7: The Ultimate Guide to Traffic Sources That You Can Use to Generate Leads

Are you looking for ways to generate more leads? In this episode I share a comprehensive list of traffic sources that you can use to get the leads you need. From social media to paid advertising, you'll learn where to share content that connects you to your ideal audience.

Highlights

00:00 - Introduction and welcome
03:48 - How to launch before you have leads
08:43 - Launching with a 5-Day Challenge
Traffic Sources:
10:04 - Blogging
12:04 - Live Video
13:04 - Social Media Bios
18:38 - Lead Magnets
20:35 - Facebook Groups

Resources and Links

Register for Challenge Launch Bootcamp and learn how to create and deliver a 4-Day Challenge that boosts your revenue and skyrockets your business. CLICK HERE

Download my free guide, 3 Things You Need to Launch and Scale Your Online Business at banishbusinessclutter.com/guide. 

Learn simple yet effective organic strategies that will generate consistent leads and customers with Online Revenue Roadmap.

Join our Facebook community at launchperspective.community. 

Want to stay up to date on new podcast episodes, or ask a question that I answer on the show? You can do this and more at launchperspective.com.

My favorite tools:

Kajabi / Learn Kajabi

Canva / Learn Canva

Evernote / Learn Evernote

Ecamm / Learn Ecamm

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Transcript:

Welcome back. So last time we talked about how to create content that increases engagement and generates leads. And I hope that it gave you a lot of ideas for the type of content you can be creating and the different types of format, meaning written content, audio content, video content. And we're going to follow up from our last episode to today's topic, which is the ultimate guide to traffic sources that you can use to generate leads. So, in other words, we have the content, the format, but where are we sharing this? How are we increasing our reach and getting the information where it needs to be to our ideal audience? 

So, before we jump into the different traffic sources that you can really hone in on your business, I just want to make a few key points. First, please know that you do not have to do everything. You do not have to be everywhere. Yes, it is fantastic when you are creating a piece of content that you can then break apart and now put all over social media, all over your ads, all over your emails, but that does take time. So, I just want everyone to release the pressure in thinking that they have to do all the things.

This guide today, which just a reminder I have all of your traffic sources laid out in a beautiful guide. If you go to banishbusinessclutter.com/guide, you can get my Three Things you Need to Launch and Scale your Online Business. And obviously we've talked about offers, we've talked about launches. Now we're really honing in on leads and that guide is going to be a great reference sheet to review what we've been talking about over the last few episodes. The other resource I wanted to make sure you checked out was Online Revenue Roadmap. If you go to lydiamartin.biz/roadmap, you're going to get access to my exact process, the exact thing I did to go from zero people on my email list to four hundred subscribers and almost 10K in revenue in just six weeks.

So, I just am sharing this because I want you to know that you can a hundred percent launch an offer even before you have leads. Leads are a very, very important piece of your business, but I just want to remind you that you don't need to wait in launching an offer until you have so many people on your email list. Of course, it is easier to launch in a lot of ways if you have a bigger email list, but I want to explain to you my journey, so that it will really spark ideas and inspiration and encouragement for you before we jump into the various types of traffic sources. 

So again, I launched my business in March of 2020, and I resigned from my corporate job on March 2nd, and  there was no plan B for me. I resigned from my corporate job, not because I didn't like my corporate job. I loved that job, loved the people, loved what I did. But it was no longer feasible for me in creating the life of freedom and flexibility that I needed to be there for my aging parents, for my son who we were going to homeschool, for my daughter who had moved out of state. It was just not possible for me to create the life I desired by working for someone else.

So, March 2nd, completely resigned and now I'm looking at launching a business. Now I had been dreaming about this business for over five years. I really didn't know what it was going to look like, and I didn't have all the answers, and I didn't really even know where I wanted to start, but I had spent the last previous years learning about online marketing. I had taken some courses from many different trainers for the different positions I was in. I had worked really hard in improving video content because I was a corporate coach and trainer. So, I had to do a weekly training with the consultants that I coached, and that gave me so much experience in finding my voice and getting confident in delivering live video. 

I always want people to understand that when I say I launched my business on March 2nd, I had zero people on my list, there were still skills and things that I had been working on, to be honest, for 25 years. Okay. I didn't just come out of the gate with no experience. All right. I had learned customer service. I had learned, you know, sales from when I was in my direct sales business. So, all of us have experiences in our past that we're going to draw on when we launch something new. You may not think it correlates, but trust me, if you've lived life any length of time you have gained some experience, okay, that you're going to be able to apply to what you're launching.

