Back when I was young, and we’re talking 14ish, the family when on an RV trip to Colorado to visit my Grandad. During the trip, we took a day to venture up into the remote hills for some one-on-one time with nature. It was a impromptu hiking slash fishing trip, and it was the first time I can remember having ever fished.
Make no mistakes, if you ever get the chance to leave technology behind and venture off into nature for some stream fishing I would highly recommend it. This particular fishing trip resulted in disaster in the form of a broken bone. Needless to say, sometimes it’s easier to get your feet wet in the stream than attempting to cross atop the algae covered rocks. Just saying.
What the heck does this have to do with generating traffic, and why am I telling you this? Maybe it’s the broken bone or perhaps the 3 hour drive through winding roads in a 29 foot RV at “more than the recommended” speeds (thanks Dad) on my way to the hospital … but the memory is always there.
As we always replay things in our minds, there have been many times I’ve wished the outcome was different on that trip, and it’s a lesson that ties into traffic generation that hopefully you’ll never forget. You’ve got the mental image of a teenage boy crossing a stream (probably no wider than 20 feet) and doing his best to stay on top of the rocks as he makes his way across. You can picture this, right?
Any guess as to why I was crossing the stream?
While it’s never clear as to what’s going on in the mind of a teenager, this circumstance was pretty straightforward, I was moving to get in a better position to hopefully catch some fish. By no means an expert, even at 14ish I could see the fast and slow parts of the stream, and wanted to get in the best possible position to attract fish with my bait (and hook).
It’s so simple, isn’t it?
Imagine now, if only for a moment, what you think the outcome would have been if instead of repositioning myself to the best spot of the stream, I just stood on the side and tossed my line into the water. Sure, maybe I wouldn’t have broken an arm (which healed perfectly fine, thank you) but I would have also had far less of a chance of catching any fish.
Oh – want the kicker? I did catch something that trip. After slipping, cracking my bone on the rock as I fell, my rod lay amidst the rocks with the bait & hook dangling in the water. As family rushed to help, the rod continued to lay there, and sometime while we all stood ashore examining the damage, a fish took the bait and hooked himself in the process.
The internet is just one gigantic stream of activity. If you think of it as anything else, you’re doing a disservice to yourself (and your business).
One of the most common questions I’ve gotten after years as a marketer is the request for traffic to be generated to a client’s website. I’m not saying that it’s not possible to generate traffic to a website, but I want you to think about the stream for a moment.
First, what do you think the chances of catching something would have been if I didn’t move to get into the flow of the existing traffic? It’s the same with the web and driving traffic to your site. You need to find where the traffic currently exists if you hope to attract any of it to your site.
That’s why social media is so popular.
These sites (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest) have a massive amount of traffic, so putting yourself in position to at least capture even just a small portion of this traffic makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? This point seems pretty basic, but the number of times I’ve seen business believe that they can create a stream of traffic to their site is too high to count.
In fact, I’d be willing to bet that you started reading this in hopes of finding out how you could create a stream of traffic to your site … is that wrong?
Fear not, there’s still more for you to find out, and even though I might discourage the idea of generating a stream of traffic to your site (well, initially at least) there are some really effective ways to get people to come … in astounding numbers … to your website.
Now that you have this image of a younger me in the remote parts of Colorado fishing (or attempting to do so) in a stream and breaking his arm I can make my point. The web and all it’s traffic is very similar to that mountain stream. Of course, I didn’t know or care about this at the time, but it’s been the perfect imagery in hindsight.
There’s already traffic on the internet, and more of it than you can imagine. Dangling your fish-hook into the stream with your bait (your ads) is how you’re fishing for business. It makes sense, that to increase your chances of hooking something (or someone) you visit an area of the stream where there’s most likely to be fish.
Back when I was on this fishing trip, I took advice from my Grandad who guided me to the parts of the stream that had a good current and some depth. Knowing virtually nothing about fishing, he said that was the best spot for me to be at, and it’s where my chances were the highest for catching fish. Not knowing any better, then or now, that’s where I attempted to go.
Think of your website as a small pebble mixing among the rest of the makings of a mountain stream. It’s arrogant to think that your website (or pebble) will attract a majority of the flow of the stream, not to mention the fish or creatures living in it.
But, it’s what you’ve got, so you work with it.
No more analogies, my point has been made. Here’s how you create traffic to your site leveraging what you’ve hopefully learned. Find the parts of the web that have an immense amount of traffic and dangle your hook there.
- YouTube
- Amazon
These are just a few of the most visited sites, I’m sure you’ve heard of them and probably even use them yourself. Better yet, there’s even likely sites that are popular in your industry or niche. If someone were to ask who the biggest company in your industry is, what would your answer be? Do you think you’d be able to find some ‘fish’ from the traffic they already get?
