Leads are the lifeblood of any business. Without consistent, predictable leads, you’re hoping and praying for new customers, and that’s no way to build a business.
Now, there are a lot of ways to bring leads into your business:
Referrals, content marketing, organic traffic, affiliate marketing, but the BEST way is with paid advertising, or “paid traffic.”
Why? Because being able to PAY for traffic means that you’re building a machine that brings you reliable, consistent income day after day.
There’s never been a better time to run ads online.
Adults in the U.S. spend an average of 11 hours a day in front of a screen.
Globally, the daily average of time spent online was almost 7 hours during the pandemic, up from 3.2 hours at the beginning of lockdowns.
And together with that, 53% of all global ad spend is expected to be online, while TV and print budgets are declining.
1The problem is, running paid traffic comes with its own set of challenges and struggles.
Which is why I’ve put together a three-part article series on running paid traffic in 2021 and beyond.
ASK Method Company CMO Elliott Pittman, who is an expert when it comes to traffic, shares some of his wisdom about what it really takes to run traffic profitably.
Elliott has been doing digital marketing since 2003. He’s run and sold a couple of ad agencies and been the advertiser of record for companies like match.com, All Web Leads, and Starbucks Coffee.
He’s also run marketing for a lot of mom and pops and have taken them from pre revenue to 5 million, 10 million and even 100 million in revenue….so he knows his stuff.
Today’s topic is all about the 5 most common traffic “Oopses” and how to fix them…let’s dive in!
Mistake #1 is focusing on the wrong KPIs. KPI stands for “Key Performance Indicator” and that just means the data on your performance.
Depending on who you are and what type of business you’re in, there is specific data that you should be tracking and looking at to see the best performance.
But sometimes, the reports you get from the ad platforms can be hard to read and understand, or your tracking isn’t set up correctly to give you the data that you need, which means that you can’t make the best decisions because you don’t have the right data, or you’re focusing on the WRONG numbers.
Mistake #2 is ignoring the competition. The best part about digital advertising is the wealth of DATA that’s available, if you’re paying attention.
Which means that you can see what your competitors are testing, what ads they’re running, what kind of language they’re using.
NOT for the purposes of copying what they’re doing, but you can leverage the time, energy and money that they’ve spent to get their own data and use it to give you a leg up on kicking off your own campaigns.
You can use free tools like SpyFu to figure out what they’re doing, and then take that data and use it as you build out your own campaigns.
Mistake #3 is a lack of a “hub and spoke” content approach. Think about it this way: you want to make sure that your message and your content are consistent across all the different networks.
The “hub” is your core message and content…and the spokes are all the different platforms that that content appears on.
This is so important because in today’s marketing environment, you need to make sure people are seeing your ad on an ongoing basis.
And so you want to make sure that when they’re on different networks they’re seeing a similar message that’s going to break through to them and that’s going to remind them.
Even if they saw a two second clip of your ad, they’re going to be reminded when they go to another network, “oh yeah that’s right, I remember that thing.”
So building a hub and spoke approach across different networks, using the RIGHT framework and strategy, is key.
Mistake #4 is not meeting your customers where they are. Sometimes we tend to advertise in the ways that appeal to us, not necessarily where our customers are.
For example, the average Facebook user is in their 40’s and 50’s, whereas Instagram tends to attract a younger demographic as its user base.
And on some days, YouTube actually gets higher traffic, and certainly they are spending more time on the site.
So, where your audience is spending their time will vary. Which means you need to VARY your traffic sources too and meet your audience where they are.
Mistake #5 is being dependent on one network. This is by far the biggest mistake because one of the biggest things that we saw in 2021 is the iOS change from Facebook.
And for a lot of people, the ground shook under their feet because they were ONLY advertising on Facebook. Suddenly, everything is turned upside down and they are scrambling.
Well, guess what? This isn’t the first time there’s been an “apocalypse” in the advertising world. And it won’t be the last.
And there are two things you can do to protect yourself. #1 is to diversify your traffic sources.
And #2 is to take a Proactive Approach to running traffic, as opposed to a reactive approach.
We’ll talk MORE about what that means in the next installment of this series, including some big changes that have happened BESIDES the iOS changes (that you might not have known about), but in the meantime…
I’ve got something BIG coming up on running paid traffic. If you want to be the first to know about it, enter your name and email below to get on the priority list!
And stay tuned for part 2!
1 https://www.visualcapitalist.com/evolution-global-advertising-spend-1980-2020/