8 Tips for Paid Traffic Strategies

Most of our SEO and content work is focused on generating natural organic traffic growth. This is is all free, but it takes a lot of patience, time and effort. Once you do, it is more likely to keep you there. However, there is another side to online marketing that also works really well: buying targeted traffic to really focus on buyers quickly. Master this ans you can send traffic to any URL with ease.

We are not talking about general advertising, which is another interesting area. We are talking about finding places where our buyers hang out, where they spend their time, where they can be communicated with to cross them over into our offers. We are also talking about existing pools of targeted traffic collected or managed by others in our market that we can immediately buy into. Paid traffic is probably the most powerful business scaling strategy if you really need fast results.

Why is traffic so important? More visitors equals more possibilities for sales conversions, or for engaging conversations leading to sales conversions. However, quality of visitors is critical too. The higher the quality of your visitors, leads and prospects, the better your sales conversations and conversions. When we talk about leads and traffic, we are not just talking about casual visitors to your website, or emails on your email list, or followers on social media. We are talking about people who are ready and interested in purchasing your programs and services from you. When you do it right, and when you choose the right page traffic strategies, it can dramatically scale your business, and often literally overnight.

Popular paid traffic strategies include Facebook Ads, YouTube Ads, Google Ads, and paid podcast interviews. Of course there are many other paid advertising opportunities across many smaller social media platforms, ad networks and premium websites, but we are going to focus on these three giants because firstly they are already huge, and secondly they are continuing to grow their audiences through organic growth and acquisitions.

Tip 1: FaceBook Knows Everything

Facebook, or Meta as they now prefer to be called, has intimate knowledge of more than two billion direct users, and vast further data from subsidiaries Instagram, Whatsapp, and Occulus Rift. Whatever your market, whoever you are trying to find, engage and sell to, Facebook has them in abundance.

However, all of that data needs a lot of work to navigate and take advantage of. Keeping up with Facebook and using it the right way takes a lot of your time if you are doing it yourself. You can outsource it to a media buyer or agency if you don’t have time, but either way when you know how to use it and you really put the time into it, it can be a massive boost for your business.

Facebook is great because it gives you some really fine tuned ways to target your audience. If you are a service based company, chances are that you’re going to be able to find your ideal clients on Facebook, and you will be able to do it quickly because Facebook gives you a variety of targeting mechanisms that are really refined. FaceBook had some bad press for their data privacy management, but from a purely advertising perspective Facebook has thousands of unique data points on each person, product, service, business, and topic. It has a huge data mining operation, and can reveal surprising, unexpected links and correlations between things that will help you rapidly increase your traffic.

Essentially, you come to the Facebook Ad algorithm and you tell it what you want to achieve, who your ideal customer is, and you give them your ad image, your video and text. Then you let them do the rest.

For example, once inside your Ad Account and your Business Manager, when you click Create to make a new ad, Facebook gives you choices of what you want your ad to do. Do you want to create an ad that will get lots of likes, comments and shares? Then come and click on Engagement. Facebook will now put your ad in front of people it knows are more likely to do that.

If instead you are running an online store, you probably just want Facebook to put your ad in front of people most likely to see your ad and buy your items. Then install the Facebook pixel on your site, which tracks customer activity on Facebook and around the web, and then pick Conversions.

When you’re advertising on Facebook, you’re also advertising on Instagram. Really think about your audience, because Facebook is not for every business. Think about where your ideal clients are really spending their time. Are they scrolling through Facebook? How frequently are they there, and can you really target them? If you can, then you should definitely consider Facebook.

Another really interesting and valuable thing to keep in mind about Facebook is that what you see is what is actually happening, both in realtime and as trends. When you inject yourself into the newsfeed, you are entering the experience your clients are having and placing yourself or your offers in front of them. Naturally they are not searching for you at that particular moment, and the chances are that they are just scrolling through their newsfeed. They are looking for the updates from their friends or for the next gossip, or they are following someone they’re interested in, but they’re not really actively searching for information. They are not necessarily in action mode. A buyer that comes to your business from Facebook might be in a completely different mindset than someone who was on a different platform.

It is also really important for you to keep in mind what you can and cannot do. For Facebook ads, there are very specific rules, regulations, and policies that you need to look at and make sure that you comply with, otherwise your ads can get shut down. Many people have had multiple ads shut down, and even had their whole account shut down. There is always a way to come back from it. It is really important that you familiarize yourself with those policies and rules before you get started.

