One of the most frequent questions I get is how to get traffic to an online business. Whether you have a blog, YouTube channel, podcast whatever, you need traffic.
Every business needs traffic to be successful. Period.
So what is traffic? Traffic refers to the number of users who visit a website. Traffic boils down to people. You don't want just anyone visiting your site. You want targeted traffic in your niche. Targeted traffic includes people who are interested, people who want or need what you have to offer.
So you might be asking, is there a button I can push to open the traffic 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. But even that wasn't really targeted, quality traffic. It was a little bit of everything. Today, it a little bit more complicated.
Today you have to put in a little work to get targeted, quality traffic through organic methods. When you don't select a niche, and you're trying to reach everyone with your marketing message, you miss the entire boat.
Reasons to Find Your Niche
Here are some of the reasons it's important to find a niche that ties in with your interests:
The best thing about selecting a niche is that it helps you sift through the people who are not interested, curiosity seekers, naysayers, and negative Nancys.
It gives you an opportunity to build rapport because you're one of them. More than likely you've had the problem too!
Having a niche that ties in with your interests helps you to use the same language as your ideal customers.
It helps you select the right words for your advertising and social media messaging. Words that will only mean anything to the people who have the problem or are looking for information on your topic. People who aren't interested will not sign up or attend.
Last Week's Podcast Episode
That's where the exercise from last week's podcast comes in handy. In those exercises you examined your interests and selected a niche and products that are a good fit for your the things you enjoy.
If you haven't looked at that exercise yet, visit my blog and click on the podcast category for more information.
Selecting a product that matches your interests is the first step in building traffic. Focusing on your ideal customers and aligning your marketing efforts to match will take you a long way to making a connection with people who are looking for what you have to offer.
A great way to do this is to create a customer avatar that represents people who would be a good fit for your niche and your product.
Next, start writing down some of their challenges, pain points and issues. Also think of ways you can help them with ideas that will help them get from point A to point B.
The Behavior of Your Ideal Customers
And since traffic boils down to people, we should also take a look at the behavior and needs/problems of people in your niche to further outline some of those pain points. So let's start by taking a look at common 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 your ideal customers are on Google, they enter words (keywords) that will help them find a solution. The results they receive from Google hopefully leads your ideal customers to your business.
Are You Coming Up in Search Results?
So, if you're not coming up in search results when your ideal customers are looking for the kinds of products and services you offer, there is a disconnect of some kind.
It could be that for whatever reason, your marketing is not reaching the right people. I would suggest going back to last week's podcast episode and looking at the show notes to examine your niche, making sure that your marketing is in line with the people you choose to serve in your area of specialty.
Here are some of the ways your ideal customers can reach you, when your marketing is connecting with the right people.
SEO/Organic. This is the kind of traffic that everyone wants. 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 in your marketing, i.e. product descriptions, image names, titles and URLs. When your content shows up on your platform of choice, Google seeks to index and rank it using the keywords and data you provide.
If you have a self hosted blog, install Google Analytics on your site to track analytics like traffic (and other important metrics) to your site.
Keep in mind that your platform can be a blog, a landing page, sales page, video or audio. However, 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 arrive on your website from paid ads from Google AdWords, Facebook ads, display advertising, and other similar channels. This is another way to get targeted traffic quickly. When you're starting out and you need to build an audience quickly, paid ads may be the way to go.
At the same time it's important to understand how paid ads work (through training courses, reading books etc.) before you get started. You can invest (waste) LOTs of money with paid ads and get little to know results.
Once you learn how they work and the correct way to use them, they can kickstart your business tremendously.
Direct traffic. This happens when a user types the URL of your website in the address bar of a browser, or he or she clicks on a previously saved bookmark.
Referral traffic. This is also the kind of traffic that every business owner wants. It consists of people who come to your website through links from other platforms (including crowd marketing). For example you may get referral traffic from Google, Bing, Etsy, Facebook, etc., or another blog or website where you have placed a link to your business (also called a backlink).
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 started sharing it in places were your ideal customers hang out in the real world you may notice that you start receiving more visits. If you run an online business, be sure to advertise in your local community.
Courses. Teach a non salesy class (online or in person) on your topic (otherwise called a webinar or full course) 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.
The Buying Process
There are five stages that people go through before they make a purchase. Awareness, interest, intent, evaluation and then the purchase. Choosing a niche helps you identify more of what your audience (people) is looking for when they are in each phase of their buying journey.
Who is Your Ideal Customer?
Sell more when you know who you're selling to!
Your goal as business owner is to have marketing messages and content that corresponds with each phase of your ideal customers buying process. So that once they land on your pages (your site) they will want to get more information and become a lead.
Some people will go through these phases quickly and some may take longer, but these are the steps that we all go through when we buy stuff.
If you only focus on selling (without creating the know, like and trust factor) from the beginning, the first problem is that (1) you are starting at the end of a typical sales process. And (2) you aren't giving visitors enough time to determine whether you're trustworthy before they pull out their wallet and do business with you. You're not fitting in with the natural process.
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