Jayson and Sam discuss how to quickly drive traffic to a new website through a variety of tactics and channels.
--Episode 10 - How to Quickly Drive Traffic to a New Website--
Sam McRoberts, CEO of VUDU Marketing and the author of Screw the Zoo, and Jayson DeMers, CEO of EmailAnalytics, discuss How to Quickly Drive Traffic to a New Website.
With many decades of combined business and digital marketing experience, Jayson and Sam will walk you through everything you need to know as you go through your own entrepreneurial journey.
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How to Quickly Drive Traffic to a New Website - The Entrepreneur Cast
Show Length: 24:29
Sam: Welcome to "The Entrepreneur Cast" your source for tactical lessons in entrepreneurship from a cast of entrepreneurs. I'm Sam McRoberts.
Jayson: And I'm Jayson DeMers, and today we're going to talk about some of the fastest ways to drive traffic for a new website.Yeah, so every entrepreneur goes through the dilemma of, okay, I have a business, or I have a, you know, maybe a product or a service. And now I have a website. Now what? How do I get traffic to this thing? So, you know, the first thing that is obvious that comes to mind for fast ways to drive traffic would be paid ads. You know, you've got Google ads, Reddit ads, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, depending on what your product is. You can pick and choose from these and find what's going to work best for you, it's sort of a no brainer to do paid ads, but it is fast. And that's the topic of today's episode. So, I think it makes sense to start with, if you've got the money and you want the traffic, you can just go ahead and pay for it. And there are easy ways to do it. Sam, have you--?
Sam: I don't think there's any way faster other than paid ads, because you can literally turn on the traffic spigot as soon as you put dollars in, right?
Jayson: Yes.
Sam: Instantaneous or near instantaneous.
Jayson: Unfortunately, I've never had good luck with paid ads. I've had a lot more luck with things like SEO and social media. But I do know people who have had tremendous luck with paid ads. And so, I think it's worth a try to see if you can resonate with your audience. Sam, have you had any luck with paid ads?
Sam: Some over the years, it depends a lot on the company and the product and the message. Paid ads are one of those things where, yes, you can instantly start getting traffic but actually dialing it in and make sure making sure it's good traffic and traffic that's going to convert, that's a different story. And that usually takes a lot of money, and a lot of tests to figure out whether it is or isn't going to work for your business that offer. So, you need to have some cash in your pockets if you're going to fiddle with ads
Jayson: It's true.
Sam: And I think you know, and I should clarify, it's not that I've run paid ads and wasn't able to get traffic, I got traffic, it just didn't convert. So, that's what I mean, when I say I haven't had luck with it.
Jayson: Yeah, it's easy. You literally just, you know, you pay money and you pay some amount per click usually, or maybe it's some amount per thousand people who viewed your ad whether or not they clicked, but the real question is, how many of them actually came to your website and then took an action, a conversion action, be it starting a free trial or a purchase or join your email list or whatever?
Sam: Exactly. So, number two, I mean, a next logical step would be assuming you have something that's actually newsworthy, put out a press release. So, press releases are fairly cheap, there's a lot of places like PR web and PR Newswire that will syndicate those out. And then, you know, reporters, journalists, writers, mind those places for things that sound interesting. And then they may reach out to you to interview you, you could get some really interesting links out of that if something you have is newsworthy and actually gets picked up, but at the very least, it's going to be spread out to a bunch of different press release sites. Whether that's any good for you or not, is debatable. I mean, the links on those pages are pretty much worthless at this point, Google filters out that kind of stuff. But in terms of, you know, just getting visibility for your company and potentially traffic to the site, that can be really effective.
Jayson: Yeah.
Sam: I've used both of these PR web and PR Newswire and they have some interesting benefits, some sites will automatically syndicate. What I mean by syndicate is they will republish a press release from these sites as long as it's within the category that they publish on. So, for instance, I have had like Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, publish press releases which is obviously a huge site that gets a lot of traffic. Now, whether those press releases got much traffic or visibility, I'm going to say I doubt they got much because I think they're kind of buried in a section of the site where they're not going to give it much love. But here is an interesting thing, this is one of the top benefits, I think that you can get out of a press release. I have seen press releases rank really well in search results for the brand name of the company that sent the press release.