So, March 2nd, I had a couple of things under my belt, but I absolutely had no one on an email list. So, I knew that I needed to replace my corporate income as fast as possible. I didn't have the luxury of just piddling around and spending 12 months building something. I knew I wanted to replace that income ASAP and so I didn't spend weeks and months building a list and sharing free content. I got to work on the first offer I was going to sell. All right. I should really say my second because coaching was my first offer. When I launched my business March 2nd, I even reached out to some people that I had worked with before. And I said, "Hey, I've launched this new business. It's called Banish Business Clutter, if you're struggling with, you know, digital organization or you need some help with your systems, I have coaching available." 

So, the beginning of March I was coaching a few people one-on-one. It wasn't even coaching packages. It was just a one-on-one session here and there with a few people, but ultimately, I knew I wanted to launch a digital course. It was not built. I did not know all of the details of it. I just knew that I needed people buying a course as fast as possible.  I wanted it to be a starter course that I would sell for $97. Because I thought for $97, if I could get, you know, 20, 40, 50 people in, that would bring in revenue for me very, very, very quickly. I wasn't focused as much on the leads as much as I was on that offer and how it was going to launch it. 

So, I knew I was going to do this course. I didn't know all the details, but I thought the best way, in my opinion, to launch something was going to be with a five-day challenge. My challenges are now four days, but back then I did a five-day challenge because I had been in a lot of challenges with other trainers. I loved the community experience of it. I loved how I, you know, went through that challenge. Sometimes I would buy their program sometimes I didn't. Right. It just depended, but I thought, what fun would it be to host a challenge. And this challenge I knew would be the first thing I could do to build my list. Because I thought they're going to register to join my challenge, that's going to add them to my email list, and that is how I built my first 250 to 400 subscribers. It was a hundred percent by launching a five-day challenge.

So that's how I started. And I had an opt-in page. That's what it's called. It's a page, or a registration page, where somebody can look at a page, see what you're offering, put in their email address to sign up. We'll talk about tools in a future video if you're wondering what kind of tools help you do that sort of thing. I use Kajabi for this, but I had this opt-in page and as people signed up for my challenge, it got them on my list. 

Now, how did I bring awareness to my challenge? Well, I created some valuable pieces of content. The first thing I did was write three blog posts. Now I didn't even have a blog at this point, but I knew in Kajabi that they had a blog page template. And I thought I'm just going to write three blog posts that are related to clutter because my challenge was going to be called the Five-day Banish Business Clutter Challenge. And I knew that I needed to get people understanding what I meant by the word clutter. So, you can go back and still access these blog posts on my website when you go to my blog. They are not very well done. I really don't consider myself an eloquent writer. I'm an informational writer, but not really a blogger. But from March 13th to March 23rd, I wrote three blog posts. They were called What is Clutter, What Causes Clutter and What is Clutter Costing You? That was it. 

So, the reason why I made these three blog posts is because at the end of the blog post what was I doing? I was extending an invitation for them to register for my five-day Banish Business Clutter challenge. So, by doing this content, instead of just telling everyone, "Hey, I'm doing a challenge. Hey, I'm doing a challenge. Sign up for my challenge.", each, you know, every few days I would share a new link to the blog, which was a valuable piece of content. And then at the bottom it would be inviting them to join my challenge. So that's what we talked about in the last episode. Right. We're sharing valuable content and extending an invitation to their next step. So that was another thing I did to expand my reach and get more people opting into my list and my challenge. Okay. 

Another piece of content I did is I went live everywhere. All right. I went live on my personal Facebook, on my business page. I had not even been using Instagram really at that point, but I even went live on Instagram and that brings me to a very important thing I want to share. So, when I first started, I was pretty much only on Facebook. Now I had a Pinterest account. I had an Instagram account, but I was only using them for personal reasons. It was not business related. So, one of the things I did in my first month of business is I did not tell myself that I was going to all of a sudden learn all these platforms. I didn't have time. I was focused on my challenge and I'm like, I am not going to just get, you know, sucked into the social media abyss, and spend all my time learning Pinterest, learning, you know, Instagram and all these things. Even LinkedIn, I hadn't used LinkedIn in forever. 

