I am going to say something that is a little controversial.
If you’re trying to get traffic for the purpose of making money then I think you’re losing money by sending traffic directly to a sales page.
Almost everyone goes to great lengths to send targeted traffic to a sales page with the hope that 1% of those people will convert and become buyers.
In my opinion this is the hard way to do things. You’re far better off building a relationship with those people, creating trust, and getting their permission to market to them in the future.
Give value to your visitors
Instead of just sending this targeted traffic a sales page you should send it to a blog or website that offers valuable tips and other information about your niche.
The more value you give away the more you build a relationship of trust with your visitors. They will say to themselves, “If he gives this much away for free then I can’t imagine what great stuff he is selling.”
Selling to people that you have a relationship with is 100 times easier. I have built a relationship with many readers here on my blog and it makes advertising much more successful.
Another benefit of having great free content is that people appreciate it and will submit your content to social media. I have had a lot of success getting traffic from Twitter and StumbleUpon.
Read:
- 10 Ways To Get More Traffic From Twitter
- My copy and paste formula for getting traffic from Stumble Upon
- Video: I got 1,300 visitors fom StumbleUpon in the last week
Build an e-mail list
When you send traffic to a sales page you might get a 1% conversion. That means the other 99% of visitors leave and never come back.
Imagine instead if you had all of these visitors join an e-mail list. Realistically it won’t be 100% but you could get 10% or 20% or even 50% to join your e-mail list.
With an e-mail list you have permission to market to these people over and over. You of course have to provide valuable content as part of your e-mail newsletter.
You can also use your e-mail list to get feedback and ask people what their needs are. You can refine your sales process by finding better advertising and building better content.
One of my best sources of traffic is my e-mail list.
As part of your blog you should have an invitation on every page for people to join your e-mail list.
For those of you who want to know how to set up e-mail list and newsletter, I have covered this in a previous post:
12 Steps To Setup An Email Newsletter, Get Traffic, And Make Money
Do something different
I also should point out that there are 1000 other people trying to send traffic to the same sales page. They use the same banners and are fighting for the same keywords on pay-per-click. These people people are spamming online forums with their affiliate links.
You are not going to get very far by doing the exact same thing that they are doing.
Instead do something different. Give away content, build a relationship with people, and build an e-mail list.
There is a lot less competition if you do that. It takes a lot of work and energy and that’s why no one does it.
{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
It's a good point Nick. But I'm still surprised by people sending me to generic pages which seeming have little to do with the search term. And this is for PPC!
I try to make sure that the page is relevant. I agree selling on the first visit is a huge ask. Instead I try to make sure that each page has an obvious next step, e.g. watch this video, click for more detail etc.
The email list is something I do think we need to look at. The list I have now simply isn't that well qualified.
Another thing that I don't like are the people who try the personal route, but their 'value' they provide from their email list are just articles written by the product creators. It really isn't that hard to write something that is personal, but I find a lot of the big internet marketers still just go with the awkward hard sell.
.-= Outsourcing Jobs Overseas's last blog ..Find An Ebook Cover Designer For Less Than $10 =-.
Very true. Giving people lame articles is easy but not very effective.
My firm's directors keeps reemphasizing the fact that people buy from people they know, like and trust… So i pretty much agree that it's better to drive traffic to your blog which provides helpful tips, knowledge and info….rather than directly to a landing page which is nothing more than a sales copy.
Your relationship with potential clients is so critical but people seem to keep making the same mistakes time and time again.
I agree as I have $500.00+ this month in dead ad fees going to a CB site, but all these promoters show you HOW MUCH they made on thier CB site
Now since I added my site and landing page, I get 1-2 signups and sles every day with my PPC ad
Thanks again
JB
Good job! Adapting is really important in this game.
I am finding it to be a waste of time trying to build a list via providing value.
What I am seeing other marketing people doing is to force people to sign up to their list via the sales channel. After purchasing a product they are prompted to subscribe to receive confirmation details of their purchase.
