Find My Market: How to Choose The Right Traffic Source For Your Market

Here’s a shocker…

One traffic source does NOT fit all.

Raise your hand if you’ve heard this before…

“The first thing you need to do is find your market.”

But how do you actually get that done?  I’m going to share how I go about finding my market.

But first you need to know…

How to Fail on the Internet

Every business speaks to a different audience. You must run traffic on the platforms where YOUR market is “hanging out”.

If you craft the perfect marketing message but then fail to put it in front of the right audience, your entire campaign will fail.

For example…

Trying to sell Apple accessories using Google display ads on a blog about PC’s would end in disaster.

You know… the proverbial, “You can’t sell ice to an Eskimo.”

But the strategy remains the same…

Conceptual traffic strategies such as “The Pixel Process” or Boomerang Retargeting are applicable no matter what market you’re in.

Those strategies are applicable across all traffic sources.

To learn more about these universal laws of traffic, read these articles…

• The “Pixel Process”: How Digital Marketer Gets 81% More Leads and 38% More Sales From Paid Traffic
• How to Plug a Leaky Sales Funnel with Facebook Retargeting

But traffic is a commodity.  A click is a click.

We view traffic like a water faucet.  When we want some, we turn it on.

When we want some, we go to the “Traffic Store” and buy it.

But which “Traffic Store” is right for you?

You go to buy traffic when you have an offer that you feel is appealing to a certain market.

You buy traffic where that market is hanging out so that YOU can get in front of them.

One of the biggest questions we get from members in Digital Marketer Lab is, “Where should I start running traffic?”

Great question! I had the same question when I started running traffic.

For most situations, I recommend starting with Facebook because…

• The ad platform is easy to use. (<< This is important, especially if you’re a traffic newbie.)
• The targeting options are insane.  With the number of targeting options at your disposal on Facebook – you can find your target market easily.
• Facebook has 1.3 billion users; there is a lot of room for scale on the platform.

But Facebook isn’t for everyone. Facebook has started cracking down and banning advertisers. Markets such as dating or weight loss just can’t advertise on Facebook.

So now I answer this question with a question…

(Want to download all of our free resources? Click here to get the Digital Marketing tool box.)

“Where is your market?”

If you’re looking to buy traffic, you want to do so from a source that will help you reach your market.

Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy answer to this. I haven’t found a tool that tells you which platform to use to reach a specific market (if you have one, please let me know in the comments)

It takes research. It takes time.

It takes thought.

But, the research couldn’t be more important.

Again, if you craft the perfect marketing message but then fail to put it in front of the right audience, your campaign will fail.

So how do you find your market?

First, you need to think about WHO your market is …

What’s their age, gender, income?

Websites like Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, etc. have aggregated millions of users — but each platform has slightly different demographics.

This broad demographic information will help you decide on a platform.

More specific information such as…

• What are their hobbies?
• What TV shows do they watch?
• What authority figures do they follow?
• What books do they read?.

… can be used to target your audience once you’ve decided on a platform.

For example, here’s how to find your market on Facebook.

We like to start with Alexa.  This tool will give you demographic data on websites around the web.

Let’s start with Pinterest:

Not surprisingly, Pinterest is WAY above average in terms of visits from Females.

Pinterest is a wonderful platform to run traffic in the craft, clothing, make up, and anything e-commerce or female focused.

Check out this research data from PewResearchCenter on Facebook…

“Fully 71% of online adults use Facebook, a proportion unchanged from August 2013. Usage among seniors continues to increase. Some 56% of internet users ages 65 and older now use Facebook, up from 45% who did so in late 2013 and 35% who did so in late 2012. Women are also particularly likely to use Facebook compared with men, a trend that continues from prior years.”

(Facebook is specifically great for reaching older demographics that have SPENDING power).

YouTube, like Facebook, have a large and diverse user base with over 1 billion people visiting YouTube every month.

Let’s take a look at LinkedIn…

“The site (LinkedIn) continues to be particularly popular among college graduates, those in higher-income households and the employed (although the increase in usage by those who are not employed to 21% from 12% in 2013 is notable).

(LinkedIn is especially powerful for reaching the professional market, or running B2B traffic).

You get the gist! Research must be done to ensure your running traffic on the correct platform. It may sound basic, but it really is the FIRST step to running successful traffic campaigns.

