Yes… I’m still living in Mexico and exploring this country. I LOVE it, and I LOVE my new life/work balance. There’s currently way more life than work in this balance, but with only two more months left in the year it’s time to even that balance out. But that’s why you guys are seeing so many images of Mexico in my blog images. I’m incorporating my personal life into my business, and I hope you guys are enjoying it. 😊
Anyway… For the last few weeks, we’ve been talking about traffic. I did a very thorough tutorial on the complete overview of website traffic which can be seen here. I started with that so you could get the “big picture” and the basics down. After that tutorial I told you where you should be driving ALL of your traffic. You can see that tutorial by clicking here.
Those two tutorials are going to instantly put you on the right path to driving traffic.
Now, I was all ready to start tutorials on getting into specific tactics and then I had this question come in…
“Liz, I have a few niche websites and am always getting confused as to which traffic suits. For example… dog training, self-improvement, affiliate marketing, preppers, etc. Any advice on what traffic (paid and free) suits?”
Now, this is a question I see a lot, so before I get into tactics, let me answer this…
First of all, there is no “rule of thumb” here. There is no, “this traffic works for this niche and not for this niche” rules. The only exception I can think of would be solo advertising (where you pay list owners to send your email to their list) because solo ads are generally only available for certain niches. Like the biz opp, internet marketing, and a few self-help niches.
Side Note: Can you think of any other tactics that are niche specific? If so, let me know in the comments below. You’ll help others by leaving your ideas. 😊
So, with that being said… You need to see where your niche can be reached online!
Are they searching Google? You can figure this out with keyword research. If they are then you need to use SEO.
Are they on social media? You can figure this out by searching the different social media sites. If they are, then you need to be using paid social ads. If you don’t have the money for paid social ads, you can use organic social media tactics.
Are there affiliates who promote products/services like yours? If so and you can give them a percentage of your profits, then you need to have an affiliate program.
I could go on and on with examples here, but YOU must find where you can reach your target audience and use the website traffic tactics that will get you in front of them.
Another thing to keep in mind once you’ve found how to reach your target audience is to make sure you can actually USE those tactics. If they take money, do you have money for it? If they take skills, do you have the skills to use those tactic?
So, the equation to figuring out what tactics to use for your niche is…
Reach (X) + Ability (Y) = Your Traffic Strategy
With what tactic can you reach your niche (target audience)? Do you have the ability (funds/skills) to reach them with that tactic?
Let’s look at a working example to really bring this home…
If I’m in the home gardening niche, and I’m driving traffic to a squeeze page, I would do my research and figure out how to get my squeeze page in front of people who are interested in home gardening. That’s my niche/target audience.
I could do keyword research and see if people are searching the search engines for information related to home gardening. If so, then SEO would make since to use IF I either had the funds to outsource my SEO OR the skills to do it myself. However, if I found no one searching the search engines for my topic, then I’d know NOT to use SEO.
It’s a process of elimination… Have a list of website tactics, and go through them until you find a tactic that solves the equation…
Reach (X) + Ability (Y) = Your Traffic Strategy
So, I’m going to leave you with a main list of traffic strategies. There are a ton of ways to do EACH of the things in this list, but this is a great list you can get started with. If you can think of a website traffic tactic, it probably falls under one of these main strategies…
SEO
Solo ads (email ads)
Paid social media ads
Organic social media marketing
Content marketing
Paid search
Media buying
Affiliate program
Content/Ad swaps
Side Note: If you can think of a tactic that doesn’t fall under one of these main topics, please leave me a comment in the comments below. I’d love to make this list the biggest list of MAIN website traffic tactics, so if there is something you can think of that doesn’t fall under one of these main tactics let me know!
Okay, so now that I’ve gotten the basics of website traffic, where to drive your website traffic, and the how to pick the best website traffic tactics for you…. (wow that’s a lot of learning) it’s time to move on to learning the actual tactics.
The next several tutorials I will be taking some of the main topics from the list above and doing tutorials around each of them. Since part of the equation of WHICH traffic tactic to use is ABILITY, you can acquire the ability by learning how to do it. So, I’ll be putting my teacher hat on and showing you how to use some of these tactics.
I’ll see you in the next tutorial!
Liz
P.S. Remember I have LearningIM.com which teaches TONS of different website traffic and marketing tactics via topic specific workshops. If you want to learn more from me QUICKLY then I highly recommend you get a LearningIM.com all access pass (you get ALL current and future workshops for one price) at http://www.LearningIM.com
