest is the amount of time and energy it takes to start to see consistent results.

In my experience from the past 18+ years of working with small business owners, blogging is something you may hear about at an event or some guru somewhere talks about how awesome it is to get all this free traffic and BOOM – your engaged.

What they don’t tell you is how hard it is.

It’s not just about throwing your opinions out into the webosphere and then you are suddenly deluged with copious amounts of free traffic.

You have to craft great content, you have to do it consistently and you have to get as much traffic on those posts as possible.

I actually stopped blogging for a few years and let the person go that was doing it for me because we weren’t seeing any results from it.

We’d craft this blog, put it on our Facebook page and there would be a slight bump in traffic and then within 48 hours our site traffic was flatlining again.

After 6 months of this I gave up. I shifted the revenue from that marketing assistance into paid advertising and overnight we were creating leads – I didn’t look back until about a year ago.

One of my goals for 2016 is to get on more stages and do more speaking engagements. This type of exposure and credibility goes a long way when you have training programs like I do, so I hired a coach that had a lot of experience with speaking and the first thing she said – you have to write. Blog posts, articles, books, etc. Those are all credibility builders. So initially, I was like… ughh, what a waste of time and then in my typical fashion, I nerd out on it a bit and see how can I make the best of this situation. That’s when I came up with VERSION 1 of my content distribution strategy.

So here’s the problem – most people that create content will write a post on their blog, maybe share it on twitter or Facebook and that’s it. At the end of the day, the post gets very little exposure, no comments or engagement and the site traffic doesn’t really do much. A little blip – but noting impressive.

I’m paying my coach a LOT of money so I’m definitely going to take her advice because she’s already been where I want to be. BUT, because I’m me, I’m going to try and hack it to see how I can get maximum exposure for my efforts so here’s what I did.

I know from experience that people aren’t going to come by my site looking for my latest and greatest blog post no matter how awesome it is, so I have to get proactive in pushing it out into the web. I have to put the content where the customers are.

I also know that if I get too aggressive it could have negative repercussions so the goal is to physically push out this content as much as I can, and still be “cool” with everybody.

Step 1: Make a list of all the different platforms that I want to show up on.

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Linked In
  • Pinterest
  • Google +

Step 2: For each platform identify where my perfect customers were hanging out.

  • Facebook pages
  • LinkedIn Groups
  • Twitter feeds
  • Pinterest boards

Step 3: Create the distribution calendar based on a few different “rules”.

  1. I know I can post to twitter multiple times per week and be OK.
  2. I know in LinkedIn groups that are similar, many of my people may belong to the same group so to not look spammy, I post to similar groups on opposite ends of the week.
  3. I have multiple Facebook pages for different businesses so I post the content on different pages in different weeks.
  4. At the end of the week, once I’m done pushing it out, I know the content has a very short shelf life so I added it to a scheduling software so that my old blog posts and content will be recycled.

Step 4: Do it yourself.

You have to do it yourself because you may get some pushback. Some LinkedIn group owners may post your stuff as promotional so make sure you reach out to the group admins if that happens.

Step 5: Hire a Virtual Assistant to do it for you

  • 1.5 hours per week

Step #6: Integrate paid ads to drive traffic to content to expand reach and remain relevant.

This is my content distribution schedule:

Monday

  • Publish post on blog
  • Linked in niche 1
  • Linked in local 1

Tuesday

  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Facebook – Page 1

Wednesday

  • LinkedIn – publish on LinkedIn
  • LinkedIn Niche 2
  • LinkedIn local 2
  • Facebook – Page 2

Thursday

  • Email to list
  • Twitter
  • PAID TRAFFIC

Friday

  • LinkedIn local #3
  • Linked in Niche 3
  • Google +
  • Schedule in Edgar – extend liveliness

Creating great content and having a distribution strategy that puts it in front of your customers where they are hanging out, can increase your traffic by 700%+. Try it!

Now It’s Your Turn

Use the comments section below and tell me how have you been distributing your content successfully?

Free vs. Paid Traffic – Which will Work for Your Business?

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Traffic is ANY and ALL sources, both online and offline, that can be used to get your message in front of your perfect client.

Some examples of Online sources:

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Email marketing
  • Snapchat
  • Craigslist

Some examples of Offline sources:

  • Networking events
  • Door hangers
  • Flyers
  • Business cards
  • Ads in the local paper

 
Personally, I use both, BUT focus more online because for me, my business model is based on larger numbers. I’m not a local business, I serve people all over the world.

The two criteria that make a great traffic source:

  • Appropriate
  • Reproducible

OK, so that’s online vs. offline – now let’s talk a little bit about paid vs. free traffic.

I feel like the difference between the two is pretty self-explanatory but there is a time and place for each.

Most folks are drawn to free traffic (also known as organic) because the idea of getting something for free is appealing. My momma didn’t raise any dummies – if it’s free I’ll take two.

And when a lot of people start professionally marketing their businesses like we’re doing – their budgets are small or even non-existent, so that fits the bill.

Here’s the problem … it’s hard to get free traffic in any reasonable amount.

  • It takes lot of time to create the content.
  • It takes a lot of skill to properly SEO the content to make sure it gets seen and to monitor it when search engines make updates to their algorithms.
  • For most local businesses – it can take months to even start to see the results of your daily or weekly blogging.

The businesses that do really well with SEO are usually mid-sized businesses that can afford to have content creators on staff that aren’t worried about generating immediate revenue.

This is why I typically veer more towards paid traffic. With paid traffic I have:

  • Better control over who I target – keywords, interests, likes.
  • It’s faster – I can get results in 24 hours.
  • I can adjust my campaigns and budgets on the fly.
  • Can get started for as little as $5/day.

I totally understand the draw of the free traffic, but it fails both of our tests for great traffic sources.

So here’s the way most folks scale up their traffic:

  1. Organic traffic sources while you’re testing out your funnel.
  2. When you are happy – bump up the organic reach with the content distribution model -The additional investment here is time.
  3. When you’re happy with that – start to mix in some paid ads.

Now It’s Your Turn

Use the comments section below and tell me which traffic sources have been the biggest success for your business?