We like to shop first at the big “traffic stores”…

There are
hundreds thousands of traffic sources to choose from but we like to stick to the big stores because…

• There is big volume and the ability to scale
• The ad interfaces are easier to use
• The targeting is (usually) better

Here’s a matrix of the big traffic sources and when to consider using them…

We have resources on using most of these big “traffic stores” for you on our blog…

YouTube

• The 4-Step Slam Dunk Process That Generated 140,000 FREE Leads From YouTube
• Which YouTube Ad Type is Right for You?

Facebook 

• How to Use Facebook Advertising Pixels to Create High Converting Ad Campaigns
• 7 Lessons Learned from 567 Facebook Ad Campaigns in One Year

LinkedIn

• 5 Simple Steps to Outrank Your Competition on LinkedIn

Google

• 7 AdWords Tips Google Doesn’t Want You to Know About
• Reach 90% of Internet Users Worldwide (And 10 more reasons to buy traffic from Google AdWords)

Twitter

• How We Got 198% ROI Using Twitter Advertising

Dedicated Email Drops

• The Traffic Avalanche: How To Buy Access to Someone Else’s Email List

It’s the BIGGEST issue we find when traffic campaigns fail… running traffic on a platform where your market isn’t present.

We might shop at the big “traffic stores” first but we’re always experimenting with smaller, niche traffic platorms.  So, if a traffic source doesn’t seem conventional, or it’s not what the industry is talking about at the moment – that’s OK!

Test it out.

The important thing is that you find your market online.

Have questions? Just getting started? Let’s talk about it in the comments section.

(Don’t forget to download all of our free resources! Click here to get the Digital Marketing tool box.)

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http://www.digitalmarketer.com/find-my-market-traffic/

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Five Questions That Smart Conversion Optimization Consultants Should Ask

Conversion optimization consultants need to be two things:  smart and curious. In order to optimize website for more conversions, a consultant doesn’t just make changes. Instead, the consultant asks questions.

If you are a conversion optimization consultant or want to do some CRO work on your own website, ask these questions.

1.  Who’s the audience?

CRO is a small part of the huge industry of marketing. There is a lot of overlap in field of digital marketing.

If there’s one thing that holds this unwieldy field of marketing together it’s this:  audience understanding.

In order to be successful at marketing, the marketer must know their audience. Marketers accomplish nothing meaningful without first identifying their audience.

The conversion optimization expert can “fix” a website’s conversion problems only if he or she understands the audience.

The illustration from Moz below shows how the field of digital marketing understands itself in all its overlapping glory:

2.  What’s the value of the product or service?

According to CRO big dog Oli Gardner, a “winning landing page” has five elements:

1. A Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
2. The hero shot.
3. The benefits you’re offering.
4. Social proof.
5. A single conversion goal — your call-to-action.

That first point is critical — the USP. Here’s how Oli describes it:

The starting point of a marketing campaign revolves around your ability to define a point of differentiation. What is it about your product or service that sets it apart from the competition? You need to communicate this in a succinct way on your landing page. Try to break down your offering to its most basic level, to describe the specific benefit your customers will get by choosing your product/service.

When a conversion optimization turns her expert eye on a landing page, she wants to know one thing — what’s the big deal? Why is this important? Why should I care? What does this offer? Why is this special? Why are you selling this?

However you answer that barrage of questions, it should focus on one thing:  value.

No matter how good a CRO consultant is, he can’t just make someone buy something with just a few conversion tricks — bigger buttons, snazzier graphics, etc. He has to understand the value of the product or service.

3.  If this were my site, what would I do first?

Those two questions are simply the pregame warmup. We have to wrap our minds around the event as a whole before we can make any changes to specifics.

Conversion optimization is an incredible field precisely because it requires comparitively little time, little cost, and little effort. It utilizes existing resources to create substantial improvement. Sometimes, a small tweak can produce a torrential uptick in conversions.

That’s what the smart consultant wants to discover. She will identify the most obvious problem or easiest opportunity for improvement.

Here are six additional questions that will help you identify your page’s low-hanging fruit:

1. Is the value proposition obvious?
2. Is the headline clear and compelling?
3. Are the graphics professional and motivating?
4. Are there benefits focused on the user?
5. Are there genuine testimonials?
6. Is the CTA obvious?

A shortcoming in any one of these areas can signal a problem that is stopping up the flow of conversions. Pick the easiest one to change, decide on an improvement, A/B test the two elements, and watch your conversion rates improve.

4.  What is one thing I can do to reduce friction?

Friction is public enemy number one of conversions.

Peep Laja of ConversionXL defines friction as “a psychological resistance to a given element.” Jeremy Smith calls it, more broadly, “anything that gets in the way of conversions.”

