Tag Archives: website 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?

Crank Up the Heat: Traffic Temperature 101

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We all know that in marketing, we have the best chance of success when we can put the right message, in front of the right audience at the right time.

Understanding traffic temperature will help us craft that perfect message.

TRAFFIC TEMPERATURE is basically a way that we can categorize different traffic sources and the relationship that we have with the prospects from those sources.

You’ve probably heard people talk about warm leads or cold leads…this is basically the same thing.

Traffic temperature comes in three stages;

  • Cold Traffic
  • Warm Traffic
  • Hot Traffic

Our ultimate goal is to try and get as much hot traffic as possible so let’s start there and work our way backwards.

HOT TRAFFIC

These are people that know who we are, know what we do and we already have some sort of relationship with them. These are our customers – the folks on our email list.

What do we know?

  • This is traffic we own
  • The relationship is built
  • They know, like and trust us
  • We have direct access – meaning we can reach out to them anytime we want
  • It costs us no extra cash to contact them

What does this look like?

When I was signing people up for one of our training webinars – the first thing I did was notify the people on my email list. These people know me and the quality of the work we do, so the messaging was really simple …

“Hey Joe – Mike here from Black Dog. Hey long time no chat – hope things are well with you. We’ve been slammed for the past few months turning our internal client attraction methods into a reproducible process and we’re going to be teaching it next week on a LIVE webinar … you need to check this out.”

It’s like a message from a friend.

WARM TRAFFIC

These are people that know who we are and have checked us out. Maybe they read some of our blog posts or skimmed by the site, but they aren’t customers and haven’t been added to our list yet.

What do we know?

  • This is traffic we can control
  • We have a semi-relationship
  • They know of us, but not deeply – they haven’t committed yet
  • To get more traffic, we will have to spend more money

What does this look like?

About 6 months ago we ran an expert interview series where we interviewed 9 successful pet business owners. On the backend of that series we sold a program. To fill out the series we ran Facebook ads – but instead of using my picture which would make sense, when talking to the hot traffic (because they already know me) – I talked more about the experts because the experts had more value to the audience than I did.

So they know about me but now they see that I’m associating with big-time industry leaders. It makes the offer more compelling.

COLD TRAFFIC

This is the traffic that we don’t control. We don’t know who it is, where they’re coming from or what their experience is. This is usually the worst converting traffic and we don’t have much control over how it comes to us. This is your SEO, blogging content, social media, etc.

What do we know?

  • Not much
  • We have very little control over when and where we get it
  • We don’t know anything about them
  • Our goal here is to qualify the traffic and move up the temperature scale

What does this look like?

When we were pushing the registration for the webinar, we received a lot of traffic to our site, blog posts, etc., so we tried to get users qualified as quickly as possible. We used a series of sidebar ads to lead magnets and popup windows to see what type of content the users were into.

This traffic was the lowest converting of any. That’s exactly why I’m not a huge fan of blogging and social media for small businesses. It’s too unpredictable and there are a lot of different factors that determine how much benefit you’ll get out of the work. 6-month lead time on SEO…forget it! I can create an ad in the morning and have 100 clicks by evening.

For my business … I used to pay marketing assistants to blog and do social media for me but I’ve found that I can get 10X the results by investing that money not in salary, but in traffic.

Now that you understand the three stages of traffic temperature, it is time to crank up the heat and TURN COLD TRAFFIC INTO HOT TRAFFIC ASAP!

Now It’s Your Turn

Use the comments section below and tell me how you have moved traffic up the temperature scale?

5 Free (And Totally Easy) Ways To Improve SEO

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SEO can be cruel.

Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) is necessary to market your business online. The better your SEO, the higher your website will appear in search engine ranks like Google or Bing. It’s not rocket science–more eyeballs on your website means more potential customers will call, leading to faster business growth. It’s every business owner’s dream, and it all starts with SEO.

There is no shortage of hacks, cheat sheets, and gurus with the latest secrets “that Google doesn’t want you to know about”. The truth is high search engine rank is a competitive game. Trying shady techniques to trick the system can actually hurt your SEO more than help it. But never fear! You can improve SEO with these 5 easy, free and Google friendly techniques (sorry shady gurus).

1 Create A Blog

By creating and maintaining an active blog you’ll not only be showcasing your expertise, but you’ll also be giving your website some serious SEO juice.

What can a blog do for your website?

  • Creates New Site Pages
  • Increases Social Link Sharing
  • Keeps Visitors On Site Longer
  • Interesting Content Creates Traffic

For best results understand the types of people you want to attract and what they want to see. And don’t forget to encourage visitors to share posts with their friends! The presence of social media has made link sharing extremely important to search engine rankings.

2 Share On Social Media

Many small business owners have a love/hate relationship with social media. They love that it’s a free way to market their business, but hate the time, frustration and drama it takes to build a community.

Whether you’re on team love, or waving a big foam finger for team hate, social media is essential for increasing SEO. Let’s break down why social media influences search engine rank:

  • Increased social sharing = increased credibility.
  • It’s hard to fake social sharing.
  • Google is vain and loves Google+.

In the new world of marketing, content is king. If you’re only sharing images, videos and blog posts from someone else’s website you won’t be gaining any SEO juice for yourself. So be sure to keep your ultimate online marketing goal in mind and send followers to your website whenever possible.

3 Get Involved In The Community

If you’re a local business don’t be afraid to network locally. Networking doesn’t translate to awkwardly swapping small talk with a sweaty stranger. Think of local events as a way to entertain and educate your social media and website followers. You can live tweet the event, share pictures or videos on your website, tag other attendees or even take something you learned at the event and turn it into a blog post. By getting out into the community you’ll connect with locals, create social media buzz, improve SEO and increase exposure for your business.

4 Social Bookmarking

So at this point we’ve established that an effective blog and social media presence is a match made is SEO heaven. But there is one common hiccup we need to talk about! How do you get your blog in front of NEW people without spending a fortune on Facebook ads?

We love loyal fans, but the more traffic, social sharing and backlinks you have the better off your online marketing will be. One easy solution to this problem is sharing your blog posts with the help of social bookmarking.

Social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon and even Pinterest allow business owners to add content links (blog posts, videos, etc.) to their online directories. The links can then be discovered by new people and lead to new traffic, unique page views and even more social sharing.

But be warned: not everyone is going to fall in love with your blog. The key to social bookmarking is getting seen by the right people. So take the time to research possible keywords before posting to these types of sites.

5 Support A Cause

People are drawn to passion. They want to align themselves with brands that support what they believe in. Figure out which causes you and your followers both support and then get to work! This could mean helping to promote cause efforts through blog posts or even taking up a collection for the cause on your website. Whether it’s social causes, animal welfare or helping to save the planet, share your content and help create buzz for your cause through social media. Even small scale efforts can mean helping a good cause and a healthy dose of traffic back to your site.

There’s just one catch. Your support for a cause has to be genuine. People can smell phonies from a mile away, and they will make a point to tell you about it online. Trendy causes come and go, so follow a cause that speaks to your heart.

Long Story Short

There you have it folks, 5 free and super easy ways to improve SEO. Now we want to hear from you! Which of these techniques are you already using and which need to be added to our list? Let us know in the comments below.

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