The Three Traffic Sources to Leverage in Your Marketing | 68
There are three different types of traffic that you can leverage to grow your business and today we are going to discuss exactly what each of them is and their pros/cons so that you can decide what is the best method to grow your business.
The three sources of traffic you can leverage are…
organic traffic
paid traffic
collaborative traffic
ORGANIC- This is traffic that you're generating from organic sources. You are not paying for these. This can be traffic found through your social media, blog, podcast or YouTube, SEO, Google, or Pinterest.
Pro:
Generating traffic this way is free! This is a huge benefit, especially at the beginning of your business when the budget is smaller.
Con:
it can be very difficult. You have to put out consistent, high-quality content and work hard to get your content into the right people’s hands.
It’s a long game! Blog posts and other long-form content can take a long time to be categorized by search engines so your posts are still being found years from now when people are searching the web.
Organic traffic is where most people begin when starting their business. By using their social media platforms and just getting out there consistently!
PAID- This method uses ads that are targeted at getting more eyes on your brand or content.
Pro:
it can be REALLY fast, easy, and not too expensive! Personally, I have run ad campaigns for only a few dollars a day and an extra 2,000 people have seen those ads. Paid ads can really speed up the rate of people becoming aware of your brand.
Con:
you shouldn’t go the paid ads route if you don’t have an entire funnel built out. Without the entire funnel, especially if you’re unsure about data and tech, then ads can quickly become overwhelming and feel like a waste.
You truly need to understand what you’re doing and have a plan and strategy in place!
COLLABORATIVE- this is when you team up with another person/people on a project to cross-pollinate your audience with someone else’s.
Examples:
a guest on someone’s podcast
guest blogging
YouTube collab, going live on Facebook together
a conference or summit
Pro:
quickly gets you in front of a new, large group of people who can now become buyers or a part of your audience.
usually free! You will put in more time using this strategy, but spend less money.
Con:
collabs need to be properly vetter to ensure the audiences are a match
potentially put in lots of time and energy into a mismatched collaboration without getting the benefits of new audience/buyers.
it can sometimes be hard to find a time that works for yourself and your collab partners.
I suggest spending at least 1 hour a week finding people who you can collab with, pitching your idea to them, and continuing to do this until you hit at least 6 figures.
Whichever strategy you choose, make sure it's a good fit for you and your business needs!
Let me know what you think and don't forget to follow me on Instagram @heyitsjenzaia and tune in next Saturday for more business tips and strategies!
xo,
Jenzaia
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Episode Transcript:
Jenzaia: Hey there, I'm Jenzaia and this is Market Scale Grow
Jenzaia: A podcast created for ambitious teacherpreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money. With weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers just like you. My goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy. So you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dreams.
Jenzaia Okay, so before we jump into the episode, I am super excited to share a brand new freebie with you. It's my targeting ideas for Facebook ads. If you've dabbled in Facebook ads, or done them and you've tried them, and you're just looking for some fresh inspiration for your audiences, this freebie is for you. I share my top Facebook ad targeting groups for you so that you can have inspiration and find those people that are perfect for what you have to offer. From warm audiences to cool lookalike audiences to cold interest-based audiences. I cover all three in this freebie, head to marketscalegrow.com/audiences to grab your copy today.
