Paid Traffic Strategies for Online Marketing
The strategy that you choose to implement in your marketing can be considered the one thing that’s going to bring you a return on investment. Some don’t implement a strategy and that’s why they fail at marketing. Others don’t know how to create a strategy. That is the main reason I am writing this post. There are many different kinds of paid traffic strategies but I am going to focus on the basics, the bare bones strategies that apply to most small businesses with an online presence.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search traffic is the highest quality traffic you can get. The reason being that what people type into the search engines is what’s on their mind at that moment. If you could align your offer to those keywords then you will capitalize. I stress being congruent with what people are searching for because one too many times I have searched for something online and the top three results do not have what I’m looking for. That’s some huge missed opportunities for those companies so don’t make the same mistake.
Now, depending on whether or not you have a brick & mortar storefront or are based solely online your strategy will be different. Small businesses with a physical storefront will place emphasis on local SEO and SEM strategies to make sure they are appearing in map searches and directory/review apps like Yelp for example.
One option is paying reputable companies that can do both SEO & SEM with a strategic approach. For example, there are so many people doing paid search engine campaigns out there and this has caused the bid for keywords to rise consistently in the past decade. See the infographic below for details.
Search Engine Optimization & Search Engine Marketing Cost-Per-Click Rising
Cost per click is important because it’s directly related to your advertising budget. Some companies may think the more people they target with more expensive keywords will bring more sales. This is wrong. The only thing they’ll get is a lot of traffic at a high price tag. What they should be going for is the less targeted, less competitive and not so obvious keywords. These keywords are proven to bring laser-targeted traffic on a long-term basis. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bid on higher keywords it means you should spread your focus a little. Especially if just starting out go for lower bids (not too low, want at least 50 searches monthly). For more on starting your first PPC campaign right click here.
A must use tool when doing search engine campaigns is the Moz toolbar. This toolbar shows you the domain authority of a website as well as the page authority for each individual page. This is important especially if you’re competing against another company using the same keyword. You can use tools like these to spy on your competition and see if it’s worth going after a certain keyword. If their domain authority is really high, above 60 let’s say and yours is just at 1 then wait before you target the same keywords. Another free tool is Google Keyword Planner and, some paid ones are Long Tail Pro and Hittail.
Blogging
“There are tons of different factors that go into ranking well, but the biggest is high-quality content.” – David Sinick
This is where you can build long-term raving fan base and therefore, my favorite of the all the traffic strategies. According to HubSpot companies who blog receive 97% more links to their website. Backlinks will drive traffic to your site like crazy. The backlink king Brian Dean can tell you why.
Blogging is largely based on content marketing and really depends on the value you provide with your blog because, there are hundreds of millions of blogs out there so how will yours stand out?
If you’re asking how does blogging fall into a paid traffic strategies post then here’s your answer. Well the truth is blogging is entirely free but costs you your time, which has value. You should put a value on your time. For example, if you get paid $25/hr and spent 3 hours writing that blog post then it cost you $75. If you were to outsource that article, lets say 500 words for $25-30 then it’ll be worth the time saved.
There’s a great course by Internet Marketer Matt Lloyd called The O.P.T. Formula (Other People’s Time), that reveals how you can leverage other people’s time. He explains how you have to focus on the more expensive tasks in your business and outsource the others that pay less.
Lets say copywriting costs you a few hundred dollars per hour. Then it would make sense, especially when starting out, to focus on learning how to be a good copywriter instead of creating blog posts every few days. Unless of course if you have a few thousand to shell out for a good copywriter. You can outsource the blog posting at $50 per article to really leverage your time. Some sites where you can get some really high-quality articles for these prices are ProBlogger Job Board and Upwork.
Copywriting is expensive and if you don’t have thousands of dollars laying around for a good optin page or sales page you may want to learn this invaluable skill on your own time. The time spent reading and practicing copywriting will be well worth it instead of writing blog posts. You can even post copywriting examples you’re working on as a separate category on your blog. By outsourcing blog articles and creating some yourself you’ll be creating twice as much content as you would alone.
Social Media Platforms
There are several social media networks that have really ramped up their paid traffic efforts. We now have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and even YouTube PPC. For the scope of this article I will not talk about all of these platforms but will talk about them in a general sense.
Doing paid traffic on social media can be very lucrative, if done correctly. If you don’t do it correctly then you will spend hundreds and even thousands of dollars with no return on investment (ROI). There are several ways of doing pay-per-click campaigns to generate conversions on social media.
There’s a great case study on the new product Uwheels (you may have seen it around it’s pretty popular now). What this company did is target Instagram users with a lot of followers that weren’t really monetizing their account. Uwheels offered them their product for free (plus payment I believe) if they would promote it on their account and, it looked something like this:
The bottom line was that this was massive social proof and brought them a ton of sales. They only invested about $61K and made a ROI of over $1 million. See Neil Patel’s awesome post for more on Instagram advertising. That is one great way of doing paid traffic on Instagram. Remember there’s never only one way of doing something even if someone tells you so. Be creative in your efforts and think of unconventional ways of how you can leverage social proof especially when paying for the traffic.
