Jenna Kutcher once said, “All roads lead back to your email list.” And while that’s a great point because having an email list is CRUCIAL, I believe all roads lead back to traffic. Because, here’s the deal, if you don’t get traffic, you’re not getting an email list.
Many marketing problems can be solved by traffic, but the question is: How do you get more traffic? There are 2 paths to consider when it comes to traffic: Paid and Unpaid.
For this article, I’m focusing on unpaid because I think it’s something you should 100% do whether you do paid or not. The caveat is that unpaid traffic can be a longer game (but it’s totally worth it). Here’s how you do it.
Traffic starts with giving the people what they want. Your audience is likely asking questions in relation to your platform. For example, if you’re a Dietitian, your audience may be asking you about:
If you’re a Realtor, you probably get questions about:
What I would do is come up with a list of questions your audience is asking. Then use these questions to create a long-term content plan. I’ve had clients come up with anywhere from 75-110 questions their audience is asking and then we map out a year-long strategy. So, getting traffic starts with creating a list of questions your audience is asking. That’s what I mean by “giving the audience what they want.” If they’re asking these questions, they want content on those topics.
Have you ever gone to a brand’s social feed or website and thought to yourself, “Wow, these people are all over the map. They literally talk about everything.”Fight every urge to be like those brands. It’s confusing for clients. What you want is for someone to think of your brand and immediately think, “They talk about x.”Remember, talking a lot about a little > Talking a little about a lot. The best place to start here is to look at the questions you came up with and look for common themes. I generally recommend having no more than 8 themes. Beyond that and it starts to get confusing.
Here’s an example: Kyler Creative Founder, Kyler Nixon, has a brand called Love Your First Year. They’re dedicated to serving engaged or newlyweds through their first year of marriage. If you go to their site, you’ll find that they have the following categories:
That’s it. As a follower, you know exactly what you’re getting because they never deviate from those topics. This establishes consistency, authority, and it allows people to associate you with a given topic. So, determine the lanes you want to run in and create the majority of your content in those lanes. That’s not to say you can’t do random posts sometimes, you totally can. Just make sure the bulk of your content falls within those categories.
There are a million brands and businesses out there, make sure your content stands out. Once you have your questions and content buckets, you need to re-title the questions into a title that piques people’s interest. For example, if one of your questions is, “How do I stage my home for a showing,” you could re-title it into, “5 Tips For a Perfectly Staged Home.” This speaks to what the reader wants (A Perfectly Staged Home) and lets them know what they’re in for (5 simple tips). The human brain craves bite-sized information. A study was done last year that found the human attention span is less than 8 seconds. That’s shorter than a mouse. So, when we see things like:
The brain loves it! Your list of questions isn’t written for readership, that’s why you have to re-title them into easily digestible and intriguing titles.
The first question you have to ask yourself when it comes to mapping out your content is, “What’s my cadence?” By that I mean, how often will you be releasing new content? Are you blogging once a week? Twice a week? If you know you’re going to blog once a week, then you may only need 52 questions. If you’re doing it twice, then double it. Once you’ve got your cadence figured out, use Google Sheets or Calendar to map out what content you’ll be creating for the foreseeable future. This will keep you accountable for your content creation. Another technique is to map it out based on your launches. If you’re doing a course launch on a specific topic, you may start dripping content about it weeks in advance. So, if I was doing quarterly launches during the year, I’d drip specific content teasing that launch about a month prior. During the off months when I’m not in pre-launch or launch mode, I’d just drip content normally.
Whether you’re blogging, vlogging, podcasting, or whatever - focus on creating content that answers the questions your audience is asking. In each one, spend time addressing the problem behind the question and then spend time speaking to the solution. But make sure it’s your voice that answers the question and not a shared article you saw on Forbes. I get a lot of people that say, “Brad, I’m not a writer.” That’s okay. Just shoot a video of yourself talking through the topic and then drop that file into a platform like Otter.AI. Otter will transcribe the video and then you can drop that transcription into a written blog. People crave authenticity. They want to see your face, hear your voice, or read your writing. They can spot stock photos a mile away (I admit, the graphic for this post is a stock photo!), they can sense when something is not genuine. So, be yourself and create content that comes from YOU.
Here is where you take a single piece of content and repurpose it across multiple platforms. Once your content is done, it’s time to send it out into the universe. Create written posts for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or even Medium. Then, utilize audio and video for Instagram Stories, Reels, YouTube, Podcasts, Facebook Lives, or TikTok.What you want to do is tease the original content. For example, if I created that post, “5 Tips to Perfectly Stage Your Home,” I might create an Instagram post that teases a few tips and encourages people to visit the blog for the rest. Whatever platform you’re on, encourage people to visit your blog “for more.”Here’s an example from a client of ours, Taking Cara Babies. Notice how she teases the content and calls you to visit the link in her profile for more help:
That is how you drive traffic. Create content that intrigues people enough to want to consume more. Be a person that provides help, help, and more help.
Use analytic platforms like Google Analytics and social metrics to see how many people are visiting your site. If you’re creating good content and leading people back to your site, you should see boosts in traffic. Now, to capitalize on this, you need some type of lead generation system on your site. Create a downloadable resource that people can opt into. But, we’ll cover that in another post.
It’s all about traffic. More traffic leads to sales. More traffic leads to more emails on your list. More traffic leads to growth. But, in order to get that traffic, you have to establish yourself as an authority and create content that’s irresistible. In order to do that, you have to give the people what they want - answer the questions they’re asking themselves (or they’re asking Google), and create content that answers those specific questions.You got this!
