The holy grail of internet business is free traffic, yet it’s also an elusive, secret thing that most people can’t find.
Let’s take a dive in and take a good look at what each one is and how to get it. Then, we’ll go over why you want to aim for both.
Free Traffic.
Free traffic is usually based around content. Video content. Audio content. Written content.
The best place to start when figuring out what content your audience wants is to look at places they talk about the topics related to what you sell.
If you sold cloth diapers, you’d want to find parents that have “hippie” tendencies. This Facebook page would be a great source of content ideas.
What you’re looking for are places where people will talk to each other. As of right now, you’d be focused on a Facebook page or group. Certain Instagram accounts would be worth following, too. It all depends on the problems your products or services solve.
Now, that you have an idea of what to talk about, you want to make sure you’re targeting properly. To do this, you’ll want to do some keyword research. How you decide to do that is completely up to you, but the Google Keyword Planner works as well as many paid tools and it’s free to use for anyone with an Adwords account.
The secret to finding the right keywords is to start at the easiest place you can. You’re going to want to focus on keyword phrases with little competition. Once you rank for those, you can start targeting more competitive ones. Be patient because it can take quite awhile before your website generates enough authority to rank well.
The single biggest benefit with free traffic is that it comes no matter what you do as long as you set it up properly.
There are non-content related ways to generate free traffic, but they’re generally going to be even harder than simply producing content on a site you own.
Infiltrating an existing community is harder than crushing a diamond with your fingers. There is an existing group of authority figures in any community and they will do everything in their power to prevent you from gaining authority in their group.
An alternative is to record your content as a YouTube video and build a channel there. Just keep in mind that you’re already going to have competition there. If you follow the basic idea of targeting less competitive phrases, you can still gain traffic in most markets.
Paid Traffic
Paid traffic is amazing when done right. You post an ad and hope that you make more than you spend. If you make more than you spend, you spend more to make more.
It’s a glorious moment the first time it happens and there is no greater win when it comes to your business.
Yet, there’s a catch. The sales only come if you’re still paying for the ads.
Even then, some ads have a half-life. They’ll only work for awhile.
Others can stop working when the audience changes or evolves.
When it comes to advertising, you’re starting in a gambler’s position.
“If I spend this $200 and make X amount of sales, I’ll make X amount of money.
Then, I just have to take a portion of the sales and spend that on more traffic.
Rinse, wash, and repeat. I win.”
Keep in mind that it doesn’t always work out that way.
The key to advertising is to understand all of the involved variables.
When you run solo ads, you have to consider the list, the email, the subject line, and the landing page.
With Facebook ads, you have to think about the interests, the headline, the ad copy, and the landing page.
One ad or email my perform really well to one list or interest and get zero response with another.
This is why any advertiser checks their data a few times per day. They watch weekly results to see if there are times when their ads shouldn’t run. The look for new traffic sources to keep sales inbound if one advertising platform dries up or shuts down.
When it comes to advertising, if you’re not optimizing, you’re waiting for failure.
Watch. Measure. Test.
Make adjustments based upon the results you get.
The reason you need both.
Advertising results stop when you stop paying while free content based traffic will continue for as long as the content is relevant.
What this means to us is that we should advertise for instant traffic, leads, and sales while we build up our content to drive continued traffic.
What do you do when the content starts driving in sales? Keep advertising.
No matter how good your content is, you’ll never reach 100% of your audience with search engine rankings. Advertising gives you the power to reach more of your audience.
When it comes to advertising, the more variables you have the higher chance you have of failure.
At TrafficForMe, we take most of the variables away. Give us your landing page URL and choose a market. As long as what you have suits the market, you’ll get new leads.
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