In case you haven’t realized it yet, conversion optimization is a mind game. The best CROs in the business know how to identify psychological barriers and totally demolish them.

There are several kinds of friction, and each one requires a different angle of attack.

• Design friction – Aspects of the overall design of the page that limit conversions. This could include layout, color, images, font kerning, etc.
• Copy friction – Features of the text that reduce conversions. It could be grammatically awkward, boring, too long, etc.
• Time friction – This involves page load time, as well as the time it might take to scroll through the page, fill out a form, etc.
• Cognitive friction – Cognitive friction is a catch-all category for those elements within the mind of a user that can prevent conversions. For example, if a user doesn’t trust website, doesn’t like the “feel” or anything else, this might be categorized as “cognitive friction.”

If you can look at your website from a user’s perspective, you will be better able to identify the points of friction and eliminate them.

If you don’t see any friction, look again. Every single website and landing page has friction. That’s just the way it is. Find it, and kill it.

5.  How can I make the call to action stronger?

This last point is money.

The CTA of a website or landing page is where all your conversion optimization efforts come to a climax. This is where the user converts (or not). Nearly every CTA on the planet can be made stronger. You just need to figure out how to do it.

Here are a few points that will help you figure out how to make your CTA really work.

• Make it look like a button.
• Make it bigger or more obvious.
• Use a color that has more contrast.
• Use copy that is more compelling or exciting.
• Place more white space around it.
• Add trust signals near it
• Add more than one CTA to your page.

Most of massive increases in CRO come from CTA changes.

Conclusion

Conversion optimization has a very straightforward goal:  make more money by improving conversions.

There are plenty of ways to do this. But it all begins with asking the right questions:

1. Who is the audience?
2. What’s the value of the product or service?
3. If this were my site, what would I do first?
4. What is one thing I can do to reduce friction?
5. How can I make the call to action stronger?

Ask these questions, conduct your A/B tests, and watch your conversions rise.

What questions help you identify areas of conversion optimization?

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http://www.forbes.com/sites/neilpatel/2014/09/15/five-questions-that-smart-conversion-optimization-consultants-should-ask/

8 Great Entrepreneurial Success Stories

It never ceases to amaze me how much time people waste searching endlessly for magic shortcuts to entrepreneurial success and fulfillment when the only real path is staring them right in the face: real entrepreneurs who start real businesses that employ real people who provide real products and services to real customers.

Yes, I know that’s hard. It's a lot of work. What can I say, that’s life. Besides, look on the bright side: You get to do what you want and you get to do it your way. There’s just one catch. You’ve got to start somewhere. Ideas and opportunities don’t just materialize out of thin air.

The only way I know to get started is by learning a marketable skill and getting to work. In my experience, that’s where the ideas, opportunities, partners, and finances always seem to come from. Sure, it also takes an enormous amount of hard work, but that just comes with the territory.

If you want to do entrepreneurship right, here are eight stories you’ve probably never heard about companies you’ve most definitely heard of.

1.The Pierre Omidyar way. In 1995, a computer programmer started auctioning off stuff on his personal website. AuctionWeb, as it was then known, was really just a personal project, but, when the amount of web traffic made it necessary to upgrade to a business Internet account, Omidyar had to start charging people fees. He actually hired his first employee to handle all the payment checks. The site is now known as eBay.  

2.The John Ferolito and Don Vultaggio way. Back in the 70s, a couple of Brooklyn friends started a beer distributor out of the back of an old VW bus. Two decades later, after seeing how well Snapple was doing they decided to try their hand at soft drinks and launched AriZona Green Tea. Today, AriZona teas are #1 in America and distributed worldwide. The friends still own the company.   

3.The Matt Maloney and Mike Evans way. When a couple of Chicago software developers working on lookup searches for Apartments.com got sick of calling restaurants in search of takeout food for dinner, the light bulb went off: Why isn’t there a one-stop shop for food delivery? That’s when the pair decided to start GrubHub, which went public last April and is now valued at more than $3 billion.   

4.The Joe Coulombe way. After operating a small chain of convenience stores in southern California, Joe Coulombe had an idea: that upwardly mobile college grads might want something better than 7-11. So he opened a tropical-themed market in Pasadena, stocked it with good wine and booze, hired good people, and paid them well. He added more locations near universities, then healthy foods, and that’s how Trader Joe’s got started.   

5.The Howard Schultz way. A trip to Milan gave a young marketer working for a Seattle coffee bean roaster an idea for upscale espresso cafes like they have all over Italy. His employer had no interest in owning coffee shops but agreed to finance Schultz’s endeavor. They even sold him their brand name, Starbucks.

