If you’re looking to build a massive organization, the name of the game is having leads…and LOTS of them. In the late 90′s when I first started marketing online it was SUPER easy to generate leads organically…almost too easy.

Then, Google came along 8 years ago and drastically changed the game. At that time, you could literally have your own monopoly owning both paid and organic search. So, when someone typed in a keyword phrase, nearly any result they clicked on would lead to one of your websites.

Ahhh…and then 2006 came. The first “smacks” took place. Competition got pretty intense…everyone and their brother began bidding on keywords with all the big platforms and organic traffic intensified too.

Those who sharpened their pencil made the cut…those who didn’t – well, they’re floundering right now trying to play “catch up” with all the changes that have taken place (and will continue).

Those who understood the relevance of “always wanting more traffic” THRIVED during these times because they knew that having only 1 source of traffic wasn’t in their best interest.

Here’s a screen shot of one of my Google campaigns for a month’s worth of traffic earlier this year on the content network.

Screen Shot Of Google Content Network

672 leads at $2.39 a piece. Not shabby…

Then came “Google Knockout” around August of this year. They changed the game again. More marketers, that didn’t keep their pencil sharp, were once again scrambling for sources to generate leads.

The savvy marketers had already been using FaceBook, article marketing, solo ads, ezines, other PPC networks, etc for months or even years prior to the big Google KO. Not because they’re any more “gifted” or intelligent than you, but because they know it’s MISSION CRITICAL to be well rounded and have multiple streams of traffic.

Traffic is the lifeline of your business. Without it, the Internet becomes a hobby to play on FB, twitter and check email.

If you’re serious about using the Internet as your personal ATM machine, don’t just get proficient at understanding how traffic works, let it be one of your PASSIONS.

Get REALLY good at understanding the “traffic game”. Your business, family and checking account will thank you for years to come.

This is the single, biggest variable that separates the “DOERS” from the audience members.

Here are some of my top traffic sources that I’m currently using. This is like having a “sneak peak” into my business. Understand that without traffic, you don’t have a business – don’t just read them, USE THEM:

1. Article marketing

2. Video marketing (hint: record your articles using camstudio.org and don’t be surprised when they get indexed by Google within a couple of hours).

3. Bing/Yahoo PPC

4. FB Advertising

5. Solo Ads/Ezine Marketing

6. Organic/SEO traffic

Those 6 traffic sources drive about 85% of my total traffic. The reality is that without visitors, one really doesn’t have an online business.

Remember, not all traffic is created equally. Some sources of your traffic will convert prospects into leads at a much higher percentage. Same with converting leads into buyers – all traffic will convert differently depending on how it was generated and the variables that are associated with that specific source.

For example, articles typically convert from a % standpoint by about a 2 to 1 ratio compared to PPC, but PPC drives a lot more traffic.

This is about balance. Take the good with the bad. There is NO perfect source of traffic or the “Holy Grail”. Traffic is traffic is traffic is traffic…and it’s REQUIRED for your business.

Get really good at one source of traffic…get it dialed in, run some tests – then expand your “octopus” and add an additional “tentacle” to your traffic stream. Rinse and repeat this process.

Some sources are certainly better than others, but the important thing is to CONSTANTLY be tweaking, refining and improving it. ALWAYS look for more traffic.

If it sounds too good to be true, it is. Simple as that. Don’t use guaranteed traffic services, spam or any type of traffic that won’t drive TARGETED visitors to your site.

If you’re looking for the ins and outs on how to systematically build your business you need to get this. It breaks down the most important aspects of your business and shows you how to MAKE MONEY and get yourself moving in the right direction as quickly as possible.

If you’re not in business to have a hobby and your committed to understanding what marketing is all about this is MUST KNOW information for you to have.

All the best,

Terry Duff

3 critical things that you need to know about bringing targeted traffic to your website…

Think all traffic is created equal?

1. Your conversion rates from both prospect to lead and from lead to buyer will be significantly different based upon how someone found your lead capture page.