So, what this means is if you've got a brand new company and you want to get some organic traction for your brand name, and maybe push down some negative results, or even just defend against potential future negative results, that's called ORM, by the way on your online reputation management, you can send out a press release and if it includes your brand name in the in the headline, which is common for press releases, you can actually start securing and locking down those spots in Google.
Jayson: So, is it a traffic driving mechanism?
Sam: It can be, but it does have other benefits that a lot of people don't usually consider. So, yeah, I like press releases.
Jayson: No, I mean, I used to use them back in the day, I honestly haven't put out a press release in a long time other than, you know, for like a startup that I worked at a couple years back, but for the most part, I don't typically use them. So, you've listed some interesting ways to use it, though. I hadn't thought about using a press release for reputation management. So yeah,
Sam: It works pretty well.
Jayson: So, the third step that I would take would be a content strategy. Now you might be thinking, but a content strategy is a long-term play. And this episode is about fast ways to get traffic. And to that I say, yes, you are right, on both accounts, because it is a long-term play. However, you can also see short term fast traffic from a content strategy, it just depends on how you play it. So, with your content strategy, you want to focus on the three mains, I'm going to say media for content, that's going to be text video. And, I say these days audio, because as if podcasting is something new. It's new for us, Sam because you and I just started it. But yes, I know that podcasts have been around for like 15 years or something and we're late to the game.
Sam: Even though that's the case, I still think its early days as a medium. There are still radio channels, you know, Sirius FM, Howard Stern, like there's still a lot of traditional media that could move over into the podcasting world. So, I still think even though it's been around a while, it's early days.
Jayson: Well, I saw a stat the other day that I think there's, right now there's something like 750,000, correct me if I'm wrong, Sam, if you've seen a different stat.
Sam: 750,000 podcasts right now, on Apple.
Jayson: Okay. Well compare that to the number of blogs that are on the web, which is brilliant, and it starts to feel like podcasting is a pretty new space. When you talk about content mediums or look at the number of videos on YouTube, that's also well into the hundreds of billions. So, podcasts might not be that old and established as even though it's been around for a while, I think people have been hesitant to start one. And I think we are an example of that Sam, we're late to the game.
Sam: Yeah, I also think, it's a lot like virtual reality, right? It's been around technically since what the 60s or 70s. But it's just now starting to ride that exponential curve up and get better. Still not quite there yet, but it's getting there. And once it does get there, it'll be enormous. I think podcasting may be the same.
Jayson: Yeah, I agree. So, here's what you do with there. And now that we've talked about the sort of three main content types, text, video and audio, what you want to do for short term traffic is ride trending topics or news. We are in the midst of the Corona virus crisis as we record this, and one thing that I'm seeing everybody do and I'm doing this myself, is pretty and we're doing this as a podcast. In fact, just today we released our episode on Corona virus predictions, on how the Corona virus will permanently change the world. So, this is a good example of what I'm recommending here, which is ride trending topics or newsworthy topics. If people are interested in a certain topic, and you can sort of align your content with that topic, you will get far more clicks, views and traffic and shares. So, that's an example of using your content strategy for short term gain. And now when you ride those trending topics, it's less likely that that will be interesting long term, right? Once the Corona virus crisis is over, hopefully in a year or hopefully less, but maybe a year or two. It might not be so interesting for people to read content about it or listen to content or watch content about it.
Sam: It depends on how you spin it. I mean, if you can spin it into some generic prepper slash pandemic, you know, preparedness, I think there's some alliteration right there. I think you could have something that lasts much longer. I mean, this obviously isn't going to be the last pandemic that we face as a species, especially since we're packing ourselves more and more densely into cities. And, yeah, I think we'll see more of this. But if you can create content that stands the test of time, what we would call evergreen content, or even content that could be converted after the fact into evergreen content, that can be effective.