Important note: do not make any claims. Facebook places a huge emphasis on equality. Making sure that whatever you claim in your advertising is actually possible is very important. Not only true on the face of it, but possible for everybody across the board. Don’t make big promises, don’t make big claims. If you are talking about things that may be extraordinary, even if you are sure that they are true, if you even suspect that they may not be achievable for everybody, that might get you into trouble on Facebook, and Facebook is very unforgiving. Stay away from anything like that.

Tip 2: Budget, Test and Scale

On platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google, and others, we can buy an ad and spend $10, $20, $50, and by spending a small amount, we can instantly tell (on the same day) if it was profitable. What budget should you set? If for every $1 you put in you get back more than $1 in return, and you can reliably measure and predict that, why would you put a ceiling or a cap to how much you’re spending on the ads? You just spend as much as you can, and keep measuring to the point of diminishing returns.

How should you to think about your budget? You must know what is your cost per result. By understanding that the path to scaling is all math, all numbers, then you just need to understand what it is costing you to get a result in your business. Depending on what your business model looks like, it could be

• cost per webinar or live event registrant
• cost for you to get a phone call appointment or physical meeting
• cost of an online or offline sale

It all depends on your sales process. In your ad account you can see one of the metrics is ‘cost per result’. Compare this with the value of what you are selling per result. This will allow you to track your return on spend, and to adjust your ad spend accordingly. When a campaign is working, add more money as quickly as possible. When it stops working, cut back until you understand why.

As your ad runs Facebook learns which type of users take actions on your ads, and which type of users do not. Facebook will get smarter and better at putting your ad in front of the right people who will want what you are offering. It is actually a good idea to start with smaller ad budgets, and scale up over time as Facebook learns more and more about your customer base. You can run ad budgets for as little as $5 a day.

Tip 3: YouTube Outranks Google

When people use a search engine you know that they are actually looking for information, and potentially looking for businesses like yours. We automatically think of Google, or perhaps Yahoo or Bing. However, the number two search engine is YouTube. Since YouTube is owned by and interlinked with Google, YouTube search results, rankings and traffic are also Google search results, rankings and traffic. Aim for traffic from YouTube, get traffic from Google Search as a bonus. Keep that in mind. YouTube is a fabulous opportunity for you to advertise, whether you are a service based company or a product based company.

Unlike on Facebook Ads, you can say almost anything on YouTube Ads that you want to. That includes claims which can make promises. You can really sharpen your message and say what you want to say. Most of the time people are actually searching and looking for information on YouTube. YouTube is clearly about entertainment, but search is the huge driver on YouTube. People come looking for information, ‘how to’ guides, explainers and instructional videos, tutorials, full classes and courses, documentaries, debates, buyer reviews and comparisons, and so much more. You might be going to YouTube to learn how to make a certain recipe, or how to grow your business, or how to fix your relationship, or anything. Someone that is watching your YouTube video is potentially a buyer that is searching and looking for your programs and services. This can lead to a better buyer mindset than that of someone who might come to you from Facebook.

There are some disadvantages to YouTube that you should be aware of. Targeting is slightly different. You need to look at which channels, which videos you have the option to advertise on. Not every video or every channel will allow you to advertise on it. You need to do a bit more research to see which positioning strategy, which targeting, will actually work to get you in front of your ideal clients. You also need to have good video presence. You need to be able to make videos. That is sometimes a little bit harder for people to get started with than just going on Facebook and creating an image and some copy. But it’s not that hard.

You can create YouTube short and sweet videos with the right equipment, and get yourself in front of your ideal clients really quickly. As far as costs are concerned, advertising on YouTube is a little bit more expensive than advertising on Facebook. If you are getting the highest quality leads and prospects from YouTube, then you can spend a little bit more on those leads and you can justify some higher advertising expenses as well.

Tip 4: Google Is Everywhere

Google is all about keywords. Keywords for search, keywords for topical relevance, keywords for tagging. It is all about you knowing what your ideal clients are searching for. They are in search mode, but what is their search intent?

They are looking for information.

