This week I have been reviewing the thorny question – where to get traffic from?

This is one of the most pressing questions that I have at the present moment.

I have plenty of products and I now need to start promoting what I have created.  A number of my sales letters require a bit of improvement but I am guessing about this until I start sending traffic to them and monitoring the conversions.

With my first blog at http://businessrenegade.co.uk, I had quite a bit of success in attracting SEO traffic simply due to the quantity of posts on that blog.  However, conversion of this traffic to actual money was disappointing.

Why was that?

I think that without making a personal connection with the reader, whilst the information on that blog is valuable, the information in and of itself is pretty dry.

I therefore need to concentrate on a number of factors to make my content more attractive:

• try to make my content entertaining as well as informative
• introduce more of myself – probably in the form of audio and video
• keep the quality of information extremely high
• to differentiate the presentation of the information – perhaps through higher quality copy, images and outstanding presentation

I also need to state the intent of my business with greater clarity and passion so that subscribers to my blog and content know exactly what they are subscribing to i.e. how to start and grow an online business that generates an income of at least $100,000 p.a..

I also need to target a segment of the market and speak directly to an ‘avatar’ in order to make a connection.  In my mind, it only makes sense to target people exactly like myself who have left a job in order to find freedom and independence through starting their own online business.

I understand these people’s feelings, and the problems they are facing, with intimacy and can empathise with their journey.

Having first sorted out exactly what I stand for, and will be delivering in the way of content and products, and exactly who I want to help, I can turn my attention to methods for driving traffic.

I have in mind 3 or 4 alternatives:

#1 Facebook Ads

Advertising on Facebook makes perfect sense to me:

• it is where my target market is on a daily basis
• I can target my market very, very precisely with my advertising
• I can build an audience and add them to my list over time using strategies such as surveys ( a strategy set out in List Liberation)
• done properly, you can scientifically measure return on investment

With this in mind, I have spent 1 day this week going through some excellent Facebook Advertising Tutorials on Learn to Blog (formerly WP Classroom)

#2 Webinars

Webinars have the highest potential of converting attendees to buyers (apart from perhaps Live Events).  With the advent of Google Hangouts on Air, the technology is no longer a barrier and it will enable me to make an instant personal connection to my audience.

Google Hangouts also rank very well in Google if I optimise the title of the webinar with keywords.

I invested in Webinar Alchemy by Stephen Renton this week – done properly, webinars have enormous potential.  (This was another day of training.)

Again it is important to monitor traffic, registrations, attendance and sales conversions to understand my ROI.

As I also own a copy of Evergreen Business Systems, which enables me to automate webinars, I have all the tools necessary for this strategy.

It will also be possible to get webinar registrations, by leveraging Facebook Ads.

#3 YouTube Marketing

I also think there is enormous potential for creating short videos and placing them on both Facebook and YouTube. Then using both Facebook Advertising and YouTube PPC to promote them to drive traffic to a landing page.  The PPC stats will enable me to measure advertising ROI precisely.

(I am moving away from SEO as a means of driving traffic (although I will still do some optimisation for keywords from force of habit) because ROI is not as easy to measure – it requires that you convert your time to a cost.  I suspect that if everyone did this, they would abandon SEO.  Also, the changes in Google algorythm pretty much place your business and traffic at the mercy of Google.  For this reason, I now regard SEO traffic as a bonus rather than my main source of traffic.)

Creating short videos is easy with tools like Camtasia 8 and Easy Video Suite – both of which I own.  I have also updated this week to Microsoft 2013 – this gives me the potential for creating Powerpoint animations.

#4 Recruit Affiliates

Marc Milburn, my coach is a great advocate of recruiting affiliates to drive traffic.  I agree but initially it is difficult to get them to promote for you if:

• I am relatively unknown
• I have no previous track record online
• I cannot show that I have a sales funnel that converts

This is why it is important to get some initial traffic using the other means available so I can approach affiliates with a professional and well thought-out proposition.

However, none of the above should deter me from connecting with potential affiliates and persevering.  For this purpose, approaching them for an interview and getting to know them, and how I can connect with them, is a smart strategy

Conclusion

In answering the question – where to get traffic from – I’m going to start with Facebook Advertising and mix in the other strategies if I have time.  It is important for me not lose focus by attempting too many strategies at once.