Jayson: That's true. And you know, Sam, the episode that I was just talking about, that is you and me making predictions about how Corona virus will change the world permanently. Well, that actually gives us an opportunity to go back after this is all over, maybe even a couple years down the road and say hey, let's see how our predictions turned out. Let's look at a door so that we can do a new episode on that. And that can be fun. So, there's an example, maybe you've had to take short term gain, and you can keep leveraging it down the line. So, prediction for that.
Sam: You should put that on the books like once a year, maybe at the start of the year predictions for that year. And then we check ourselves and do new predictions the next year.
Jayson: I'm down. I love it.
Sam: All right. You heard it here, first, folks, we have a new segment in future shows. So, just to end up on content, just to end my little bit here on content strategy. I would, I do want to be sure to mention that proper SEO and keyword research upfront is critical for content strategy. And even if you don't ride trending topics, you can find strategic keywords that don't have a lot of competition, you can publish content that's really good. And you can get fast traffic for that keyword, I've done this with several blog posts at email analytics. So, while content strategy is general thought of as a long-term game, you can get short term gain out of it, if you do it strategically. So, I'll end up on that.
Jayson: Agreed. So, next would be the influencer marketing. Now there are a lot of different ways to do this. I mean, there's micro influencers, there's major influencers, there's brands, celebrities, there's all sorts of people that you could partner up with to help extend the reach of the content that you're creating. But these can be a really fast way to bring people onto your site, because you're pairing up with somebody who already has a large audience. And I'll give you an example. So, Oprah is famous for the Oprah effect, right? She brings up something on her show and instantly like the website crashes, everything is sold out everywhere, you know, huge effect. Tim Ferriss is also known for this, he'll mention a product that he's found that he really likes and it again, crashes the website sells out on their site, sells out on Amazon. It's hilarious, but it's also awesome. So, if you can partner up with the right source of influencers, somebody whose audience is your perfect target audience, whose interests align with your interests, you can very quickly get potentially large amounts of traffic and sales revenue from influencer marketing.
Sam: Yeah, let's say I have an idea. Let's go get Tim Ferriss to recommend our show on his show. I mean, I could ask him, I doubt he'd do it. But I could ask, I'll probably feel a little dirty asking though.
Jayson: No. All right. You know what we should do? We should do an episode where we talk about like, lessons. we've learned, the books he's written, our favorite podcast guests, do that and we'll send it to him.
Sam: How about lessons we learned from the four-hour workweek and then we go, and then we hit up, Tim, and that's ego bait. Hope Tim's not listening because he's going to totally, he's going to get our strategy. I don't think, I don't know, I seriously doubt it. But you know.
Jayson: Okay. Well, hopefully Tim's not listening. But I guess everyone else knows our strategy now. So, we're going to give it a go. All right. Yeah. So, influencer marketing. So, the next bucket would be social media. Social media is a good way to get fast traffic. So, there's a few ways you can do this, contests are a popular way. There are certain apps, I think one of them is KingSumo. Sam have you used that one or at least are you familiar with that one?
Sam: Yeah.
Jayson: So, you can use you can use an app like KingSumo to run a contest, to get people to come to your website, leave a review, gosh I don't know, review a product, even just follow you or even just retweet a tweet, you know, anything you can think of, you can run a contest and people can gain an entry for taking that action. I don't have much experience with a contest, but I know a lot of people who do, so that's why I'm recommending it here. Sam, have you ever run a contest? Have you got experience with that?
Sam: You know, I feel like I probably have at some point, but it's been a long time, they're a good way to quickly build a list, but they're not usually effective for building a relationship. Because, you know, it's too transactional, you know, the people probably are not interested in you, they're interested in whatever it is you're giving away. And so, yeah.