Here’s what I mean…

Someone who finds your lead capture page as a result of seeing an article you have out there is more than 200% likely to optin to your site compared to say someone finding your site on Yahoo PPC.

In this case, not only are they more likely to become a lead, but the likelihood to spend money with you is substantially higher as well.

Sounds weird, but remember that every form of traffic you can surmise will have a different footprint and “genetic makeup”.

2. At the end of the day, there’s really only 2 forms of traffic.

A. Free

B. Paid

And there really is no such thing as “free” traffic – most free traffic comes at a cost….your time. It’s also true that some of the best traffic you’ll ever get is the free stuff.

Think joint ventures and list sharing…

If you’re marketing a product that helps people suffering from weight related issues and you contact another marketer in your niche and offer to send an email promoting him/her to your list and he/she agrees to do the same for you…that traffic rocks.

They’re already on a list that pertains to what they’re looking for…they’re also continuing to look for solutions. Doing a list exchange like this isn’t difficult and it’s a great way to generate leads quickly…and lots of them – without costing a dime.

Look for people in your niche market…create relationships with them. You never know what will come from it.

3. Don’t forget some of the most targeted, yet underlooked sources of traffic.

Think banner ads are dead? They’re alive and well…better now than ever before (not that they were ever “dead” – they just had a bad wrap for a while).

This is another simple and dangerously effective way to generate consistent leads…without breaking the bank.

If you’re marketing funnel leads around the primary benefit of weight loss. Go to google.com and type in “weight loss blog”, “weight loss information”, “weight loss forum”, etc – anything that would likely pull up a content rich website that discusses information about losing weight.

Click on every link in the search results for page 1 and 2 (no need to click on sponsored listings). What you’re looking for is popular websites that allow you to buy ad space on their site.

There are sites with tens of thousands of visitors every month (some had hundreds of thousands of visitors every month) that will allow you to run an ad(s) there.

Simple yet dangerously effective.

I just placed an ad at carlocab.com a couple weeks ago. It cost me $77/mo and that site has around 700 visitors a day. Not a bad value proposition.

If there’s one thing that every home based business owner should strive to get really, really good at it’s about getting targeted visitors to a site.

It’s one of the most valuable skills one can ever learn to master. It’s right up there with the importance of copy writing and the power of trading written words for dollars.

If you’re looking to drive more traffic in a week than most drive all month, you need to check this out.

This is the exact same information I use to drive, on average, 700 visitors a day to one single website…

It’s Not About Me Though – It’s About You…

Click Here To Learn How To Do The Same For Your Website(s)!

All the best,

Terry Duff

P.S. In all honesty, I’m absolutely nuts for giving away the information that I have at this price point. It’s less than a mediocre dinner for two. Grab it now before reality sets in and I double the price.

The short answer is “no”, but let’s dive in just a bit, shall we?

Direct response marketing = where you place an ad/message in front of your audience designed to get them to take one very specific action. The action could be filling out a survey, buying something, filling out a form (ie; capture page, etc).

If one is looking to build their “community”, create relationships with those prospects and then provide solutions to them, based upon their needs, there is NO substitute or alternative to direct response marketing. It’s objective. It provides a “trail” so when it’s done properly you know what worked and what didn’t work. You can look at your data, analyze it and objectively know what did well and what needs to be eliminated or tweaked.

Here’s a 30 day screen shot of my Adwords campaign in April…this is a direct response marketer’s dream because with “data”, you’re armed. Your data is your guide. I can take this data, analyze it, tear it upside down…remove what isn’t working and improve what is working.

A smiggin’ over 100 leads per day for a cost of $3.53 per lead. Direct response marketing is very specific and “numbers driven”. Take a look at “institutional advertising” – if you watch a commercial on Travelocity the direction is completely different. They’re looking for branding…a totally different purpose in their marketing dollars compared to a direct response marketer. Branding is not a bad thing…it’s a “different” thing – most of us aren’t sitting with tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in our back pocket so “branding” wouldn’t be relevant for us.