They are searching for businesses like yours. The probability is that you are getting in front of a buyer who was in action mode and wants to buy right now. When you first start with Google, you should do some keyword research so that you know which keywords to bid on. Keywords that will get you in front of your ideal clients on Google. You have two main strategies to get seen using keyword strategies.

Strategy 1: Browser Keyword Searches

These are the terms you type into the Google search window, or into the browser search bar. When people search here to find what they want, Google and other search engines will try to match that to your search intent. If you have optimized your SEO, this should make you pop up in the first four or five listings of a Google search.

If you are just getting started, start with appearing in keyword searches. When it comes to keywords, you should consider two particular types.

Type 1: Branded Keywords

This could be your business or company name, your product or service name, your topic name, or your own name. Think about how people will look for you, then bid on that. Don’t just choose the most obvious terms, also pick out some less common variations. Less competition equals better chances of picking up some sales.

Type 2: Topic Keywords

There are also the keywords that are more topic specific. You might be bidding on ‘how to grow your business’, ‘how to market your business’, ‘online marketing strategies’, and phrases like that. Take a look at what your competitors are using, see who is ranking for what, both for short and long tail keywords and phrases.

Strategy 2: Banner Advertising

Display adverts which appear in a Google search, but also on most other websites where they allow advertising to be displayed. Appearing on someone’s website carries a different authority than appearing in a search engine listing. You may appear to be part of the site, or related to the topic it is discussing, depending on the kinds of banners used and their placement.

Both options are great, so experiment and measure and see what works best for you.

Google gives you a great keyword research tool where you can look at the number of searches that are happening for specific keywords. It also provides you with additional recommendations for keywords that you might consider bidding on in your advertising strategy. This is not the only tool, but it is quite helpful, especially when you are just starting out.

Tip 5: Podcast Interviews Endure

Podcasts fit into the space between traditional media such as television and radio, and social media such as YouTube and Facebook. It feels like radio to the listener, but it has all of the social sharing and following capabilities. It is also one of the fastest growing platforms, with highly engaged ‘fan’ audiences. The great thing about podcasts is that once they are up, they get lots of listeners, often with many repeated visits. Also, new listeners will search out old episodes to listen to those too. This means your content is enduring, it will have a very long lifespan.

As with all other forms of social media, they need to add fresh content regularly. A lot of fresh content. One of the ways they do this is by hosting interviews. That’s where you come in. Being on a podcast is a fabulous opportunity for you to really share your message and be interviewed by a leader in your industry. Of course you want to do some research first. If they have a lot of followers, they will extend your reach, but the audience is more likely to be diverse and less likely to be super interested in your message.

Look for podcasts that are speaking to your ideal clients. Someone who is not necessarily competing with you, but somebody who really compliments what it is that you are offering. See what their requirements are in terms of their interviews: timings, format, what topics they want to talk about, what the process is for applying to be on the podcast, branding or advertising, payments, products for review, access to services for review, etc. Then take the necessary steps.

Podcasts can last anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours, so it gives you the opportunity to be in the spotlight in the middle of a conversation, and to showcase what it is that you have to offer. Doing a podcast interview should also be relatively easy for you to do, because there is usually no video required. You don’t have to get ready, put makeup on, or get dressed.

All you need to do is focus on the questions that the interviewer will ask. You are having a nice friendly conversation, or perhaps teaching something, depending on what style of podcast you’re going on. If the host allows, go beyond that and make it a really dynamic and engaging conversation. What is really important though, is that you have a strong call to action. So you want to be sure that when you pay to be on a podcast, you can make an offer to the audience. You can talk about your programs, your services, your products. You can invite them to watch one of your webinars to download a freebie, to go to your website, whatever it is that you use to begin the sales and conversion process for your leads in your marketing campaigns. Make sure you can do a strong call to action, and be ready to tell people about what it is that you do.

Another benefit of being on a podcast is that you can see past results. You can see the number of downloads. You can potentially see the number of engaged people who are listening, and maybe even get your hands on past results from other people who did interviews, and check how many leads they received. How many people joined their email list. How much money they made, how much revenue they generated from the interview. That will give you a sense for what might be possible for you as well.

Tip 6: List Brokers For Scale

A list broker’s jobs is to collect specific, targeted lists of consumers and businesses contact details using specific criteria, so that businesses can use them for their marketing campaigns. List brokers are skilled at data acquisition, integration and evaluation of marketing list data. This provides valuable insight to inform targeting choices.