However, I know how valuable it is to be able to find someone on the platforms that you use or that they use. Okay. So, what I mean by that is this. Even if I'm a Facebook person and that's where most of my content lives, that's where my audience lives, I absolutely know that there's people that will find me who maybe Facebook is not their platform of choice. They prefer Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, TikTok, whatever. Okay.  Creating a profile on some of the major social media platforms. Now I still don't have or use TikTok, so I won't say I did that one. However, I knew if anybody was going to look me up or look at Banish Business Clutter and would go to LinkedIn or go to Instagram.

I wanted to make sure that my profiles were correct. That they were businesses accounts with links to my website with good profile pictures of me. The best pictures I had at the time. They were not nearly as good as they are now, okay, but cover images that were really good quality, you know, that I downloaded from Canva that matched my niche. Okay. So, I just kind of created this brand look across the different platforms. And let me tell you what happened. Even though I was yet to be on Instagram consistently or Pinterest for business, just by updating my profiles it pushed out to those who had been following me years prior. And it said, "Lydia has updated her cover image. Lydia has updated her profile." And then people are saying, "Oh my goodness. What's Lydia up to? Wow. What's this new website?" You would not believe the personal messages I was getting from platforms I had not been on in years. 

So, I just mention this because while I don't think you need to be on all the platforms consistently until you like build and have a team and all that, even having good quality profiles is beneficial. When Clubhouse came out, I created a profile on Clubhouse so that if I was ever interacting with people on that platform people would be able to click on my profile. They would have links to my website. If you go on my Instagram, I have a social link that takes people to the various things I talk about. So at least get to the point, especially if you're brand new, to where you have a branded, seamless sense across the different platforms. All right. That was one thing that I did do. 

And then I did go live. Back then I don't even think they had LinkedIn Live, but wherever you can go live. I was just very casually with my phone saying, "Hey everybody. This is Lydia. I don't know if you heard. I'm launching something super exciting. I have a five-day Banish Business Clutter challenge coming up and here's what we're going to be doing in this challenge. It's going to help you do X, Y, and Z." That was it. I was literally just informal, going live. And I would say, "By the way, the link to the challenge is in the post or click below in the comments. I would absolutely love for you to join me in the challenge." And that is really what I was doing. 

So, I wrote my three blog posts. I updated my profiles on all the major platforms. I went live everywhere I could think of, not like every day, but every couple of days I would just go live in a new place. Okay. I also created some images and some GIFs in Canva, like marketing type things. It's like join the five-day Banish Business Clutter challenge. So, like, I was creating images and the GIFs I was using was like  feeling unorganized? And it would be like a messy desk or something like that. So, I was just creating content to get awareness to that challenge. And that challenge is what built my list. In fact, 250 people joined my list before the challenge started. And by the end of the five-day challenge, I had 400 people on my email list. And that was the beginning of everything. 

So, I just want to encourage you that if you're launching something, you're thinking I don't have a list. Now I had been building relationships with business owners. So yes, I was absolutely in my personal messenger as well saying, "Hey Kara, just letting you know what I have happening. I think you would love this." Or I would reach out to a leader and say, "This is something I think your team members would love." Or I would reach out to just a really good friend and say, "Do you know of any business owners who might be interested in this?" So personal messages, referrals, valuable content, all of this is what built my list for my first launch. And all of these things are what I still do today. 

If I were to tell you what still brings in the most leads into my world, it is definitely my live challenges, which I've now done six in the last two years. I also have done a webinar launch. That also increased my list. So, launches are list builders, for sure. But you don't only want to be building your list when you're launching. 

So, what are some other ways that I build my list? Well, I have now created two different lead magnets. One is a video tutorial where I teach people in eight minutes how to create a bookmark folder system. To date I have had, I think, 2,500 people download this video or access this video training because it is life changing. If you want to get this, we'll be sure to link it in the show notes for this podcast. But this little eight-minute training helps you reduce all of those tabs. If you are famous for having fifty, eighty, a hundred tabs open in your browser, my bookmark folder system shows you how to get quickly to anything you need online in one click. All right. It is to date one of my tips that my students love the most. So that is an example of a lead magnet. If you go on my website, banishbusinessclutter.com, you'll see I have links to lead magnets. So, it's either a free video or a free guide or a free, you know, email tips, you know, for a few days.