But hey, in order to get visibility on these big sites, I have to pay money to them! Of course you do! And it’s money well spent considering you’re going to be spending money on your website anyway. If you were thinking that you’d be able to create, run, promote, and close business all by yourself, you’re just plain nuts (or superhuman). At some point, you’re going to pay someone money for online advertising so you had best prepare for it and make the most out of it.
One of the first things businesses want to spend money on is traffic. In fact, after 15 years of marketing, sometimes it’s the ONLY thing they want to spend money on (which isn’t a good thing).
There are tons of marketers trying to get your business, and I’m sure some of them would adamantly disagree with this idea, so let me support it with some facts so you have a better idea of why I’m telling you to do this.
For starters, you have to have traffic to your site if you hope to have it generate sales. If nobody visits your site, then there’s no hope of anyone converting into a customer, right? Everyone follow that logic?
I’ve spent a great deal of time developing both basic and advanced sales funnels before starting to drive traffic to a site and you know what happens every time without exception? Unless your business model pays you for each website visitor, getting traffic to your site is simply the very first step of a multi-step process.
There are going to be plenty of other articles here on the blog that will take you through these concepts at a slower pace, but for now I’d like to stay focused on generating traffic.
For argument’s sake, let us pretend that you agree so far with what I’m saying and that it was your intent all along to drive traffic to your site using social media, paid ads (like PPC), email marketing and whatever else you could think of.
Some marketers might stress to you that it’s the copy or design of your ads which could make or break your success. Others might will surely disagree, and argue that it depends on where you’re advertising and the quality of traffic from that source that would be a determining factor of success or failure. Then again, maybe it’s neither of those things and the profitability of the campaign comes down to the page that you’re sending traffic to (and it’s design and/or copy).
In reality – it’s all of them.
And it’s not just those factors that determine the ‘heros’ or the ‘zeros’ in my opinion, but instead comes down to who’s done their homework the best. Yes, we’re adults and we don’t have homework anymore (unless it’s our kids’) but everyone knows exactly what I mean by that.
Would or do you conduct yourself differently when you’re at a black tie event as opposed to being beachside in a swimsuit? Of course – it’s only natural and I’m aware that there are some exceptions to this analogy.
When it comes to your marketing, everything needs to integrate together for a seamless experience. You need to know, without a doubt, who you’re going to be talking to and how to speak to them. Gone are the days of creating messages that might appeal to the masses, now the winners are those who have so accurately identified their audience that when they interact with them (be it ads, pages on the website, or emails) the conversation is fluid and speaks directly to those people.
Only the most dedicated and determined will win here, sometimes it isn’t easy (or cheap) to find out the goodies about your audience… but when you do you’ll be hard pressed to keep up with the success. I’m a big fan of giving examples so here we go…
Most businesses have an idea of who is in their target audience. When I ask the question of our clients, this is the typical kind of information I get back:
Gender, age, geography, income, married or not, kids or not, the industry of work they might be in, etc. Don’t get me wrong, all of this information helps and having it sure beats guessing. My challenge is to find out the details that your competition doesn’t know about.
What kind of buyers are they? Do they buy luxury items or are they thrifty? Do they ever gamble? What is their overall energy level? Do they read? What do they read (and how often)? What shows do they watch (or movies)? Are they brand loyal, and if they are, to what brands?
Knowing that your audience is male and not female helps a lot, there’s no question to that.
However, if you also knew that your male audience loved buying luxury items (like automobiles), had a high level of energy (played sports, took vacations, etc) and also loved the television shows Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, would that give you a significant advantage over others who are advertising to the same audience?
Absolutely and without doubt.
I promise that we’re rounding the corner on how this translates into generating traffic – stick with me for just a few more seconds.
Those insights into your audience’s lives are goldmines. They tell you how they might think, what they enjoy and potentially find funny, and they also tell you secrets on how to talk with them if you want their attention.
Both of those shows are suspenseful, so you might want to add a little suspense to your copy. It doesn’t have to obvious that you know information about them – don’t come off as creepy by saying “TV SHOW fans love our ‘product’” – that’s weak and I’ll venture to say that anyone who’s made it this far into the article isn’t weak.
Perhaps you find out that they enjoy sarcasm, or humor, or maybe you find out they don’t. The point is, this is how you stand out from the other competitors in your space. This is how you use the right kind of ‘bait’ and ‘hook’ for your audience. In order to catch them, you need to know them.
Earlier I talked about the ‘major’ sources of traffic on the web, and I want you to remember them once you’ve had time to dial in your understanding of your audience. Some of you might take the time to do more research and apply the knowledge to your ad copy, your landing page copy, and even your email copy. If you do, you’ll be well on your way to building a successful campaign.