GSD 181: How To Buy Website Traffic The Smart Way

That was probably 15 years ago. Since then, we’ve gotten a lot more sophisticated with the way that we’re able to target traffic, with the way we’re able to segment traffic, and even so much as being we’re able to target based on the keyword phrases that they’re searching Google for, We’re able to target based on the interests that they’re showing in Facebook, the stuff they’re doing, the things they’re searching for.

There are lots of ways that we can target the exact right kind of traffic. So one of the things that I wanted to do was dust off this old article, this targeted website traffic FAQ, and talk about buying website traffic. So buying traffic for your offers, for your landing pages, and all that stuff. But the most important thing, especially at first, is understanding what your traffic has to do, what they need to do to become a leader in your CRM to buy something from you, because at the end of the day, people don’t just wake up and they’re like, “I’m going to go buy from this person, especially when they don’t know who you are.

So what happens is they click an ad somewhere and then they go through and they click an ad, they hit a landing page, they hit an advertorial, they learn a little bit bit about you, they read a blog post and then they start going through the top of the funnel. So they hit a lead magnet. They opt for the lead magnet. They sign up for a webinar. They learn about your offer. There are all kinds of little micro-actions that have to happen before they do business with you, and that’s what a funnel is for. A funnel is to take your folks and drip them down through a sequence so that out the other side comes to a sale. So, at the end of the day, that’s what we’re doing.

Now, if we look at the blog post here, so basically at the end of the day, what we want to make sure of is that there are two different kinds of traffic. So we have our free traffic folks who are coming to our website for free. They’re searching Google. They’re searching stuff in Google, and they are just visiting the organic search rankings. So they’re going through the organic search rankings and then ultimately clicking an ad and then popping out on your website. The problem is free traffic takes a long time, and it’s not even guaranteed that anything is going to happen with that free traffic.

So, for free traffic, first of all, it’s a lot of work to write all the content to get ranked in Google. You also need to make sure that you have certain keyword phrases within that content so that Google is looking favorably on your blog post or your page or your advertorial in sending that traffic. And there’s only one page of Google. There are billions of websites that are trying to rank on page one of Google for many, many different keyboard phrases, so the likelihood that you have content that is better than somebody else is relatively small.

You can hedge your bets by running paid traffic to those pages, and that’s really where the paid traffic, the buying the website traffic, actually comes into play. You want to make sure that you can turn ads on and turn ads off. You want to make sure that if you spend a dollar, you can get two clicks. If you spend $10, you can get 20 clicks or whatever, whatever it ends up being. So you don’t necessarily have to wait three or four or five or six months for the search engines to catch up. You can turn, hit a button, turn traffic on, and start getting leads and selling your thing immediately.

Now, with Facebook being a little weird lately, sometimes it takes a little bit longer than immediately. But that’s what ad platforms are for. They give you the foundational amount of traffic, something that you can count on to grow your business on top of. Google AdWords is a great way to buy website traffic. Google AdWords is 100% search based. Well, it has a display too, but Google AdWords is search based. Somebody goes to Google, types in a keyword phrase, and then your ad pops up at the top and the bottom of the search results. So that is how they make money, and that’s how you show up in front of your customer avatar successfully.

Now, Facebook, on the other hand, is interruption-based. So your ad shows up as somebody scrolling through their newsfeed. Your ad shows up because they exhibit interest based on what they’re doing, based on what they’re clicking, based on what they’re doing from a profile standpoint. They exhibit the interest that makes Facebook say, oh, this guy, this person is perfect for this ad. That’s what Facebook and social media traffic do. That’s what paid ads inside Facebook do. Instagram is the same way, interruption-based, and the ads are popping up because of something that they did in their profile.

Now, Outbrain and Taboola, have different stories, and different scenarios. So Outbrain and Taboola are sponsor-related posts. Every once in a while, if you run into problems from an approval standpoint on Facebook and Google, Taboola and Outbrain typically have a little bit lax or more lackadaisical approval parameters. So you can oftentimes get stuff approved on Outbrain and Taboola that you can’t get approved on Facebook and Google, in which the best example of that is if you go to the Weather Channel, scroll to the bottom, and there are sponsor posts at the bottom. Those sponsor posts are Taboola or Outbrain ads. So they look like blog posts, they look like related blog posts, but they’re sponsored, they’re sponsored material. It’s a great way to get stuff to get traffic on some higher-risk properties or offers.

Another one is Solo ads. You can go in, and without too much hassle, you can go to a website, a website that gets quite a bit of traffic. You can go to the contact page and just fill out the contact form and say, “I would like to buy a banner on your website,” and they might, might send you back a price. The price is typically… sometimes it’s just a straight monthly, 200 bucks a month, 300 bucks a month, or whatever, but oftentimes that price is based on a CPM perimeter, so the cost per thousand impressions, and that just depends on what you want to pay. It might be $10 per thousand impressions. If they get 10,000 impressions, that ad gets seen 10,000 times, you’re going to pay them 100 bucks or 200 bucks or 500 bucks, or $1,000. It just depends on how many times that ad is seen.

You can also set it up so that it’s per click, so it’s not necessarily impression-based, but how many clicks you’re going to be getting. That’s, of course, how Google AdWords is set up. So it just depends on how you want to work it. But the best way to buy Solo ads is just to do some Google searches, scour the internet, go to the contact pages and reach out to individual people. There was probably 10 years ago, I had a spreadsheet of thousands of websites that we could drop ads on, but now it’s just as effective to go to Google, place an ad inside Google, place an ad inside Facebook, do the audience network and that kind of thing. It’s just a better use of time than reaching out individually. But once you find a website that is doing well for your particular offer, then you can reach out for a solo ad with them. So it works out nicely.

Now, there are just four networks, I mean… five, if you count Instagram, so Google, Facebook, and Instagram. There are Solo ads and then there’s Taboola and Outbrain. You can also run traffic on LinkedIn. LinkedIn over the last probably three years has, really, really dropped in price in terms of how much it is to advertise on those platforms. If you have a B2B offer or B2B lead magnet or B2B coaching program or whatever, then make sure to be running traffic on LinkedIn too. For most of our better-performing lead magnets, it might be $2 a click, 14, or $15 per lead, but that lead quality is, really, it’s just really high quality.

We’re running quite a bit of traffic on TikTok. TikTok is notoriously difficult to turn into revenue, but there are some offers and some folks that are doing well with it. It just depends on your avatar, I think more than anything. But those are the big ones. Facebook, Instagram, Google, LinkedIn, Taboola, and Outbrain, are some of the Solo stuff. But staying within those bounds will help you buy website traffic cheaply, effectively for sure. If you have any questions at all or you would like to jump on an action plan call, just go to doneforyou.com/start, go through the little format there, schedule a time on my calendar, and then we’ll jump on a call.