Whatever it is, there is a reason why people are giving me their email address. It's because I'm offering something of value in return. Okay. So, a lead magnet is a great way to build your list. There is one other thing, though, that has brought in more leads to my list than even my lead magnets. Okay. Now challenges are number one. That's built my list the most. Which by the way, in now two years and three months, we're getting ready to hit 8,000 email subscribers. So, a long way from my beginning 400 people. But how did we get to 8,000 on our email list? The challenges. These lead magnets. 

But the other thing that generates leads for us every single day are our Facebook groups. So, I absolutely love Facebook communities. They're not for everyone. Some people will build their list on Instagram because that is more their space, them, and their audience. They want to spend time, you know, posts, and Reels, and stories, and DMs and Instagram. For me, the community aspect of a Facebook group is like no other. I personally love it for myself. I love to meet people inside of Facebook groups. I love to connect with people. And then I love to host my groups where people can come into my world and see what we do, see what we offer, connect with other like-minded entrepreneurs. 

So, the first group I ever launched was my Banish Business Clutter group. And why was that group launched? It was because I was doing a challenge and I needed people to be in a Facebook group to run the challenge. And I've run multiple challenges inside of that same group. It's now grown to over 3,100 members, but how did that group grow my email list? Well, on Facebook when someone joins your group, you can set up three questions. And I always say, you know, what's your email address so I can send you such and such? Okay. Whatever valuable thing you're going to send them. A video, a guide, a recipe book, it just depends on your niche. But what is your email address and then I ask them what's your biggest struggle when it comes to clutter? All right. 

You can ask anything you want in these three questions, but one of them should always be what is your email address? Now it's completely up to you if you still want to let people in your group without putting in an email. Some people believe that that's the better option because it lets people come in, be a fly on the wall, you know, see what you're all about before committing to get on your list. My take on it is that if you want to come into one of my free Facebook groups, okay, free, where I am going to share valuable tips, resources, all kinds of things, I feel that I am giving you that in exchange for your email address. So, I look at my groups as a lead magnet. Okay. 

And if you are not willing to give your email address to me it's totally fine. I get it. I understand. But I at least need to know that you want to be there. And so, by giving me your email, it's saying, yes, I want what you're sharing in the group. And then it's completely up to you if you'd like to unsubscribe after that. I preach against digital clutter, so I understand the need to unsubscribe from lists. I never, you know, expect that everyone's going to stay on my list, but I do feel like if you want to come into my group, knowing the value I give for free, I at least want to do that in exchange for your email.  

So, most people would never have more than one free group. I have a second one only because this is what happened. When I did that challenge. Okay. Remember I had 250 people sign up to my very, very first challenge. It was held, like, March 23rd to 29th. Okay. So, it was the end of my very, very first month in business and then they had until, like, April 13th to sign up for my $97 program. So, at this point I've got these four hundred people in my challenge. Okay. By the end of the challenge. Ninety-five of those four hundred people signed up for my $97 course. So almost a 10K launch on a course that I had not yet built. Okay. Now, we won't go into all the details of that today, but I just want you to understand that you can a hundred percent do a launch without a list and sell an offer, okay, without it being built.

This is what I mean by taking massive imperfect action. This is probably a whole new perspective for some of you, but all I did was deliver each module one week at a time over the next six weeks. So, I would record a module and then they would get access. I record the next module. They would get access. And that is how my first course was built.  After I did that challenge and here I have this 10K challenge in six weeks after zero people on my email list. I was having people coming to me saying, "How did you do that?" 

Why were they messaging me this? Because I was sharing my excitement in all the entrepreneur groups I was in. Right. I was in the Kajabi group. I was in the Doers Way, which is a huge female entrepreneur group that I had been a part of for so long. I was in Amy Porterfield's groups. I was in much smaller groups as well, but when that launch happened, I was excited. I was like, oh, my word, the validation of I just quit my job and I just made $9,500 in six weeks. I was like, I can do this. What's going to happen if I keep at this? And I just was sharing my excitement and sharing stories. This is why I talked last time about sharing inspiring stories behind the scenes. And I was just posting my excitement everywhere. 

