What Must You Have On Your Website Before Generating Traffic?

Often, the first thing a prospective book buzz client says to me is, “I need more traffic to my site.”

Makes sense.

Yes, you  need eyeballs, which means visitors and “impressions” on your website. But there is something you must have in place first. Without this element, there is absolutely no point sending people to your site — no point generating traffic.

You probably cannot imagine why you would wait before working at getting people to your site. Well, check out this story and you’ll get it.

Put yourself in the place of a potential reader of your book or customer of your business. The same condition applies in either instance.

You’re busy. You have a life, maybe a family, and a million things on your list. Someone tells you in an email about an excellent book. You go to the author’s website and check it out. Looks good, but you’re busy and in no mood to get out the credit card right now. Too much else to do. So you close the page and think, “I’ll go back another time.”

But you don’t go back. You’re busy. You have a life, maybe a family, and a thousand things to do, remember? And pretty soon it’s been 3 months since you saw that webpage by – who was that author and what was that book? Oh well, it must not be that important.

it doesn’t have to be that way.

Here’s another scenario of doom.

True story from a bestselling author I know: Imagine you’re an author launching your book and you have to write each mailing partner separately, which takes two to three hours each time you do it.  You hardly see your own family for months while you ramp up for the book launch day.

It doesn’t have to be that way either.

There is an alternative scenario available to you that serves you well in either of the above scenarios.  Maybe you’re sharp and can guess. I’ll ask the question again.

What must you have on your website before generating traffic?

 

The answer is simple, and it is an absolute MUST HAVE on your site. You’ve seen it before. It’s a place to put in your name and email in exchange for something, such as a webinar, a workbook or a free CD. It’s an “opt-in box.”

Yes, what you need to do is have a way to keep in contact with prospects (or joint venture partners, or clients, or students in your class,  or any growing group of people). I even have one right here on this blog.

A list – community

Most people will call the needed element your list and the method of acquiring it it “list building.” But it’s not a list of names that you are building; it is a series of relationships, personalized, to one person at a time.

How do you grow your list?

1.The first thing you need is the auto-responder service, which enables you to write individually to whatever number of people in one shot.  You’ll put something like, “Hey Firstname” and the email will read, “Hey George” (assuming your name is George. That’s great because you can write all your joint venture partners or subscribers or students or whatever efficiently yet personally. Aweber works well and has fabulous tutorials. You’ll be up and running in no time.

2.  You need a domain and hosting. I won’t go into this here. You’re going to add a hunk of code (technical term) in the right place on your webpage to capture the names.

3. You need a gift to exchange for contact information. This is often called an ethical bribe or value exchange. Who will give up their name and email for nothing? Not very many people. I won’t go into this right now, except to say make sure your gift is worth giving up a name and email.

4. You need to communicate regularly with the “list” – I say the person (one at a time, remember) who asks for your gift. You’ll create a follow-up sequence. It lets you set up a series of messages that will go out automatically for you at the right time. Do it once and it’s done.

You will always have a link to something in your email. Teach the reader that there is always something to click on. It may be a product, resource, social media page or whatever. Your autoresponder gives you statistics that are useful, such as what percentage of people opened the email and what percentage of those clicked the link.

I will talk in specific about what to say in your emails and how to say it in another post. for right now, think of it this way.

Mindset while writing emails

You’re sitting across from a friend at a coffees hop. You’re telling this person about a cool resource, valuable gift, or product you love. You’re speaking one-on-one and connecting emotionally with this one person.

Your first ten follow-up messages

The first email in your sequence is the “thanks for signing up, here’s your gift” email.

One  day later send out an “I hope you’re enjoying your gift.” email with a tip on how to consume it better. You might also give out the download link in case the person missed it.

One day later is another gift consumption tip. You might link to your Facebook page or youtube video. Don’t be in a hurry to go for the throat. Serve, don’t sell. Yes, you’ll sell things sometimes, but first be a person of value and show yourself to your new community member.

One day later share another story and a link.

The next four messages can come three to four days apart and will lead the new prospect deeper into the experience of working with you and consuming your material.

After that, send something in your follow-up sequence every week.

This will make life easier for you. Yes, you will also do what are called “broadcasts” that you set up as needed, but first concern yourself with setting the foundation to serving your prospect, student, partner, client or whatever type of community (list) you are building.

Resources

Aweber autoresponder

Easy “squeeze page” /lead capture page you can make in 15–20 minutes

Audio for your pages

web hosting

Create your own website with the Faster Webmaster

Ronda Del Boccio is a transformational speaker, mentor and author known globally as The Story Lady because she teaches authors, entrepreneurs and business owners to easily connect with your ideal customers and contacts through the power of your story.

She is the author of numerous stories, poems, and articles, as well as her books I’ll Push You Steer, and other upcoming books.

Discover how to explode profits, prospects and prime media opoprtuntiies with her latest book is the Instant Credibility system, which teaches any business owner, entrepreneur, coach, speaker or writer to craft a lead-generating book that grows your business.

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