Jenzaia: Hello, and welcome to Market Scale Grow. As you know, I'm your host Jenzaia and this is a Saturday Strategy Session. I am super excited about today's episode, I'm excited about every episode. I don't know why I have to say the beginning. But I am excited about today's episode because we are going to be talking about the three different types of traffic that you can create, I guess, in your business. And we're going to compare and contrast them and what I think the benefits of each one are. And maybe some of the downsides for each of them too. So three different traffic sources. The first one is organic traffic. The second one is paid traffic. And then the third one is collaborations, or yeah, let's just stick with collaboration. So collaborative traffic. Now, before I dive into the specifics, I do want to say that in a lot of ways organic traffic and collaboration, traffic could be classified as one, but I'm separating them because there are different needs and different ways of going about it. And it really is its own category. So again, the three different types of traffic that you can leverage in your business are organic traffic, paid traffic, and collaborative traffic. So let's jump into the first one organic traffic. So this is traffic that you're generating from organic sources. So you're not paying for these and some examples would be social media, your blog, or podcast, YouTube, if you have a YouTube channel, so the long-form content, anything that's SEO, so search engine optimized that people are finding you through Google or another search engine, like Pinterest, or YouTube. So using the Pinterest pins and optimizing your traffic in that way, one of the big benefits of organic traffic is that it's free. That is a huge benefit or huge draw, especially the beginning of a business when you don't necessarily have a lot of capital to invest, but you do have more time and more energy. So you're able to put your time and energy into those organic efforts, I highly recommend that you start with your content marketing. So that's your long-form content, blog, podcast or video content that you're putting out consistently every single week. So that you can develop a wealth of knowledge that explains shows you as an expert that people can go to the find you through search and if they find you on social media, then maybe they can stumble onto your blog and learn more about you.
Jenzaia You also can absolutely 100% promote this information to draw in more people to your world and to nurture them through your sales funnel. So that's the big draw of organic traffic is that it's free. Now, one of the big drawbacks one of the big downsides to organic traffic is that it takes a really long time, you have to be putting out consistent high quality content. And you have to be doing a lot of hard work to be getting it out there and getting it into the hands of the right people and having the right people read it or listen to it, whatever it may be and so organic traffic is a long game. That's another piece is that it's a long game. Those blog posts take time to be categorized or catalogued by the search engines so that years to come people are still being redirected or your blog post is popping up for them when they're searching. But the drawback to that is the timepiece and so it takes time again to build that wealth of knowledge to put that, oh, all of those content pieces, it takes time for people to share it, and for other people to find out about it and for you to really pick up steam. So it can be really hard and it can be frustrating and fighting the algorithm is no joke like it is can be extremely painful. But this is where most people start is the organic content marketing, using social media, and just getting out there organically.
Jenzaia The second traffic source that you can leverage in your business is paid traffic. Now, this is where you're putting ads been behind your content to get it in front of more people. I'm specifically talking right now about brand visibility and awareness ads and nurture ads where you're promoting either high quality, high-value long-form content, or you're promoting high quality, high-value social media posts, just to get more eyes on your brand more eyes on your content. The big pro to this is it can be really, really fast. I've had these kind of ad campaigns up for my own business. And I've had with only running a couple dollars a day for my ads and extra like 2000 people who have seen those ads, and that's 2000 more eyes on my business. So it can really, really speed up the rate of people just becoming aware of your brand. Now, I do not recommend that you run these ads without an entire funnel built out, which is one of the drawbacks. Yes, they are quick and easy and not too expensive to run but without the entire funnel. And I like to call it an invisible funnel because there are ads that are supporting all the pieces. And people are invisibly moving through it based on their actions, but you can't really see anything. So people are moving through this invisible funnel, but you need to have it set up. So the other drawback is that if you don't know what you're doing, if you aren't sure about the data, if you are overwhelmed by the tech, then Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Pinterest ads, any kind of ads can very, very, very quickly become too much and feel like a waste of money and feel like your hard work is going nowhere. So you really need to understand what you're doing and have a plan and a strategy in place. But paid traffic will speed up the process.
Jenzaia Okay, the third type of traffic that you can leverage in your business is collaboration or collaborative traffic. And this one might actually be my favorite. Yes, I'm a Facebook ad strategist. Yes, I fully believe in Facebook ads and marketing and those pieces. But I think that collaboration is my favorite way to drive new traffic because you are cross-pollinating your audience with someone else's audience. So usually what happens is, you're a guest on their podcast, they're a guest on your podcast, and you each share it out. And then there's a whole new group of people learn about you, you can also do it with guest blogging, or a YouTube collaboration. You can go live on Instagram together, you could do some sort of collaborative Summit, or convention or conference, anything like that, where you and at least one other person. But in the case of a conference or a summit, it might be like 10, or 20 other people are all working together, you're all promoting this piece of content or this event to your audiences. And so you're getting in front of that many more eyes. So if my audience is 1000 People, I'm sharing it to 1000 then the other person's audiences 1000, they're sharing it to their 1000. So that is now 2000 people that I have shared my business with, which is absolutely amazing. And it's a really, really great way to get in front of more people really quickly.