6.The Phil Robertson way. There was a guy who so loved duck hunting that he chose that over playing pro football for the NFL. He invented a duck call, started a company called Duck Commander, eventually put his son Willy in charge, and that spawned a media and merchandising empire for a family of rednecks known as Duck Dynasty.  

7.The Konosuke Matsushita way. In Japan in 1917, a 23-year-old apprentice at the Osaka Electric Light Company with no formal education came up with an improved light socket. His boss wasn’t interested so young Matsushita started making samples in his basement. He later expanded with battery-powered bicycle lamps and other electronic products. Matsushita Electric, as it was known until 2008 when the company officially changed its name to Panasonic, is now worth $66 billion.

8.The Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs way. While they had been friends since high school, the two college dropouts gained considerable exposure to the computer world while working on game software together on the night shift at Atari. The third Apple founder, Ron Wayne, was also an Atari alumnus.

As I always say, the world is full of infinite possibilities and countless opportunities, but your life and career are finite, meaning you have limited time to find what you’re searching for and make your mark on the world. This is your time. It’s limited so don’t waste it. Find something you like to do and just do it. That’s how real entrepreneurs always start.

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http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/243099

How To Tackle Fear - Tony Robbins

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                                       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQWkeDUabc4

How I Started My First Company - Funny Cartoon

                 

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Six Minutes to Success - Bob Proctor

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Life Of An Entrepreneur - Cartoon Funny

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5 New Ways Twitter Can Get You More Business

Amanda DiSilvestro examines the latest Twitter changes and discusses how you can take advantage of new features to improve your marketing strategies.

Not only are Twitter ads not going away, but they are expected to grow dramatically because it will be the first full year with their completed IPO. In other words, (and if we’re using Facebook as a benchmark), an IPO is going to mean nothing but big things for Twitter advertising for both the network as well as small businesses getting involved. According to Mashable, Twitter is on track to bring in more than half a billion dollars in revenue this year and is now valued at around $35 billion.

Whether Twitter is the first social network you want to master or the last, it’s easy once you understand how it all works (and unlike other networks, the process hasn’t changed much over the last few years). You do, however, have to ask yourself a couple questions:

• Will Twitter ads really benefit my business?
• If so, how can I take advantage?

Looking back at the changes we saw to Twitter ads last year is a great starting point to getting started and getting prepared for the changes we will see in 2014. A few of these updates and new features included:

1. Lead generation cards

May 22, the new lead generation cards feature was launched. This change helps advertisers find and connect with users outside of Twitter who might be interested in their message. This allows you, the company owner, to put a call to action button within the tweet, and then all a user needs to do is expand your tweet, click this button, and then share their email and name with your company all without having to leave Twitter.

2. Tv ad targeting

July 23 saw the tv ad targeting feature. This helps marketers connect with those who have seen their ads on TV. According to the announcement, it works by using fingerprinting technology to automatically detect when and where a brand’s commercials are running on TV.

3. Tailored audiences

December 5, Twitter introduced tailored audiences. This allows your brand to share browser-related information with Twitter, so that your Twitter ad is only shown to people who have interacted with your site somewhere outside of Twitter. This helps you display your ads to only relevant users, and according to the announcement, companies who have used tailored audiences have shown impressive results. For example, Hubspot saw a lift of 45 percent over their historical averages.

4. Promoted accounts in timelines

In 2010, promoted accounts were actually launched, but December 11 they were added to timelines. In other words, with this new feature Twitter displays account recommendations on the timeline of mobile phones for users to connect with. The example Twitter used in the announcement was for a coffee shop and said, “A new coffee shop could run a geo-targeted Promoted Accounts campaign in timeline to build awareness about their business and explain why users should follow them.”

5. Broad match keyword targeting

Lastly, broad match keyword targeting was announced December 16. Twitter has always allowed advertisers to focus on specific keywords to find relevant Twitter users, but with broad match keyword targeting these keywords don’t have to be exact. The feature will automatically expand their targeted keywords to include related terms. To use the coffee example once again, Twitter explained that using the broad match keyword “love coffee” would also allow them to connect with users who use terms like “luv coffee” or “love latte.” As you can see, even Twitter-lingo is included.

If you’re looking to get your company involved with Twitter ads to start using some of these new features visit the Twitter for Business page and simply follow the directions.

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http://www.wordtracker.com/blog/5-new-ways-twitter-can-get-you-more-business