Jayson: Yeah, and that's a really good point, actually. Because if are giving away and Sam, you made this point on an earlier show, but if you're giving away something that is generic, something that anybody would want, like, let's say, an Amazon gift card, you're going to attract just general rondos who are participating in your contest. And that's really not who you want. You want to build up people who are in your target audience. So, the way you do that is you offer something that specifically your target audience would like. So Gosh, what--?
Sam: It could be time with you. It could be a one on one call. It could be something signed by you depending on what you do. It could be a freebie from your store, you know, something directly related to you and what you do. And that would attract only people who are in or are interested in that. It could be, if you're a travel blogger, I was going to say if if you're a travel blogger, it could be a trip that a trip is also a little too generic. It could be a trip where they travel with you to a place, that'd be interesting. But yeah, essentially try and come up with something where it's not going to appeal to everybody, it would only appeal to somebody in your target audience, or who knows or is interested in you and your brand.
Jayson: Yep, that's good advice. So, moving on from contest, but keeping on the social media category here, I do want to point out that right now LinkedIn has fantastic organic reach. So, if you and I are connected on LinkedIn, maybe you see my stuff, because LinkedIn is really great right now. And so, it's a good time to hop on the LinkedIn train and leverage their organic reach. And I'm just talking about you know, you just put a post-up on your page and a lot of people see it. So, that's really nice right now.
Sam: I really wonder how many of those are bots?
Jayson: Honestly, like, I don't know, hardly anyone who actually uses LinkedIn. Some I mean, a couple, but it's only like the self-promotion people who seem to use LinkedIn. So, I don't know if it's just a self-promotional circle that's going on or bots or, you know if people are actually starting to use that as a social network.
Sam: I mean, maybe.
Jayson: I will admit that I have been using LinkedIn, but mostly just perusing other people's stuff, because there's a lot of interesting stuff that I'm seeing in my feed lately. So, I am a real person who's actually been using it. And you know, sometimes I'll drop comments and stuff. I mostly use it to try and drive awareness in a marketing sense. So yeah, you know, but I am actually using and reading another people's content. So, who knows?
Sam: There you go. We'll see.
Jayson: So, a couple of other things I want to point out going live is big right now, whether it's on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, people are doing it and they're getting a lot of reach when they do it. So, that's something to try, use hashtags. Hashtags are your way of getting into the conversation that other people are having that's relevant to you. So, you know, if you post something about remote work, which is all the rage right now, then use hashtag working from home, hashtag remote working or remote work, something like that. And that can extend the reach of your post. A couple other things would be you can use tools to extend your reach. One of them is buffer, which is good for scheduling posts, too, and you can schedule what time they'll post to each of your accounts, which is nice. You can also use Meet Edgar to automatically repost content. So, what you do is you add content to its sort of content pool, and then it will decide when to publish stuff to your accounts, so that you can just kind of set it and forget it. That's pretty nice. And then one final tool that I want to shout out, is a tool called Quuu Promote, and I say it that way because it's spelled, Q- U- U-U Promote.
So, just go Google that, and I like this tool, I've been using it for about a month or two. And what it does is, you input content that you want other people to share on their social media accounts. And the editors at Quuu Promote will go and they review every single submission, and if it's good enough, they will approve it. And then they will automatically send it out to their network of people who have signed up to say, hey, just share good stuff on my social media accounts so that I don't have to worry about it. Yes, so it's really it's actually really interesting. So, if you are one of those people whose like, I know I need to be tweeting and I know I need to be posting on all my social media accounts, but I just don't know what to post and I don't want to give it the time to go find the stuff. You can go link your account with Quuu Promote, and let their editors figure out good stuff to post onto your account.
Sam: Can you restrict it semantically? Can you say only--?
Jayson: Yes.
