Why is it so hard to create a successful online business and get traffic? The reason for this is simple… way too many people are focusing on ‘just creating content’ and calling it quits! Guess what… when you are only creating content, you are putting yourself into a world of competition with another billion-plus sites doing exactly the same thing.
If you want to compete (and rank), you need to come up with some new and creative ways to not only create better content than the competition… but also get more attention in the process. This is especially true if you don’t have a big marketing budget to play around with.
To help with this process and give you a few real-life examples of what’s working for other brands, I’ve outlined five working methods for you to study and implement to your own sites.
Need more site traffic and conversions? Try these 5 methods!
Go Live with a Contest or Rewards Based Incentive
One of the most fun and exciting ways to bring attention to a business or brand, is through sweepstakes, contest or rewards based program. This is something we often see in the world of affiliate marketing, as the incentive to join a network or improve upon your previous earnings can easily be tracked and rewarded by the network.
To see an example of a network doing this right now, AdCombo is currently giving away a Ferrari California worth over $200,000, along with a bunch of other prizes like iPhones, iPads, Watches and much more. In the case of AdCombo, their contest takes place over the course of six months, so this leaves plenty of time for the ad network to promote the contest, while also measuring their results and ROI in the process. The length of a contest will also vary based on the rules and prize amounts given away.
No matter what type of contest or promotion you might be running for your audience, always make sure to have the prize as relevant as possible to your audience service or product. The last thing you want is to get a ton of sign ups for your contest to win a free iPad, and have none of the entries actually be interested in what you have to offer.
Run an Expert Round Up with Industry Leaders
If you’ve ever seen other expert round-up posts on other sites in the blogging or affiliate marketing space, you’ve likely seen my name and a few other industry experts in there as well. Whenever I have the opportunity, I always make sure to send over my contribution, as it’s a great way to bring additional exposure and reach for my sites and personal brand. At the same time, I also run such posts on my own sites to help provide value to my audience and send a ton of social shares and visits to my site as well. Here’s one we did with 82 experts on how to start a blog — also featuring John himself.
However, it’s not just the experts featured within these round ups that are getting all of the benefits, it’s actually the site in itself as well. The first step to having a successful round-up is to ask a great question and have lots of participants. Once this takes place, go live with your round up and send an email to all of the participates to let them know it’s live. Also, don’t forget to tag them on social media to make the social sharing aspect even easier.
Expert round ups work extremely well in all niches. This is one of the best free ways to bring attention and real traffic to your site, while also giving your audience some killer content in the process.
Create an Infographic and Promote it Hard
Infographics are still one of the best ways to provide extreme value to your audience, while also making it easy for people to share your best content in the process. Check out this article I did on why infographic marketing still works in 2017. I cover why every website or brand should be using infographics, and also mentioning a few resources and tools for creating your own.
Once you have an infographic created for your site, it’s time to write up a great article to go along with it. This will help with the actual sharing and SEO aspect of placing it on your site, but you aren’t finished yet. Now the real work starts, which is the outreach and promotion process.
One of the first things you should do is share your infographic content on all social platforms, then also submit it to all of these infographic directories. After this, take some time to reach out to other relevant sites in your niche and see if they would like to share your infographic on their sites. Improve your chances of getting responses to this request by also offering a unique 500+ word article to go along with or even some paid social promotion in the process.
For even more tips on how to double your traffic with infographics, be sure to check out this resource guide from Neil Patel.
Launch a Podcast and Take Advantage of New Audiences
Podcasting is growing at a rapid pace and it’s becoming more mainstream than ever before. This is as a result of two big things; Apple continues to push podcasting hard, and big name brands and celebrities are quickly getting in on the action. Now the question is, is podcasting right for your brand or business?
I personally launched my own podcast over a year ago and already have 80+ episodes in the books. I currently use it for branding and reaching new audiences… not as a source of income — however, it does bring in new opportunities all the time.
But don’t let me confuse… podcasting is not easy and it is very time consuming — but it’s also great for engaging with your audience in a way that text content simply never could. Another great thing about podcasting is that you can release new episodes whenever you like, and it doesn’t matter what the content is on, or how long each episode is.
Many top bloggers and entrepreneurs now have podcasts of their, you can see a list of a few top entrepreneur-based podcasts here, then make the decision for yourself if you should be podcasting as well.
Give Your Audience Premium Content & Discounts for Free
As much as we would like to convert our audiences into paying customers, it’s definitely not as easy as you think. This is especially true in the world of content creation and blogging. The majority of people online aren’t looking to buy something when they are looking for information… and when they are, they are going to want to trust the source first.
This is why blogging and content marketing is something that takes a lot of time, as you need to build a relationship with your audience and ultimately gain their trust. An excellent way to accomplish this is by providing extreme value for free, where others might charge.
A common example of this would be John Chow’s free book that he gives away through this site. In the e-commerce space, Tommie Copper has also become quite good at this as well, as they will offer a coupon for email signup. If you are going to their site to buy something, of course, you are going to submit your email for a quick 25% discount.
These are just two examples, but there are many other out-of-the-box methods for this to work as well, such as:
- Bonus coupon on next purchase/visit (great for repeat traffic)
- Free trial access to membership course (free to paid process)
- Attend upcoming webinar (real engagement with no sales)
- Retargeting (show ads/offers after visitor leaves your site)
These methods all work extremely well for providing extreme value to your audience, while also having a monetization play down the road. Don’t try to sell to your audience on the first visit. Build that relationship so they won’t ever think twice about buying from you in the future.
It’s All About Getting Users to Your Site
As I mentioned earlier, we are all creating content, but if we aren’t actively promoting it and doing so in different ways than your competition, you are just going to get lost in the mix of the other billion sites already out there.
Be sure to implement each of these methods into your own blog, brand or business and stick with the one or two that seems to work best. It might take some time and effort to get them going, but it will be well worth the investment in the long run.