The information provided by brokers comes from a number of legitimate sources. Professional list brokers use extensive databases with consumer and business contacts from such diverse sources as public phone books, public records and surveys.

A good list broker can take this raw data and narrow the list down to a list of the particular households or businesses which you want to target. You can maximize your return on investment by targeting only the parties likely to be interested in your offer.

A secondary effect is that this activity can also increase awareness of your business and offers, which may result in further new customers over time.

Tip 7: Solo Ads for Accuracy

Solo ads are a special kind of advertisement conducted by a special kind of list owner. These list owners carefully grow their lists in niches, by running their own traffic, which sets them up to offer you a hyper-targeted audience. The real advantage for you is that you will be the only offer made in that email.

These advertising placements contain links which will drive significant amounts of traffic to your offer, which will be a website or funnel sales landing page where you can collect their details and describe the offer more and persuade them to buy. Alternatively it could go straight to a checkout page if your offer is already hot and you know that it converts well.

If you have an offer, a product or service, that is already selling, and you want to scale it up, solo ads may be a great way to go.

Where can you find solo ad providers? There are two main sources.

Type 1: Solo Ad Professionals

These people are marketers who spend their time building and curating high performing buyer lists, focused on specific markets. Most specialize in one niche audience, or perhaps just the most popular audience segments, but others have a wide range of lists that they maintain.

They cannot always guarantee any specific conversion ratio, but will offer you a number of clicks on your offer at a price per click, which they will keep sending emails for until they achieve this. They will send out an email focused on your offer which is custom written for increasing open rates and conversion rates.

Professional Solo Ad Service providers usually operate under one of two charging models:

• CPM (Cost Per thousand impressions). An impression is a unique time that a person sees an ad.
• CPC (Cost-Per-Click). A click is a physical click on a link.

List owners will track and measure this for you and be able to report it all to you. Make sure that their charging model is suitable for your budget and goals before you buy any campaigns from the list owner. Some markets are much better geared to CPC, others for CPM. Your solo ad vendor will advise. It is important to remember that CPM will not guarantee a specific click-through rate.

If you don’t have a big budget, perhaps start with just 200-500 clicks. This will provide you with sufficient metrics without costing too much, and tell you if the campaign is worth scaling. Less than 200 clicks will probably not be enough to collect all of the data you need in order to determine whether your solo ad met your goals.

They can usually discuss your requirements and give advice on which offers work, and how to frame your offer so that it pulls people into taking action. Using Solo Ad professionals is a great shortcut to building your sales pipeline quickly, or just building up a list for later marketing. It is not too expensive, and you will get relevant, probably interested people to respond and sign up.

Type 2: Influencers and Topic Specialists

There is another method that has great potential if you can negotiate it. If you research your subject online, you will probably find at least a few social media influencers, bloggers, journalists or writers covering it. In many cases these people probably have large and good quality audiences. Good quality in this case means highly relevant.

If you contact the influencer, you may be able to negotiate a deal to send an email to their list. The important difference here is that the influencer will be promoting it, encouraging their subscribers to check out the opt-in page. They will do this because your offer is relevant and the list owner believes it is a good fit for their audience. The nature of the deal will be that you pay an amount of money, say $1,000, and in exchange you get 500 clicks to your opt-in page.

Solo Ads Work

That is a solo ad, and they are really effective. Solo ads have been an email marketing tool for many years now, and people still use them to this day precisely because of how effective they are.

As with other forms of marketing, you must make sure that your headline, body content and call to action are aligned with your audience. In most cases the list owner will either want to write the headline, possibly the content too. They may even demand to have full editorial control over it. The reason is they want to maintain the quality of offers to their list so that people stay on their list. Bad offers or badly worded offers may alienate people and damage the list. Your conversion ratio will depend on your copy quality, so it is a process of negotiation to make it work for both of you.

You also need to check to see if this person is trustworthy. You don’t want to work with someone who spams people, or who promotes unethical products or services which may reflect on your brand. Confirm that they are really sure of their numbers and audience engagement. How confident at they of that data, and can they support that. You also need someone who is responsive and easy to work with, so that you can dig into results and decide what worked and what didn’t. This should not be a one time remote operation with no further contact. You could even try running your solo ads to different segments of their list to see if results are reasonably consistent.