Sam: Cool. All right,
Jayson: And they've got like 150 different categories or themes. So, you know, remote work, for instance, is one category, productivity is one, sales, marketing, whatever you want to tweet about, there's probably a very specific category that you can choose. And you can select what categories you want for content. And similarly, when I submit my content for the editors to approve so that my shit gets tweeted out and shared by other people, I get to pick exactly one category. So, what is the one category that fits best for this post that you want people to share? So, it's pretty cool. It does cost money, it's a paid tool, but so far, I'm digging it and I'm seeing a fair bit of clicks and traffic I think in the first month, I think it drove something like 200 or 250 clicks to my website, which is not bad, considering those are people who presumably are real people on social media, who clicked the link because it looked interesting to them.
Sam: That's fascinating.
Jayson: Yeah, it's an interesting concept. So, shout out to Quuu Promote. So, number six, and the last thing I think we're going to hit it would be guest blogging slash guest, podcasting, guest YouTubing you're essentially being a guest on somebody else's established platform. And just like influencer marketing, this is an opportunity for you to piggyback on somebody else's audience and the efforts that they've put in to grow their own presence. And this is super effective, you know, if you're able to put a guest blog site in a guest blog, once upon a time on moz.com. Moz is huge in the SEO industry. And so, that was really effective. Guest podcasting, I mean, I've been on a couple of really big podcasts, haven't done anything with YouTube, but again, in each instance you are exposed to a whole new subset of people that you wouldn't have otherwise. And they'll hit up your social profiles, visit your website, you know, quickly, you can get pretty quick traffic just by doing some of these things. And they're generally not that hard. A lot of podcasters are constantly looking for guests, especially podcasters, who run a daily show, or they do interviews. Like it's hard to keep your pipeline full when you're doing one every single day. Being a guest on a YouTube channel, you know, maybe if you're a streamer or a gamer like partnering up with another streamer to do a co stream. Guest blogging, in particular, I think can be really beneficial because not only does it expose you to a new audience and new audience potentially bring traffic to your site, but it's also a really good way to get links. So, a lot of benefits in doing those.
Sam: Absolutely. I am a serial guest blogger so big; I can definitely vouch for guest blogging and how it has tremendously helped my career and my reach.
Jayson: As for guest podcasting, Sam, you've done a lot more of it than me. I think, I've been on four or five guests podcast, or I've guested four or five times on other podcasts. I should say. You've done it more than--?
Sam: A dozen or maybe even more.
Jayson: Yeah. So, it's not only fun, but it's really good for networking and you made some really good contacts if you meet a host of a podcast of an established one, they probably have a lot of connections because of all the guests that podcast hosts do. And so, it's really valuable, not just from a traffic standpoint, but from a networking standpoint, which is important for all entrepreneurs,
Sam: And you can use it to piggyback. So, just like the first time you put on a free event at your local Microsoft campus or something and you can say, all right, I did a lecture at Microsoft on this topic and you leverage that to step up and step up. Same thing with this you get on a couple of small podcasts and do well and then you leverage that to get on to something bigger and then you go into something mainstream and you can use that to kind of level up your credibility as well. It's super.
Jayson: Yeah, that is really good advice. I call that the staircase method or maybe somebody else calls it that, but you can call whatever you want, but it works. That is the method that I used to work my way up from small time blogs when I was first starting out as a guest blogger, to get all the way up to writing for Forbes Entrepreneur, Huffington Post, Business Insider, Search Engine, Land and the list goes on. It is, you start small, you leverage your successes at a small level to level up one step higher, level those and then leverage those successes to level up one step higher, and so on, until you reach the top. It really works. Very effective. Yep.
Sam: So, that covers our six steps or tactics for how to get traffic to a new website quickly. I hope that you found these things useful. If there's anything that you have any questions on, feel free to get in touch with Samurai you can find Samurai.
Jayson: Hey, you say it's like you know, like a samurai.
Sam: Right.
Jayson: Okay, so our new nickname is samurai.
Sam: So, tweet us, or you can send us an email at the entrepreneur cast@gmail.com.
Jayson: Cool. Thank you so much for listening. And it would help us out, subscribe to the podcast on whatever app you choose to listen to leave a review, rate us, that would help us a lot.
Sam: Thank you so much.
Jayson: Thanks a lot, guys.