Tag Archives: traffic

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

Posted on by
Reply

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?

TRAFFIC: The Lifeblood of Your Marketing Funnel

Posted on by
Reply

Chances are, you wouldn’t spend months planning an elaborate wedding with fancy decorations, a rockin’ band, 3-tier cake and enough food to feed a village – and not invite any guests. Sounds a little senseless, right?

It would be like crafting a genius marketing campaign for your business, and not introducing it to a crowd of prospective clients. Again, pointless…  

It doesn’t matter how good our marketing plans are built – if nobody sees them, they just aren’t going to be able to do what we need them to do.

Finding some awesome traffic sources is the solution to that dilemma.

Before we get started though…lets run through a quick definition of the term traffic to make sure we’re all on the same page.

Traffic is defined as: Any and all sources, both online and offline, that can be used to get YOUR MESSAGE in front of YOUR PERFECT CLIENT.

Here’s the thing that we need to get –

TRAFFIC IS THE LIFEBLOOD OF YOUR MARKETING FUNNEL

blood
We talk about the marketing funnel all the time but if this is your first experience with it…let me give you a quick Reader’s Digest breakdown.

A marketing funnel is just a graphical representation of our visitor’s journey through our marketing process – from a Prospect, to a Lead and hopefully all the way to a Customer.

The funnel has three stages in it and each stage represents a phase of the relationship we have with our customer.

Stage 1 – Introduction and Awareness

Stage 2 – Evaluation

Stage 3 – Conversion

Right now, we’re talking about traffic and putting our message in front of our perfect customer, so we’re really focused on the top section – Stage 1 Introduction and Awareness.

There are literally thousands of different traffic sources that we could use here, but who’s got time for that? We’re all busy professionals, incapable to doing them ALL (and I know there’s probably some of you that have done this, right? Trying to be on all the social media channels – and you end up going nuts trying to keep up.) We don’t want that – what we really want to do is find a couple of really awesome traffic sources and focus our time and energy there.

SO WHAT MAKES AN AWESOME TRAFFIC SOURCE?

There are actually 2 criteria for great traffic sources.

#1. Appropriate

We need to find the traffic sources that get us in front of our perfect clients – obvious!

#2. Reproducible

We need that traffic source to be reproducible. Meaning that we can go out to this traffic source anytime we want and get more traffic.

It is #2, the reproducibility of the traffic that allows us to scale our customer acquisition up and down as need be. This is what gives us the first of two major WINS in this type of system – CONTROL.

Now that you know why it is vital to focus on traffic when building your marketing funnel, it is time to start testing which sources work best for attracting your perfect client.

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN

Use the comments section below and tell me what traffic sources have worked best for your business and why?