When setting up your PPC campaigns on social media platforms remember that most people go to social media sites to socialize not to buy. This doesn’t mean they won’t buy though. It means that your advertisement can’t be an interruption; it needs to be seamlessly integrated into the way a particular platform is made to work. I have a previous post on how to increase Facebook engagement with PPC.
Another approach is using automation software. There are several of these as well. I have another post that explains more about increasing your social media influence where I mention some of the best automation software.
Email Marketing
Email is the way you follow-up with your prospects and begin to build a relationship with them. It is necessary to use email marketing in your business because this will bring your prospects to like and trust you. The way to get started in email marketing is to get an autoresponder and write a series of follow-up emails, around 5-7 as a series to all new subscribers. If you’d like a series of award winning templates and a guide on how to write emails that convert click here. An autoresponder takes care of the sending of emails according to your schedule. I use Aweber because they have the best deliverability (means highest percentage of emails get sent out).
In today’s world where we receive dozens if not hundreds of emails daily, email marketing needs to be approached differently. According to a study done by Radicati there are more than 205 billion emails sent/received every day. So how are your emails going to stand out? You need to craft excellent headlines and provide massive value from email to email. Build expectation for the next email in your “PS” for example. If you want a series of free eBooks (valued at $97) about email marketing as a bonus for being a loyal reader go here.
Online Advertising
Banners and text ads are still very effective. The top #100 sites in the world still use them and they are worth looking into. You really have to do your research and use the resources available. Some great sites to advertise with are:
Buysellads.com
Arcamax.com
According to what niche you’re in you will have to do your research and find good sites that accept advertising.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to doing so:
Do a Google search for one of your target keywords.
See the first few sites that come up.
Browse their site.
Check their Alexa Traffic Rank.
See if they accept advertising.
What are their prices?
Are they open to negotiate if you purchase long-term banner placement?
Explore your options. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Set aside a good budget for this. Once you find a few good ones and have purchased 1-2 times ask for a lower price.
Your banners have to be proven to convert and must align with the content on the website. You can’t advertise new and trend-breaking technologies on a site for retired mom-preneurs, you can try but not sure how well you would do.
Affiliate Marketing Programs
A great way of having an automatic lead flow is to start your own affiliate marketing program. There are many, many affiliate marketing programs out there. You can get one of the established companies to manage your affiliates like Clickbank or CJ Affiliate. If you can prove that your offer has a high earnings per click rate (EPC) then the large affiliate base from these programs will promote your link. Most of these affiliate programs will be for digital products but there are ones that will accept physical products.
Before you get started with these affiliate programs you will need to have some kind of support system in your business, even if it’s just your cell phone number or email for contacting you. For example, with Clickbank you will need to respond within 24 hours or they will process a refund on your behalf. There a few others so find the one that will work best for your product or service. If you’re in the Internet Marketing niche then I recommend you look into the MOBE Marketplace. You do have to be a member of MOBE (My Online Business Education) to have your product promoted first.
Further Marketing Ideas
Cross-promotion is when related products or services are marketed at the same or to the same people. For example, a wedding photographer may want to share advertising space with a hair stylist to lower costs and share profits. Or a product photographer can advertise with a prop stylist for a package deal.
Launches are a great strategy that have been used for decades. Focusing on the release of a new product or service months and even years in advance can really build anticipation for it. A great example is Apple. There’s always an event where the products are revealed and people can start pre-ordering usually within a month. This is good marketing and Apple has done great with launches. They prepare all kinds of ads including commercials like the famous “Hello iPhone” of 2007.
You want to do the same for your products and services. When launching a website for the first time for example, you want to get people engaged on social media. Another way to create buzz is to setup a meet-up group on meetup.com. Give free training sessions in your local area and have the opportunity to market to people face-to-face. In the Internet Marketing niche for example, a good resource for product launches is jvnotifypro.com where you can find a list of all the products that will be launching in the next few months.
Bonuses & contests are also very effective. Some people will get involved with your brand only to enter a contest or get a free bonus. Figure out ways of creating buzz with contests and bonuses. What products can you offer as a bonus? Some ideas are PLR (private label products) or licensing another product as your own. If you license another product and are making really high commissions from it then you could give it out for free as the price of getting a customer. Your sales funnel has to be deep enough for this and you will make up for it on the backend.
Viral Marketing
A good way to get traffic is by looking for viral news and trending topics. For example, when Google changed its logo everyone was writing about it that same week, not the week after. So it’s good to stay on top of what’s trending and going viral to see how you can relate it to what you do in a blog post. The viral news or trending topic needs to be relevant to your product or service or you need to figure out how you can make it relevant.
For example, when Apple revealed the iPad Pro this is proof of how deep their sales funnel really is. A lot of people were searching for “iPad Pro” on the Internet at the time. So a way of getting some of that traffic for an Internet Marketer would be to create a post titled: “The Apple iPad Pro and The Importance of Deep Sales Funnels.”
It doesn’t end with the title you really have to make your post about what people are searching for. If they’re searching for an iPad Pro review or summary make sure you include that in the post and especially in your meta description.
Well there you have it, a resource with several paid traffic strategies you can start implementing today. If you gained value from this post you are welcome to leave a comment below and/or share this post.
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