In my case I had 1596 unique visitors to my blog and I got just 1 subscriber to my list. I don't think that my blog is that bad in that it puts people off subscribing. And I even give them a free download.
I am building up to a boiling point actually where I am ready to expose much of the teachings of Internet gurus as being almost useless to most people.
.-= Internet Marketing Coding's last blog ..Misconceptions Regarding IM Tools =-.
I understand your frustration. It took me a long time to be able to consistently get people to sign up for my e-mail list.
Today I wrote a post on some things you can do to help improve your list building: http://nickstraffictricks.com/2497_how-to-get-you…
Ya i send 127 visitors to a farmville affiliate and no sales. Probably should sent them to another page.
.-= Killer ab workout's last blog ..Acai Berry =-.
Nick wrote: "Do something different."
I picked up that idea and created a page completely different to the rest of the site. I combined a few videos from youtube in such a way that the visitor finds something useful, but also something humorous. Affiliate links are only at the top and bottom of the page, so I don't press on them too much.
http://www.howtospeak-japanese.com/how-to-learn-j…
Have fun – and learn a little bit japanese
Good idea. That last video made me laugh.
Hi Nick,
just stumbled this page – what about stumbling the above video page in return?
Thanks in advance!
I will stumble pretty much any site you want. Submit it at: http://nickstraffictricks.com/can-i-stumble-your-…
The mail list is today's focus (er actually I have another issue, so it's one of today's focuses). I'm look at this stuff in conjunction with mail chimp to manage sign-ups.
Too at look at "Internet Marketing Coding" blog and agree there's nowt to fault it. Certainly better than mine: http://www.citrustechnology.com/blog/2
Only one sign up? How may read via RSS or similar? I read most my stuff that way otherwise my inbox is unworkable.
I don't track RSS subscribers but I see a plenty of visitors from blo.gs, twitter and bit.ly which I think are social traffic sources.
The email list is where I would provide special deals to potential customers of products because of the ability to privately communicate with them. And in return I guess I may obtain testimonials and repeat customers.
Actually, I don't subscribe to emails in general unless I am offered something that I really want to get my hands on. So, I guess that I need to provide an irresistible offer to new subscribers?
You need to offer something that is highly targeted and irresistible to your visitors. The hard part is knowing what exactly they want. In the past I had some thoughts about what people wanted and in some cases I was very wrong.
I just posted a request for visitors to suggest script ideas that they wished were available. This should give me some ideas as to what my visitors are looking for.
http://internetmarketingcoding.com/your-idea-for-…
Great idea. You might even want to consider giving away a freebie if people post a comment. Sometimes people just need a little incentive.
I posted an idea for a script I would like written.
Yes I agree, just leading up to a sales based website sometimes irks me to no end.
I did that too. I was more interested in getting as much traffic as possible to at least get 1 or 2 sales so I can reinvest it to get an email list going. But I guess I've been trying to put the cart before the horse. Sometimes you just have to do that before you realize that this is a real business where you have to invest a bit of money before you can get anywhere.
.-= Ryan's last blog ..Digital Photography – Which Camera Should You Buy? Have You Considered the Batteries it Uses? =-.
Very true. Giving people lame articles is easy…..
.-= Google Boy's last blog ..Responsibilities and Duties =-.
I agree, I can tell right away when I get to sites that are doing this and I normally leave right away. I am also a big bookmarker and subscriber so they lose out on my traffic. A little off topic but I always leave and never come back if there is a pop up right away.
I used to have a pop up asking people to subscribe to my e-mail list but I found that it irritated too many people.
Thanks as always for the great tips, Nick. It's good to have someone "in the know" encourage relationship building rather than product pushing. Sometimes I feel like I'm wasting my time giving away free info on my blog, and other such efforts to gain people's attention. You keep me on track though!
Laura
Thanks for the kind words Laura. Sometimes giving away free content can seem like a waste of time. I feel that way sometimes too. But I believe it's all worth it in the end.
I really like your watercolor paintings by the way.