If you aren’t satisfied with the answers you get, then look for another list owner.

Test Before Scaling Up

It is really important to test a new solo ad list to see how responsive it it before you run a full solo ad campaign.

Test a small representative sample, whatever the smallest amount is that the list owner will agree to let you test, so that you can see if it produces the quantity and quality of results that you are looking for. Doing it with a small sample list take away any risk before you spend serious money on a much larger campaign.

Not every market is right for solo ads, but there are some markets that solo ads have proven to be very effective in:

• Health (including cosmetics, supplements)
• Survival (including equipment, training, supplies)
• Internet marketing (including ecommerce, affiliate, MLM)
• Financial (including retirement, investment, trading)
• Crypto (anything and everything in this hot market)
• Personal development (including education, coaching, courses)

If your market isn’t on that list it doesn’t mean that solo ads won’t work for you. There are hundreds of other niches, there are solo ad providers and influencers for just about anything you might want to target.

Their Audience Doesn’t Know You

Remember that any time you are running a solo ad on someone else’s list, this is completely cold traffic. The list own is going to be promoting you, but even with that recommendation, you are still unknown to the customer. You need to write your copy with this in mind.

This doesn’t mean it will be difficult to get people to click, they definitely will. Just don’t expect your conversions to be at the same levels as the list owner’s conversion rate. They built their list and they have a relationship with it, working many offers to it. It is your task to reach these people and make them click, not the list owner’s. That is why it can be helpful to work closely with them and even have them write the headline, the content, and the ad. They know their audience and have historical campaign data. This list is cold traffic for you, so find ways to warm it up.

That means producing great copy. Good copywriting gets good results. If you are not a great copywriter, either learn it, or outsource it to someone who is a great copywriter. Don’t waste your money on poorly written campaigns.

Tip 8: Eliminate Bots

The initial task is simply to filter buyers from non-buyers. Working out who is really interested, and who is just looking, or not even responding. However, there is a new and annoying trend which is a growing problem. Non-humans who can’t buy no matter what you offer: we are talking about bots.

You need to make an effort to purge your list on a regular basis to remove any bots or suspected bots. These bots are possibly just fishing for your information, or just responding to everything.

Best Practices

It doesn’t matter which paid traffic strategy you choose. It doesn’t matter which platform you choose. It doesn’t matter which niche you are in. You must know what your conversion process looks like. Your customer journey is the process by which someone becomes aware of you, interested in you, then really interested in you. They believe your offer, they want it, and they like you more than any competitor, then they take action. You should map out this process in detail so that when you use paid advertising to create awareness, you know how your potential buyers will move through your customer journey. You need to test this and make it as frictionless as possible.

You can send people straight to your landing page, or even direct to your shopping cart or order page. This may waste some opportunities. There is a big advantage in learning more about these people by engaging them first, then filtering them to exactly the right landing page or checkout. Two really useful conversion tactics worth considering are:

Conversion Tactic 1: Webinars And Masterclasses

People like to learn and to be entertained, and they like it to be passive so they don’t have to do anything. These sessions can be live. They can be recorded and sent as replays, or automated as play on demand. Masterclasses and webinars work amazingly well. They take your interested audience much deeper into the topic, and allow you to explain, demonstrate, educate, make special promotional offers, sign-ups to memberships, downloads, and a wide range of other steps. People like video, so a lot of people can be engaged over multiple viewings, and you can really build up a big list for followup.

It is a win-win offering webinars and master classes. They are great to really showcase your expertise and put you out there as a thought leader in your niche. You can be open and playful, maybe even make some mistakes, which will show your human side and reduce audience sales resistance. When you’re getting started with maybe a new peer traffic strategy in the beginning, keep with it, because the more you invest into it, the sooner you will really master it.

Conversion Tactic 2: Assessment Tool Or Quiz

Almost everyone likes to be asked for their opinion or ideas, especially if they are going to receive feedback or rewards. These techniques are amazing in terms of the results, since they allow you to much more deeply understand who your audience are and what they want. You should not make it too time consuming or difficult to complete, but you should be as granular as possible to categorize and segment your audience into levels of interest and things they are interested in. This allows more accurate retargeting, and better cross-selling.

Use the tactics and you will see the benefits for your business.

If you need some help creating or managing any aspect of these, let us know, we have all of the tools and we are here to support you.