Every business needs traffic. No exceptions here. The only reason to be in business is to sell something, and you can’t do that if nobody knows you have something to sell.
You gotta have eyeballs on your marketing messages – your ad copy – and that means you gotta generate traffic. AND that traffic must be targeted, people who have an intense interest in what your product will do for them.
So how do we find those interested people, and how do we turn them into visitors to our offer so they can see what we have to sell? How do we make them aware that we’ve got what they want & need?
The answer is: We find people who are interested in our product offers with advertising – we get our ad copy out there where those eyeballs are likely to see it.
In this article I’ll talk about ways to “get our ad copy out there.”
This will be a short list of effective traffic generating techniques. I can’t cover them all in one article, but these will get you started.
There are two ways to advertise your product. One is with paid advertising. The other is with free advertising. I’ll give you some examples of both with short descriptions as this is just an introduction.
1. Advertising Companies. Paid Advertising.
If you do a search for advertising companies you’ll get a list of both online and offline agencies that offer advertising services. You can visit their sites to find out how they operate. Typically they’ll take your product description and copy (or they’ll write new sales copy for you), and publish it for you. They do a lot of marketing research to find out where the best places are for advertising your specific type of product.
2. Classified Ads. Both Free Advertising & Paid Advertising.
Classifieds include newspapers, magazines, and local fliers both online & offline. Craig’s List is an example where you can post both free & paid ads. A search here will net you pages of classified ad sources.
3. Solo Ads. Paid Advertising.
Here you buy clicks from another marketer. That marketer mails your ad copy out to his list. When someone reads the copy, and uses the link to visit your web page, that’s a click.
This is a very effective traffic generating technique – IF you know how to do it right.
BUT do some research on the marketer before you consider buying clicks from him. There are unscrupulous vendors who have large lists of people who will click away all day, and never buy a thing.
You need to watch for those.
4. Blog Posting. Can be Free Advertising & Paid Advertising.
This is either a blog site that you own, or another blogger’s site. When you use this technique you write content that is informative about your niche subject. If you publish it on your blog you can include a recommendation for your product along with a link to your squeeze page. If you submit this to another blogger for publication on his blog you’ll get an author’s bio box at the end of your content where you can place info about you and your product.
Some bloggers sell you this publication space on their blog sites. Others are happy to get new content (as long as it has value for their readers), and will publish it at no charge.
5. Forum Posting. Free Advertising.
There’s a forum for virtually every subject on the planet. Got a hobby? Do a search for that hobby + forums, and you’ll get a list of sites where you can talk with other enthusiasts for that hobby.
The key here is to provide forum subject related information that’s useful to the other members. Post often with good stuff, and the other members will recognize you as a knowledgeable source. You place your product teaser in your signature file (often referred to as sigfile) as a link to your squeeze page, and – once they come to trust you – you’ll get some visitors from the forum.
And every member is a person who is interested in the forum’s subject matter. That’s highly targeted visitors right there. As long as your product is also related to the subject matter.
6. Article Marketing. Free Advertising.
With this technique your writing will be much like your blog posting content creation. You write informative articles that relate to your product.
You take those articles and submit them to article directories that have a category in the related subject matter. Here again you get an author’s bio box to put your personal & product info in.
7. Video Marketing. Free Advertising.
Record informative videos, and post them on video sites like Youtube & Vimeo. You can also post them on your own websites. These should normally be short – max 5 to 9 minutes – videos that present niche related training, and product reviews.
You can present in an on camera style where you face the camera and the viewer sees and hears you, or you can record over-the-shoulder type video that shows your computer desktop, and you give them a walk through training or slide show.
8. Giveaway Products. Free Advertising.
This traffic generation technique is extremely effective, and especially good for building your list.
The giveaway product can be an ebook, a PDF, a training course, a white paper, or software. You can present your product to sites that post it for you, and make it available to their members.
I often participate in giveaway events. That’s where a number of marketers get together, and contribute their products to one site. Then they each promote the giveaway site to their lists, and those people join the site to get free training materials and/or software.
The art of generating traffic is a whole niche of its own. And there’s all kinds of training (both free & paid) out there.
This is one area where it’s a must for you to educate yourself. Make sure you find some quality training for this, and learn it well. The success of your business absolutely depends on your skills at attracting targeted traffic to your product offers.
One place for you to get some intense training, not only for list building but for other core business building concepts is by becoming a part of Brett’s Circle. You can find that by visiting here:
http://discoverhowtoworkfromhome.biz
In my next article I’ll wrap up this traffic generation series with a quick re-visit to what we talked about.
Keep an eye open for that, and my announcement of what’s coming next.
In the meantime don’t forget to start your business building education today.
Go to http://discoverhowtoworkfromhome.biz/ to get started right now!
