<aside> đź’ˇ How Can This Help?
First thing you need to know is that we don’t generate traffic, we simply direct traffic. Flipping the paradigm when thinking about this is crucial.
Traffic is not created, it’s already there. It’s like a river running all the time and the fish inside are your customer. All you need to do is to create channels, hence why we call it traffic channels, and then use some sort of a bait to lure those customers to your marketing material, i.e., your playing ground, where you impress them. You just want to stand in front of them, attract them and direct them to your product.
Before showing you where you can find them and explaining the types of different Channels, you just want to know 2 things about Traffic: 1) Traffic Type & 2) Traffic Temperature.
From a marketing point of view, traffic can come in 3 forms:
A) Traffic You Own:
Those are prospects and customers that are already in your list. It’s your “Email List”, “Followers” or “Subscribers”. Sometimes you want to direct them to another campaign or experiment. This is considered the best type because you don’t pay every time you advertise to them, which means you get pure profit from them. Your marketing cost is zero or close to minimum since you just need to send them an email, post a blog or nudge them via a notification. That’s why, your ultimate goal in marketing is to try and turn all your visitors (those interested traffic) into traffic you own.
B) Traffic You Control:
Those who you have the ability to tell them where to go. You control how and where to stand on their way and tell them "hey, I've got something to solve your xxx problem or pain" and then direct them to a certain place. Includes all paid traffic like Email ads (Solo ads, links, mentions), PPC ads (Facebook, Google), Banner ads, Native ads, Affiliate and JV. You have to spend money (or time) to have them.
How to turn them into traffic "You Own"? We direct those to a “Squeeze Page” ( or any other page intended and designed to cause a particular action, like a click, a share, etc) by the help of our “Traffic Bridge” to get their emails and turn them to “Traffic you own”.
C) Traffic You Don't Control:
This is the one who just shows up and you don’t have any control over where it came from or where it goes. Like social media, Search traffic (Inbound SEO), mentions in any website, Guest Interviews, testimonials from unknown people and so on.
How to turn them into traffic "You Own"? Design all of your web pages to be lead magnets. Place forms, Traffic Bridge everywhere to attract such traffic.
The temperature indicates the probability for such traffic to convert. What’s the mindset of the traffic reaching my landing page? How ready they’re to buy? How much of a pain they have from the problem that they need an immediate solution?
Each group needs special treatment and individualized communication. Each needs to come across a different bridge to arrive at your landing page.
A) Hot Traffic:
Traffic that probably know who you are, and know your product, maybe in your list, or just know the problem they're facing, searching for a cure and ready to pay. These are your early adopters.
B) Warm Traffic:
People who don’t know you, but they have a relationship with somebody you know. People who are aware of the solution. Can come from your JV partners. If you remember from the Innovation Adoption, those are part of the early Majority that might be interest in your offer but not ready to commit and buy.
C) Cold:
People who have no idea who you are. They don’t know the solution, your product or if you’re trustworthy. People you find on S.M or who click on your ads, or stumble across your blog somehow.
Understand that there are two distinctive journeys based on the type of your customer. Your early adopter (hot and warm traffic) is usually solely sold by your particular solution since it was built to address his specific pains and problems. That's why we don't waste offering them promotions and direct them towards the acquisition, activation than nurturing.
The early majority (col traffic), however, needs more convincing and usually are not ready to buy at the moment, so we need to activate them, offer them promotions and nurture them before making the sale.
This is the biggest mistakes startups do. They read marketing books and start implementing them. Startups in their validation stage need to market differently than the ones who achieved P/M fit. What you read is marketing activities for scaling purposes.
For early adopters (which is our focus now), you just need to test the delivery channel without promos, or incentives. You just need to test the value by itself. It doens't make sense to sell for 50% to find out later that people bought because it was a bargain or a cheap alternative. You want to solve a pain and sell the solution.