Tracking Traffic Lessons: Quality Qualified Leads – Week 4

Tracking Traffic

Traffic has been the focus of the last week of the 30 Day Challenge training. Tracking traffic is a key part of the process.

Now with the funnels set up, the work also switches to traffic. A quick reminder on the suggested traffic strategies which has 3 traffic strategy phases

1. Free traffic: Find a platform (e.g, Facebook). Position yourself as giving value – help them solve their problems – get them to ask for help – offer a solution
2. Quick Paid Traffic: Use Solo Ads (email ads) to start the build of paid leads. Also useful to ramp up at any time when cash flow is needed
3. Slow and Steady Paid Traffic: Build using paid ads. Choose a platform and start advertising.

I did set out a first cut traffic plan last week. We learned that tracking traffic was a key process to learn what works and what does not. The tracking I did reinforced what was a week was full of frustration. I do not manage frustration well but I did make some progress. Stepping back to the good things in the week. I did finish all of the 30 Day Challenge training – here is an image from the last minute of the last training video AND I did go through the Free traffic training case study on Facebook outreach. Deliver quantity of quality leads from one free and one paid strategy to an opt-in page (SP). The flow begins there with the followup email sequence channeling interested people to the ultimate sales funnel (under the hand).

The week’s progress compared to last week’s first cut plan

1. Existing Solo Ads capability: I have run a few solo ads and credit ads on two platforms. I have received the clicks that were promised but am not seeing the clicks flow through to clicks on my links. I did analyse sources of traffic – 65% from Tier One countries which is a little low. One really wants at least 85%
2. Organic Outreach on Facebook:  I went through the organic outreach free channel training which focuses on Facebook and Facebook Groups. I have started a little of that – Dean’s advice was to join a few groups and to watch for a while. I have done that and added a few friends who are similar in profile to my target customer BUT I have not done any outreach stuff just yet. I am in watch mode
3. Realign Twitter Strategies: I have spent most of my time addressing this to target the 30,000 followers I have in two profiles. I have created an Internet Profits stage on Staged.com for posting to @Stratocharge. I have tuned down the other stages on Staged itself and on Copywriting. On @MarkSCarrington, I am working on fixing the follower ratios as Twitter will not allow me to follow any more followers – hence reducing followings. The week has not been helped by technical difficulties in Staged on two of the profiles. I have been exploring using Hootsuite to do some of the work on engaging with followers. Changes in Twitter and Facebook API’s have not helped the frustration either – one has to work directly rather than through third party apps
4. Align Website: I changed the opt-in box to point to my Internet Profits opt-in page away from my own Charity lead magnet. It was not getting traction and had only one opt-in. I have not changed banner advertising – that changes at the end of November when the Kids Cancer charity drive ends
5. One Other Paid Ads Approach: I did sign up for a solo ad from a traffic broker. That ad is awaiting set up before it runs.

Missing were actions to migrate existing email lists to the new list. I have not thought through fully how best to do this. I did do some work on adding banner ads across a few of my ad platforms. They will trickle through clicks unattended.

I have started a process of journalling what I have done and what the results are. The first cut is a live walk through of my traffic sources in this video

Traffic Lessons Learned

Results are a lot less than I would have liked to see

1. I am not getting clickthroughs from my existing email ad channels. That tells me that the channels do not have the right type of traffic, or the copy is not right for the traffic, or the traffic channel is simply not right. I did take note of the warning in the 30 Day Challenge training to avoid traffic exchanges. My channel is not a traffic exchange BUT people seem to use it like one
2. I remain concerned that my opt-in landing page and bridge page does not work well on mobile. The page is set up in Convertri, for which I have a lifetime licence and am keen to leverage. I will leave it in place for this week to see how the solo ads run through it. I am still working the Convertri platform out
3. I am not happy with prospects I am finding in the Facebook affiliate marketing groups. They are a long way away from my ideal customer targets (EOP I nicknamed them). The group members are mostly younger, mostly not from tier one countries, mostly got no cash. Two courses of action here – change the types of groups I am following and/or change the target customer – back to the conundrum from week 3. Read about the conundrum and my ideal customer here
4. My LeadsLeap ads are not working as well as normal. I need to tweak the copy and work on the imagery. I want to get that humming along quietly in the background. I have made a few changes.

Thoughts on Journalling

Now I did say I was going to do the journalling as a forcing device for my processes and also as a way of collecting materials for these posts. I currently do this for my investing and trading. I write up a post and post it on Steemit.com every day I make trades. The posts have a defined structure and I update specific activity areas that trade regularly every day (crypto bots, forex bots, outsourced forex trading). I also lead in the post with news that is affecting my portfolios – snippets of things that affect my view of the markets. So my thought is to do much the same for Internet Marketing. Maybe the place to start is with some headings:

• Tracking Traffic results
• Sales results
• Traffic activity highlights
• Blockages and frustrations
• Actions for the next day
• Directions for next 10 days

Now my investment posts take some time to create (anything from 45 minutes to 2 hours). That time does cover a fair amount of data gathering and research work and looking back. What I do know is my investing has improved enormously doing it. I want to find a somewhat automated way to bring the material together quickly – searching for a toolbox to help with that.

Week 4 felt all about blockages and frustrations rather than action. Progress this week was slow because of frustration at the slowness of results and the technical challenges I had to deal with. I did go cycling and walking looking for orchids = that helped.  I am hoping the journalling will help with the mindset. After all, all I have to do is focus on traffic because the rest of the funnel is essentially outsourced to experts.

Focus for Week 5

1. Streamline a process for using existing email ads platforms. I will keep using the platform as a secondary source
2. Integrate mailing lists
3. Plan for extending follow up sequences for emails – already have a person on day 16 of 33. I do have a source of written affiliate marketing emails which travel the journey one needs to follow – I will intersperse these into the flow.
4. Start sharing blog posts written so far to my personal Facebook and LinkedIn audiences
5. Review new Solo ads performance especially to test the opt-in page situation
6. Pin down tools for doing the daily journalling – been trying a few so far

Resources

Solo Ads: Guaranteed Solo Mails offers Pro members 8 mailings a month for free with 200 unique viewers guaranteed for each mailing. It also offers range of advertising models which you can buy with cash or credits from viewing mails or ads. It does provide a way to build an advertising budget by reading ads. Use the reading time to learn what copy works to attract you to click a link. Sign up for free

Banner Ads: LeadsLeap works unattended to deliver ads to its members. One can build credits for free ads by reading ads or just pay for a Pro account. It works well for me and delivers a steady trickle of leads unattended. Sign up for free

Grow Twitter Followers: Staged provides a platform for growing Twitter followers, managing engagement with them and sharing content (called stages). Sign up for free to grow your following and try out the content sharing features

Credits

Quality images by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images

Frustration image is CC from Pixabay