This guest post is by Herman Diaz of SEO So Easy.
Would you let Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, YouTube and other sites control your online business? Or would you like to control it yourself?
Would you want to be in a position to lose your online income suddenly because Google decides to drop your rankings, or because Facebook shuts down your fan page or YouTube shuts down your channel? Of course, you’d like to control your own business and not be at the mercy of other sites.
To run a sustainable business online you need to create a marketing funnel where you siphon traffic from sources like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube into your funnel, and create your own traffic source.
Creating a traffic-siphoning funnel
Before you start creating your traffic-siphoning marketing funnel, you need to ask yourself one question:
What is the one important thing that’s needed to make money online?
An obvious answer would be people, right? In fact it’s not just people, traffic, or visitors that make you money online. It’s the relationship and trust you build with your visitors that will make you money online.
Relationships cannot be developed with your visitors in just one or two visits to your site. Therefore it is important you capture the names and email addresses of as many visitors as you can, so you can give yourself a chance to build a relationship with them.
To get their names and email addresses, you need to have a really good lead magnet. A lead magnet is a good piece of content like a video, PDF report, or a case study that will help your potential subscriber and will entice him to give you his or her name and email address.
Once your visitor enters their details into your site, they’ll get into you funnel—and that’s where you will begin the process of building a relationship and trust with them. And then, you can recommend products to them.
The traffic-siphoning funnel process in action
Here’s a process map that shows how the traffic-siphoning funnel works.
Firstly, your need to have three lead hunters to convert your visitors into subscribers and put them into the funnel.
Step 1: Create a blog lead hunter
Your niche blog is a lead hunter that should focus on two things. One is providing valuable and fresh content to your visitors; the other is capturing the names and email addresses of your visitors.
With fresh and valuable content rolling in regularly, your first-time visitor will make return visits to your blog, and they might even like share or tweet your content.
Make sure your blog has your best content on it. For that, you need to prepare a three-month content creation strategy; here’s what you need to do.
- You need to identify ten low-competition keywords with a decent search volume.
- You then need to write at least one 600- to 800-word articles for each of the keywords.
- These will be the ten pages on your blog that you will work on getting search engine traffic to, by raking on the search engines.
- Each of these pages will have a resource box that will send people to your lead capture page.
- You will then have to write a 300-word post every other day for the next 90 days and link each of these posts to the ten pages you have created.
This tactic will create a strong internal linking structure that will help with your SEO efforts.
Step 2: Create a squeeze page lead hunter
The sole purpose of this page, which I call a lead magnet, is to capture names and email addresses of visitors.
- Make sure you have an eye-catching header.
- Mention all the benefits of the free offer you’re giving away.
- Make sure to tell your visitors exactly what to do to get the free offer.
- Have the opt-in box above the fold of the page.
Step 3: Create a Facebook fan page lead hunter
The fan page will be a replication of your squeeze page, but it will be on Facebook, allowing you to collect names and email addresses of people visiting your fan page. The main idea of the fan page is to get as many people to opt-in or like the page.
Step 4: Driving traffic to the lead hunter pages
Here’s how to drive traffic from each of your lead hunters.
Blog traffic sources
These sources will send visitors to you blog and siphon subscribers to your funnel.
- Search engine traffic
- Guest blogging
- YouTube
You can try other traffic sources as well, but I usually start with these.
Lead magnet traffic sources
These sources will send visitors to you squeeze page and siphon subscribers to your funnel.
- From your blog
- Warrior special offers (Note: this is a paid service.)
- Solo ads (Also a paid service.)
- Youtube
- Twitter.
Facebook Fan page traffic sources
These sources will siphon send visitors to your fan page, and siphon subscribers to your funnel.
- Facebook PPC (A paid service)
- From your blog
- YouTube
Step 5: What happens in the funnel?
Now, as you get a steady flow of subscribers from your lead hunters, you need to set your autoresponder with some killer content. This content can be articles, videos, PDF reports—or you can even send subscribers back to your blog pages where you have already published good content.
Get your subscribers involved. Ask them to tweet, share, or Like the page you sent them. Also ask them to comment and ask questions, as this will help you build a good relationship with your list. They will feel like they know you not only because you send them quality emails, but because they interact with you on your blog and other places as well.
You also have to make sure you are honest with your subscribers from the beginning. Tell them that, apart from the great content, you are also going to recommend good products to them that will help them. Also be clear that you will make a commission when they purchase the recommended product using your link.
To summarize, in the first part of the funnel you need to focus on providing great content with incredible value to your subscribers. Be honest from the first email about what your intentions are. This combination of honesty and great content will build a strong relationship of trust with your subscribers.
Step 6: Promoting the right product
Relationships, trust, and honesty will go a long way in making your subscribers loyal to you. To keep up this loyalty, make sure you recommend good products to your list.
Research the product you are going to promote well—including, of course, trying it for yourself—so you can answer any question that are asked. Try getting a discount for the product you are promoting too, as this will increase conversions with your list. Also try giving subscribers a bonus, depending on the price of the product.
Make sure you treat your subscribers like friends, and recommend only products or services you think will genuinely help them. Remember, it will take you some time to develop a relationship and build trust with your list, yet it can all be lost with one bad recommendation. Be choosy with what you recommend.
If you are promoting your own product, make sure you over-deliver with that product. Go all-out to see that your product will really help them—this will only build credibility and your buyers will love you for it.
People who buy your products should get on your buyers’ list—and you have to take very good care of them! The people who have not yet bought from you can still enjoy the free content you provide.
Step 7: Back in the funnel
After you have finished promoting an affiliate offer or you own product, make sure you start the process of sending free content and start building up to the next promotion.
Conclusion
You have to have a business to make money! But you also have to remember that your business has to be built on a foundation of honesty, trust, and good relationships with your subscribers. That’s what will make you money consistently for years: a source of customers who trust you.
Herman Dias likes writing about SEO Tips, blogging, list building, traffic strategies and other Internet Marketing Topics, He also recently completed a Free Live Case Study on How to Rank on Page One of The Search Engines in 15 days for 55 keywords.