With all of that said, there’s some pretty relevant developments taking place in the online marketing world right now that we should all be paying VERY CLOSE ATTENTION TO.

On August 13, 2010, my primary Google Adwords account received it’s “final warning” email. This has been a slow, but inevitable “coming” since June of 2006, when the first “Google Slap” shook the world. There message has been clear….if you’re not providing meaningful information to our searchers and a pleasurable search experience, we don’t want you.

As advertisers, whether we agree with what they’re looking to do (or their cloak of “secrecy” behind it) isn’t relevant. Either we choose to be in compliance or we can tell Google to take a hike. It’s our marketing dollars and our choice.

I chose to be in compliance and advertise with them – I thoroughly believe in what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. My hat goes off to them for being THE “trend setter” in the search world. I’m not really fond of how they’re going about things, however, but that’s a topic for another day…

So…in January, even before my “final warning” email from seeing what was taking place with others who operate in my same niche, I’ve been ramping up content at terryduff.com, making it more “user friendly”, incorporating a touch of social media, etc – all with the intentions of making this site become the “core” of my Google lead generation efforts.

Last week I sent them an email asking if they’d like any changes at terryduff.com before I started driving traffic to it…

Here’s what they said:

I’ll keep you posted from my findings and how this turns out…

I may need to either remove the capture box all together or place it “deeper” in the site.

Marketing is about compromise and balance…hang with me here.

I’m hoping at this point, you’ve seen 2 VERY different marketing styles.

1. Squeeze pages that I typically ran on Adwords – I was in total control over the creative side, traffic to the site, the message they were exposed to, etc.

2. A content rich site like terryduff.com – on a site like this I can use analytics, conversion tracking code, etc but at the end of the day, It would be an uphill battle to track how much each visitor was really worth (in an exact fashion)…they may follow me on twitter.com or facebook.com before leaving the page. This has value to me and it may not be worth something immediately, but I’m allowing myself to establish and create a relationship with someone WITHOUT them “optin” into my site…but remember, they’re still becoming part of my community, which is my big focal point. The relationship can still be created – whether one “opts in” in the traditional sense or they follow me in other areas, to me, isn’t all that relevant. It’s another relationship.

Notice the MAJOR shifts that are taking place right now. Transparency is more important now than ever before, providing meaningful information to your audience is no longer optional and being open to the idea that marketing is not stagnant and constantly evolving must be understood.

I believe that we’re heading down a direction that is ultimately good for everyone involved. You’ll soon see more and more product launches that aren’t “list driven”…they’re “socially driven”. As transparency becomes more and more relevant to the people looking for the solutions you can provide, their ability (and desire) to “look under the hood” before they subscribe to your list, buy from you, etc should become an INCREASING PRIORITY TO YOUR MARKETING AND SYSTEMS YOU’RE CREATING.

Notice with the 2nd direction from above, there’s a bit of a “blur” taking place between “institutional advertising” and direct response marketing. Think about this for a second…

Marketing is about compromise and sometimes getting a bit less than what you’d really like in a “perfect” world. In a perfect world, I’d want to place ads on google for any keyword phrase of my liking, have my reports tell me what’s relevant and what isn’t, in the mind of my prospects and their Quality Score formula would be a thing of the past…now, knowing that’s not an option for me, I need to switch gears and think in a different direction…

Here it is. I know I want that traffic…roughly 2/3 of all search traffic takes place on the Google network. I WANT THAT TRAFFIC.

I also know I will likely need to make some sacrifices…

Eventually, whatever page the prospect lands on that I can get approval from Adwords with, I will need to look at my data in a much broader perspective…

In a traditional sense, most direct response marketers look at bottom line numbers and say, “OK, I’m spending $5.50 on average to generate a lead, and on average, each lead is worth $13.00 to my company”. We say, OK, we’re more than doubling our money for each dollar we spend on advertising.

