by Lamar Tyler
Lamar Tyler, host of Traffic and Profit – a three day event held annually in Atlanta, GA, hosted a #ContentCrash in my private Facebook group. He shared lots of actionable content to show you how to get more traffic to your website. You’ll be excited to know he maps out a simple, traffic-getting strategy you can readily tap into at any stage of your business. This guest blog post is crafted from his #ContentCrash.
Let’s talk traffic – the type of traffic that makes you money.
I know you want to know how to get traffic?
How to grow traffic?
And, how to sell products and services without traffic?
I hate to tell you but it is impossible to sell your products and services without traffic. You have to have traffic in order to get your services or products in front of your ideal client.
When I talk about traffic with my clients, the first thing we figure out is which type of traffic are we going to focus on? Are we looking at driving traffic to their website or sending traffic to their businesses.
That means, using three methods…
The 1st method is Organic Traffic.
Organic traffic is basically you handing out business cards, kissing babies and getting your audience to notice you. You’re basically introducing yourself and saying, “Hey world, here I am online.” It consists of social media, email marketing, Word of Mouth, blogging, content marketing and more. It allows you to build a tribe. People who know you, know your voice and they want to hear what you have to say. With this type of strategy, your goal is getting your markets attention and then getting them to tell their friends about you and how wonderful your products and services are. This is the best method because you need people in your corner that have your back.
The bad part about organic traffic is that it is very, very slow. And, in the fast-paced world of online marketing, this could potentially hurt your business by you getting left behind.
The 2nd method is Partnership.
This could consist of joint ventures or content partnerships where you share traffic by posting on one another’s page or sharing your email list with your products or services. The goal is to find people who have an audience that is in your demographic. That means you need to know who you serve and why. So, instead of growing your business slowly with organic traffic, you can approach a specific person or company, who has already done the legwork and who has a huge following and you want to collaborate with them in sharing content.
Look, I want you to understand that you are asking this person to give up communicating with their tribe to share your content. That means, they are removing their own content that they know works with their tribe to post yours. So, before approaching this partnership, make sure you have something to offer not just their tribe but them.
Why should they give up money out of their pocket to put it in yours?
Make sure you are approaching this strategy with the mindset that this person or company is looking at this as “what’s in it for me?” He or she wants to know, “What am I getting out of this?”
Have the answer to those questions already in your email or scheduled call before even approaching them. It has to be a win-win for everyone in order for this strategy to work.
The 3rd method is Paid Traffic.
Of course, Facebook ads are number one in the strategic way of getting traffic, but don’t forget about a pinnable post on Pinterest, Twitter ads or Google AdWords. The beautiful part about paid traffic is, you can send as many people to your site as you can afford. This is the fastest and most costly way to getting traffic.
Understand that there is a downside to paid traffic because of the learning curve in running ads. You are taking a risk with your money. A good friend of mine, Chris Davis with Active Campaign, spoke at an event that I host called Traffic Sales and Profit live every June here in Atlanta. When Chris spoke at the event last year, he said, “When you do paid traffic, it is like pouring gasoline on your business. So if your business is going well, awesome it takes off and the clients start rolling in. But if you are doing bad, guess what… it is the opposite. It gets worst – quicker.”
Basically, you’re gambling with your money. The key with paid traffic is knowing your audience is.
If you can do those things, then paid traffic can do amazing things for your business. Before running paid traffic on any platform make sure you again, know your audience, cost, & metrics and the numbers behind your ad, because things could look great on the surface as if you are making money but in actuality, you are losing money. It is best to know your cost all the way through the funnel.
An easier way to remember these strategies is that they all begin with the letter B:
- Build: Organic growth the simple is to “build” traffic.
- Borrow: Joint ventures or content partnership is to “borrow”.
- Buy: This is the Facebook ads which show you how to “Buy” traffic.
On another note: Make sure you have multiple ways to connect with your audience. Get them off the social media platforms and onto your own real estate.
When setting up a strategy for your business, another key thing to remember is to make sure all your eggs are NOT in one basket. When Facebook pretty much shut down organic reach and growth on their platform, entrepreneurs were forced to think about how to stay contacted with their audience. It is imperative to have other avenues in place with connecting with your audience. This could be an email list, Google search, newsletter or SMS/mobile text.
Analytics in boosting traffic
Ask yourself, what are people coming to me for? What content is working? People don’t reinvent the wheel. Use what is working. Be a copycat. I am the guru of copying my own content. Why not, I already know it works.
Let’s say I posted something in 2015, heck 2014 and it drove a lot of traffic to my blog, or website (wherever it was going at the time). I would take that same content, tweak it for 2017, maybe change out the image, tweak a few words and set up an Facebook ad that will lead my targeted audience to a free offer and then to my website. I can do this for high clicks with low cost to Facebook because I already know the post works so when setting that same post to an evergreen funnel will quickly get your business in front of new eyes. Your analytics will tell you what worked back then so use what you already know.
Make it easy for visitors to find information
When sending traffic to your site, make it easy for your customers to find what they are looking for. If I set up a lead magnet about infidelity and someone interested in that gets to my site and they have to search for that article, I have already lost them.
That is why I have segmented articles on my Black and Married with Kids website by topic. So, if I brought you to my site based on infidelity, I want to take you directly to that article. I don’t want my customers having to search to find that article.
I do the same thing if a single woman comes to the site and she could care less about infidelity but wants to read up on dating with kids. She can see the categories that pertain to that topic easily on the site and go straight to that topic.
Remember these traffic basics:
- To get more traffic you will need to put together the type of strategy that works best for your business and you first do this by knowing your audience.
- Once you know your audience, everything else is trial and error. And, that is okay because what works today may not work tomorrow.
To learn more about me and talk “traffic,” join my Facebook group.
Lamar Tyler
Lamar Tyler, creator of Traffic Sales & Profit is probably one of the hardest working digital influencers in the game. He lives his life by the motto: Passion, Purpose, and Profit, and it has never steered him wrong. This life-work hustle creed has taken his company Tyler New Media and his blog Black and Married with Kids (BMWK) from being a small personal blog to an international brand with paying customers across the globe. This life-work hustle creed has taken the business from making “no figures” to grossing over seven-figures. He's a sought-after speaker and digital mentor who serves clients, internationally.