Before I knew it, I had, I mean, dozens and dozens of personal messages. How did you do it? What type of launch did you do? Tell me about your offer? How did you find your people? Where did you share it? I was like, okay, I cannot answer all these people in individual messages. I don't have that kind of time. So, I just put up a brand-new group with no plan, no marketing plan, no content plan. I just said launch strategies and tech support for course, creators, and coaches. Created this group. It was so bare bones. I think it only had like a hundred people in it for a really, really long time. But initially I launched it because I was like, well, just join this group and if you have any questions post them there. And then I could answer them but everyone in the group was going to get the answer. And it hit me like a couple of weeks in. I was like, this is a really nice way to share content, not just my own content, but like affiliate links.

We're going to talk about affiliate marketing in another episode, but like, I've been a partner with Evernote forever and I've been partners with Canva and Kajabi. And I was like, you know, if people ask me questions about Canva I can share my affiliate link with them. And it just became this amazing group of the audience I ultimately wanted to serve. Okay. So not everybody is going to have two groups, but my point is you need a place for your people to go when they start having a conversation with you. If you are connecting with people, whether it's in other groups, on your social media, I'm going to share some other options here in a minute. 

But if you're connecting, you need a way to say, by the way, I have a free resource. I'd love for you to check it out. That's your lead magnet. They go check that out. They're on your list. By the way, I have a group where I answer questions about being a course creator. Go check that out. When they join your group, they give you their email. All of these individual things have grown my list over the last two plus years.

Okay. So, I hope this just gives you a good overview, some ideas, maybe things you didn't think about. I have other ideas that I share in Online Revenue Roadmap. I go into even more detail about how I expanded my reach and how I connected with people. So, you'll want to check that out, but definitely check out the free guide. And if you go to page 11, you will see a list of organic traffic sources and paid traffic sources. Now most people think of traffic sources as social media, you know, great. I'm going to share my content on one of the major social media platforms, whether it's TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest. Okay. 

But I also want you to be thinking about, like, the search traffic. So, Search Engine Optimization, it's called SEO. Just by doing certain strategies you can expand your reach because you're creating things that people search for. This is why blogging is so valuable. Podcasts. YouTube is a search engine. Even Pinterest is a search engine. Okay. People are going on Pinterest to learn how to do things or ideas for things. Right. So, SEO is another huge traffic source for you. We're not going to go into details on how to make SEO work for you. I just want you to know that that is a big piece of organic strategies that you can implement to share content, which grows your list. Okay. 

Other things. Don't underestimate the value of referrals. Okay. I don't even know if I listed referrals on the sheet, but I did in a roundabout way. Meaning you can connect with people who are willing to interview you on their podcast. They want to have you as a guest blogger. Right. They want to do, like, a joint venture marketing campaign with you where you're sharing your content with their audience, they're sharing their content with your audience. All right. There's lots of  traffic sources that are out there where you can share your content that brings people into your world. All right. 

Just remember in each of these you have written audio and video types of content. Don't underestimate speaking opportunities. All right. There're so many virtual speaking opportunities today. You don't even have to travel somewhere. But don't underestimate your local either. Reach out to your chamber of commerce. Find out if they have a networking group in the area. Right. I was a part of a group called WIN for a little while. It was Women In Networking and being a part of a group like that allowed me to connect with so many other entrepreneurs. All right. 

So, these sort of opportunities are available to you locally or virtually. Okay. So, so, so many options. And then of course once you have utilized all of these organic strategies, you 've started to grow your content. You have a lot of different content pieces now and you're starting to grow your team. That is when I decided to implement paid traffic. Now we're not going to go into paid sources like Facebook, YouTube, Google Ads, things like that. Because I feel that is a whole beast in and of itself. And when you start paid, advertising is different for everyone. 

Some people launch their businesses. They're an E-COM. So, they sell a physical product and advertising is how they get their leads. It is a hundred percent how they grow. That's their model. I wanted to know that I had offers that would convert. Once I knew that I have used paid advertising to just take what I'm already doing and multiply it. Okay. I pretty much do Facebook ads and Pinterest ads right now. And Instagram of course. But my point is that can come down the road. Don't stress. If you're like, I have so many things I'm trying to work on and create and launch and should I do ads? Go ahead and focus on converting things organically first, because then when you know those numbers, you're going to put your money into something that you know is going to reap a return.

All right. I know this episode is longer than I usually try to go, but I had so many things I wanted to share. And I wanted to explain my story from the beginning because I felt like it would really help you see how different traffic sources can be utilized where you're sharing content to bring people into your world.

Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you in the next episode.