Well, with driving traffic to something like terryduff.com the old rules of the game don’t completely apply. There’s a really good chance that my cost per lead from a traditional perspective will double…maybe even triple. I’ll need to view my data in a much broader fashion and ask myself how much is a Facebook friend worth to me…how much should I be willing to spend for a follower on Twitter? You get the idea.

There’s 3 critical takeaways that I really hope you get from this message today…

1. Marketing is a game of compromise…it’s about give and take. Sometimes in marketing and in life, we may not get exactly what we’re striving for, but we do the best we can with what we’re working with.

2. With major advertising platforms like Google Adwords and Facebook Advertising changing the game so frequently it’s now more important than EVER to treat the lead generation aspect of your business like an octopus…have multiple tentacles that are bringing you quality prospects every day so you can build relationships with them.

3. Understand that the Internet is nothing more than a platform to communicate our message to the masses. Don’t forget about direct mail! It’s targeted, competition is minimal (how many times have you opened up your mail and found 4 postcards or letters from competing companies?), it’s highly effective and extremely objective. Too often, in my opinion, we get so tied up online and think that’s the only way to generate leads…or it’s an “easier” way to generate leads – BOTH of those beliefs are false. They each have their own “nuances”. The Internet as well as direct mail are nothing more than platforms to communicate your message and engage the masses. Use them both. If I knew how to communicate via smoke signals…I would.

You get the message here.

Don’t read this just once…read it top to bottom 2 or 3 times. It’s just that important.

In conclusion, direct response marketing is far from dead…what is dying, however, is how we traditionally view our marketing and the basic assumptions being made about how to “best” structure marketing campaigns. Take a look at every aspect of your marketing…and SECOND GUESS IT. Question it extensively. Ask yourself, “With the new rules of the game, am I setting myself up for success?”

Let the others in our community and myself know your thoughts on this…

I’m committed to your success if you are,

Terry Duff

Seems like Facebook Advertising’s been creating quite a buzz lately and I wanted to share some thoughts about my experiences so you can use Facebook as a productive marketing platform for your business.

Breakdown:

I’ve been using Facebook Advertising since late 2009 and there’s been some pretty interesting findings.

It’s tough to turn your head when there’s a pond of 125 million visitors every month literally at your fingertips at one location. This is a marketers dream. Lots of traffic + lots of page views on your site = a ton of leads.

(Source of chart data is Quantcast)

With that said, here’s a few observations…

==> The most difficult aspect of advertising on Facebook is getting your ads/landing pages approved. They go through a manual review process (by a real human being). Make sure your ads and landing page(s) don’t discuss “how to make a ton of money” or “easy riches” or anything along those lines.

I’ve found the easiest way to get approval is “toning down” the message and also using product oriented data capture pages (not opportunity).

Their approval process is VERY subjective. For example, last week I added a country to one of my adgroups…and didn’t touch the ad or the creative side – that remained 100% the same. The only change was adding an additional country to expand the reach of the ad.

It went through their approval process (as with any change made) and they DENIED the ad…interesting as there was no change to the ad in any way, shape or form.

==> When you’re adding “likes an interests” to establish where you’re ad will be ran at, think along the lines of “themes”. This aspect is very similar to Adwords content network (not Google’s search network). If you’re marketing “ice cream”, you could add any “likes an interests” that relate to ice cream, but you likely wouldn’t be able to get much more specific than that (chocolate ice cream, vanilla, etc) based upon their “likes an interest” categories.

==> The average lifespan of your ads is very short. When one thinks about traditional search engine PPC traffic, you’re constantly having new “eye balls” viewing or potentially viewing your ads. Initially, this is the same with Facebook, however, over time, you have the same prospects viewing your ads over and over again. This is why the CTR’s drop pretty quickly. I’ve started off campaigns and had CTR’s 1-1.5% for the first week or two and then things pretty quickly nosedive…a few weeks later they’re running .4-.5%.

