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If you’ve been marketing for any length of time, you’d probably have heard or read the saying, “Traffic is the lifeblood of your business.”

That’s very true, but here’s what most beginner marketers do not know – traffic is easy. It’s conversions that are difficult. You can always drive traffic by spending some money but getting that traffic to convert to sales is where the challenge lies.

While improving conversions is beyond the scope of this article, we’re going to look at why one of the biggest mistakes affiliates make is not proactively driving traffic to their web properties or affiliate links.

There are a few points to note about traffic, but the most important one to bear in mind is that you will need to direct and drive it to your sites. Building a site and waiting for traffic to arrive is just not going to cut it. You MUST direct the flow of traffic to your sites.

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Don’t try to create your own

Here’s something so many marketers fail to realize – the fastest way to get traffic will be to ‘siphon’ it from sites that have tons of it. We all know that millions of people are on Facebook. It only makes sense to go on Facebook and use fan pages, Facebook groups or Facebook ads to target people interested in your niche.

From Facebook, now you’ll have a stream of traffic going to your site. The same applies to YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. These hotbeds of traffic will trickle down your way if you do the work.

You always pay for it

There’s no such thing as free traffic. You either pay for it with money, or with your time and effort. Video marketing is free, but you’ll need to spend time making the videos, optimizing them and doing all that you need to for them to rank and get traffic to your site.

The same applies to other ‘free’ methods. It’s best to use them if you’re starting out and on a tight budget. If you can afford paid ads and you have a good understanding of how they work, you’ll get faster results with paid traffic – but just know that no matter what, you will pay.

Focus on one source first

When driving traffic, focus on one source at a time. If you’re using YouTube, get good at it until you have thousands of subscribers and traffic from there before moving on to another traffic source.

Many beginners run from one source to another like headless chickens. Their efforts are scattered and yield no results because they’ve not gone deep. Go deep and focus on one traffic source until it works for you. Then scale up and move on to the next one.

Capture as much of it as you can

Drive all traffic to a landing page. Offer a free trial or a lead magnet so that you capture leads. This will not only build your list, but you’ll be able to presell the visitors and improve conversions.

Engage

Engage with your list. They’ll be made up of cold traffic. So, you need to warm them up. The more you engage and build a relationship with them, the better your marketing efforts will be.

Keep at it

Finally, driving traffic is a never-ending task. While you can automate it or hire someone to help you out, just know that it must be ongoing.

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On a final note, do bear in mind that without traffic you will not have a business. It’s not difficult to drive traffic, but it does require effort and know-how. So, educate yourself on it and get started today. Within a month or two, you’ll start seeing results that will snowball over time. That’s how you do it.

[avatar user=”mike” size=”thumbnail” align=”” link=”file”]Mike Gaudreau is the owner of The Wealthy Boomers, a site devoted to helping seniors make money online. Mike resides in Montreal Canada.[/avatar]

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