One of the most frequent questions I get is how to get traffic to my online business. Whether you have a blog, YouTube channel, podcast whatever, you need traffic. Traffic refers to the number of users who visit a website. Without traffic you are not going to be very successful in promoting your products and services. So what is traffic? Traffic boils down to people. People who are interested, people who want or need what you have to offer. So is there a button I can push to open the flood gates? I wish it was that easy. There was a time when you just needed to throw up a website and you were pretty much good to go. Today, it a little bit more complicated. Today you have to do a little work to get targeted, quality traffic. But if you're knowledgeable about your subject matter, you should have no problem getting traffic. That's where the exercise you did in last weeks podcast comes in handy. In those exercises you examined your interests and selecting a niche and products that are a good fit for your niche. If you haven't looked at that yet visit my blog and click on the podcast category for more information. Niching down and selecting a product that matches your nich is the first step in building traffic. Next you need to identify people who would be a good fit for your niche and your product. And since traffic boils down to people, we have to look at the behavior and needs/problems of people in your niche. So let's start with behavior. When someone has a problem or needs something they are not sure about what do they do? The first thing most people do is pick up their phone and perform a Google search. When they are on Google they put in keywords that will help them find a solution. SEO/Organic. In order for the right audience to find you, there has to be a match between the keywords (SEO) your ideal customer uses to find your products, and the keywords you've used on your platform. If you have a self hosted blog, you will want to install Google Analytics on your site to track analytics like traffic (and other important metrics) to your site. Your platform can be your blog, your landing page, sales page, video or audio. SEO can take a while to kick in, and there are some keywords that you may never rank for. So you have to use other methods of finding your ideal customer. Paid traffic. With paid traffic visitors that come to the website from and online ads. Google AdWords, ads on Facebook, display advertising, and other similar channels. This is another way to get targeted traffic quickly. Direct traffic. This happens when a user types the URL of the website in the address bar of a browser, he clicks on a previously saved bookmark. Referral traffic. Consists of people who come to the website through different links on other resources (including crowd marketing) Social Media. This traffic comes from social media sites. Because of things like groups, it's possible to create a strong community with highly involved and active subscribers. Be in Twelve Places at the Same Time. Another way to find your audience is by being in all the right places. That means creating valuable content and placing it on various platforms, (as many as possible) and on social media in the places where your ideal customers hang out. Offline Methods. There are offline methods you can use to build an audience. Once you have published valuable content start sharing it in places were your ideal customers hang out in the real world. If you run a service business, be sure to advertise in your local community. Courses. Teach a non salesy classes (online or in person) on your topic (otherwise called a webinar) and invite people from your community. You can hold your training class on Zoom or another platform and advertise it to groups and organizations that would be a great fit. There are five stages that people go through before they make a purchase. Awareness, interest, intent, evaluation and then the purchase. Having a nic