This is because the same people are viewing your ads over and over again. Unlike with Google Adwords, you can’t have multiple ads rotating…trying to capture the attention of different prospects depending on what caught their attention. With Facebook Advertising, when you’re using the same “likes and interests”, you create one ad…run it, then you’d have to pause it and start another ad (and go through the approval process with each new ad).

Stay on top of your ads so their productiveness doesn’t fall of a cliff. Create a new ad…get the approval FIRST…then pause the old ad. If you create the new ad, pause the old one and the one you just added doesn’t get approval, now you’re not going to get any traffic from that “adgroup”.

==> Their advertising interface is a bit clunky. They just added a conversion tracking pixel code for tracking conversion rates several weeks ago. It will track the conversions for the entire campaign as a whole – it will not break down the individual ads (adgroups) within the campaign. This is an easy fix…use hypertracker.com or statcounter.com and manage your own conversion stats.

==> Bid prices appear to be heading up fairly quickly. When I first started using Facebook Advertising, I was spending about .32 per click. My average cost per click currently is .47 cents. May not seem drastic, but that’s a 50% increase in less than 6 months.

Although Facebook is relatively new to the PPC game (since late 2007), they’re not naive and their platform is constantly improving and changes are taking place it seem like just about weekly they’re rolling out or testing something new.

In my experience, this is very similar to the growth curve that Adwords experienced from 2003 to 2008 (they’re still growing, just not at the same % YOY growth they once enjoyed). I’m sure they’ll be forced to incorporate some parameters that deal with bid prices skyrocketing so quickly (Adwords has done a great job for paving the way to show others how to improve their advertising systems). Who knows…maybe they’ll incorporate some quality score type of regiment…add ad quality to the mix on some sort of rating system or take their “like” & “dislike” ad options to a new level that will help impact bid prices and what you spend.

That’s really the big 3 downsides I see currently from what I’ve seen…

1. Clunky tracking/advertising platform.
2. Bid prices quickly elevating.
3. CTR’s quickly dropping.

Bottom line…as with any advertising platform, it’s not the lead that makes you money – it’s the system you’ve created and how you’re monetizing that data. I know a lot of people that are GREAT at generating leads, but they fail to monetize the data.

That’s no different regardless of how you’re generating leads – have a map for your prospects and guide them down a smooth process so ultimately they’re making a buying/sign up decision based upon a smooth slide you’ve taken them down.

** With any new ad or change that you make to an ad, it again goes through their approval process – this can take up to 24 hours. I’ve noticed that if the change is done by about 11:00 AM, the approval (or denial) is typically same day.

At the end of the day, marketing is about balance. There’s no PERFECT advertising platform…only ones that are superior than others because of the compromise that the advertiser and the platform are making. Take Google Adwords for example…they don’t exactly allow you to advertise precisely how you’d like to, but at the end of the day, Google and Google alone can add 100+ leads to your marketing funnel.

Facebook Advertising is appealing because of it’s massive reach. On a typical day, I have more impressions from Facebook than I do with my Google account (including their content network). Pretty staggering really.

Take the good with the bad because at the end of the day, Facebook Advertising generates quality, targeted leads…who end up buying stuff from you.

Remember, you’re not just looking for ways to generate leads…that doesn’t pay the bills. These leads need to be converted into customers/distributors – that’s what pays the bills.

You don’t create wealth creating leads – that’s PART of the equation. You create wealth by creating a system that communicates and monetizes your data. One without the other is meaningless.

Conversion Rates:

Some details first to bring things into the appropriate context…

On Facebook Advertising, I’m using their small text ads along with an image that’s 77×80 pixels (that’s about 1″ by 1″ in size). Prospects click on the ad and go to very simple data capture page – on the page, there’s a headline & 2 minute video…that’s it (you can check out a page at www.addingreps.com/fb/5).

Nothing fancy…just real simple. It’s converting at 32%. For my market, that’s less than $1.50 per lead (based upon my current average cost per click). This is after testing 4 different landing pages.