Jenzaia The other really cool thing about collaborations is if you are properly vetting the collaborations, then you know that their audience is a good match for your product or service. And so as a Facebook ad strategist, it's not a good fit for me to potentially go on to somebody podcast and talk about running, I love running, I ran a couple half marathons, I'm waiting for spring to come because I'm like itching to go for a run. And I just haven't been able to this be winter, I just can't bring myself to do it this year, despite the fact anyway, this is a total tangent. I love winter running, but just not this year. So I'm really excited for spring. And for me to go and talk about running and my passion for running. And the half marathons that I've ran in the training that I'm doing this summer, and blah, blah, blah, is great and could be quite interesting. And I'm sure there are people that would love it. But it's not going to bring in the right people for my business. I'm not going to get any attention as a Facebook ads strategist by talking about running. And so by properly vetting and really thinking about these collaborations before you do them, you can ensure that the audience is a good fit and that it will bring people into your audience that maybe aren't buyers today that you can nurture and grow relationships with and then have them become buyers down the road. So that is a huge, huge benefit of collaborative traffic. Now the downside is if you're not working Really vetting it, then it's a mismatch. Also, it can be a lot of time and energy spent. So I've prepped for and I've been part of a few different conferences, and sometimes it's pretty easy and sometimes as well organized, and it's very streamlined. But other times, it can be almost like a nightmare, where you don't know what you're expected to do or when to do it or the format that you're expected. And then you have to redo it, and communication kind of sucks. So it can take a lot of time, it can also be challenging to find a time that works. So when you're setting up a podcast for you, for example trying to find a time that works for both people's schedules sometimes can be a challenge. Now, that's not a challenge that I've ever encountered, maybe one time that I encountered, but mostly no but it can still be something to think about when you're considering collaborative traffic.
Jenzaia: Now, another benefit of this kind of traffic is that generally speaking, it is free, which is really, really nice. But it is that time versus money as well. So you're putting in that time, but spending less money. And so that's definitely a benefit is that you can do these things for free. And my coach actually talks about being sure or prioritizing, creating these relationships and looking for collaboration opportunities, and working on it for at least one hour every single week of just finding people that you can collaborate with pitching these collaborations with until you've had at least six figures and then changes need to be made and your marketing strategy and your business strategy and all that but it until you've hit six figures, this can be a really, really easy and powerful way to expand your audience for low cost, but high time investment.
Jenzaia: Right. So okay, so just as a quick recap the three types of traffic sources that you can leverage in your business, are organic traffic, paid traffic and collaborative traffic, I would absolutely love to hear what you think about these three different types of traffic, which one that you love the most. So reach out to me on Instagram, I'm @heyitsjenzaia I'm looking forward to hearing your answers and I will be back with another episode next Saturday. Thank you so much for listening.
Jenzaia: Thank you so much for listening to Market Scale Grow. If you're ready to build your email list and generate consistent leads on autopilot, then we would love to partner with you. Our growth package is perfect. For course creators, service writers, and coaches looking to inject their list with fresh leads so that they can amplify their amazing program and get it out to new people. This six-week package is perfect for you if you have a proven lead magnet that you're ready to turn into an established lead generation machine. To get started today, head to marketscalegrow.com/worktogether, fill out the application and someone from my team will be in contact with you to schedule a free strategy session to ensure that it's a good fit and to get you on the path to consistent lead generation with Team JD. Thank you again for listening and I look forward to working with you