Side note: ALWAYS test multiple versions of your capture page – there can be HUGE differences in conversion numbers and what you’re spending per lead.

There’s a lot of ways of getting targeted traffic to your website. In my opinion, Facebook Advertising should be one of the sources you’re using.

I want to know your thoughts on this post. They mean a lot to me and others as well. Post a comment and If I left something out or if you have a question you’d like to have answered, fire away!

All the best,

Terry Duff

Ultimately, at the end of the day, there are only 2 types of traffic. Free and paid – I’ll dive in a bit deeper in just a moment, but the real point of this post is not only explaining the different forms of traffic, but to also instill the importance of keeping it super simple…

Let’s break down these 2 categories of traffic…

Free traffic consists of things like:

Article marketing
Forum posts
Classified ad postings
Answer sites (like answers.yahoo.com and wikianswers.com)
Press release submissions
Blogging
There are several others, but this is a good starting point.

Sources of paid traffic:

Banner advertising
PPC (yahoo, google, facebook advertising, MSN, Adbrite.com, etc)
PPV (pay per view – examples: zango.com, clicksor.com, etc)
Buying ad space on a site or blog
There are a lot of forms of paid advertising, these are a few of the common ones that I use or have used.

Is one better than the other?

The short answer is “No”, however, they each have their own positives/negatives.

With “free” advertising (really no such thing as free), there is a cost associated. With free traffic, you’re essentially trading time for traffic. Free traffic can be very time consuming, but does produce results. You can spend say 45 minutes in writing and submitting an article to directories and in the coming days, weeks and months, maybe get 5 or so leads from that one article. Not much leverage here, but a little…you spent 45 minutes to generate about 5 leads (note: this number could be higher or lower – I’m just using some “rough”, yet realistic numbers here).

Same type of logic would apply if you were using Yahoo Answers, submitting press releases or posting in forums or creating classified ad listings at places like Craigslist or Kijiji.

So, generally speaking, free traffic comes at a price…it’s typically slower at generating traffic. The good news is that you can generate SUPER targeted traffic and it didn’t cost you anything financially.

With paid traffic, you can generate more visitors…faster. Plain and simple. Although I’m not any more attached to one form of traffic compared to another, the important thing to understand when you’re generating visitors to your site is to keep it simple and start with ONE form of traffic…then ramp up once that technique has been mastered.

Bottom line…it really doesn’t matter HOW you get traffic, but it’s a MUST if you’re looking to generate an endless supply of leads with prospects that are looking for what you’ve got. Pick a starting point…dive in and go for it. Make no mistake…when you live in a state of “lead abundance” you can literally write your own check.

Now, it’s a point of monetizing that data. And that process is much easier than learning how to generate an avalanche of leads every day.

Think of this like an octopus…you start off with one tentacle (source of generating visitors), get good at it…then expand and create more tentacles. After several months, you should be getting traffic from several different sources.

Eventually you’ll have a “virtual machine”, generating you traffic (and leads) on almost autopilot – 24/7. The great thing about traffic and websites is that when used properly THERE IS NO OTHER LEVERAGING TOOL EQUALLY POWERFUL relative to the time you put in. They don’t call in sick or tell you they can’t “work” today because they have an ingrown toenail…they’re constantly on the front line…driving you visitors and generating leads. Every day like clock work.

In closing, start with one form of traffic…get REALLY good at it. Then expand your “octopus” and begin using other streams to bring additional visitors to your site. By “staging” this process it will also give you ample time to dial in other areas of your campaign (follow up emails, webinars/teleconferences, etc) to appropriately handle the “ramp up” process.

Never stop learning. Success truly does boil down to applied knowledge.

Committed to your success,

Terry Duff

Here’s a cool trick to get more leads using Google Adwords. This can literally get you dozens of leads per day for less than a buck a piece. The best part is that you can set this up in less than 2 minutes…

It’s quick. It provides results. Use this.