Want to increase your traffic on a low (or non-existent) budget?

This isn’t a post where you’ll be recommended solo ads, Fiverr gigs, or any other low quality traffic generation strategies. And because of this, you’ll have to put in a lot of work to make these strategies deliver the results that you want.

But if you’re willing to put in the time needed, your website can become a customer acquisition machine.

Here are 3 cost effective methods to increase your site’s traffic:

#1. Promote Word of Mouth

If you already have an existing audience, the easiest and most cost effective way to get relevant traffic is by using worth of mouth. In the modern day and age, you can leverage ‘word of mouth’ through email and social media for immediate results.

In addition, customer acquisition costs are lower when a customer is referred. They are also more likely to turn into loyal customers that can promote your business for you.

For example, you could email your customers who have had a positive experience and ask for a referral. If you provided them with an exceptional product or service, they would be doing their friends a favour by referring you to them. It’s a win-win!

Best of all, this strategy is completely free.

#2. Leverage other people’s audience

Would you say no to free?

People love getting stuff sent to them, including the influencers in your niche. Why not create a mutually beneficial arrangement where you send them a sample of your product in exchange for a shout out?

There are a lot of options out there:

  • Instagram influencers
  • Reaching out to bloggers
  • YouTube channels
  • And so many more…

These people have an existing audience that would be time consuming for you to create.

Reach out to these people and see if they’d be willing to reach a mutually beneficial arrangement.And on top of being a quick way to generate extra traffic, 71% of marketers have found influencer marketing to deliver higher quality customer and traffic, when compared to other channels. This means every dollar you spend on influencer marketing will have a higher ROI compared to other channels.

#3. Search Engine Optimisation

When you start ranking for keywords that convert visitors into customers, you have money flowing in on auto-pilot. Almost.

But before you get to this stage, you need to actually start ranking. And you also need to find the keywords that convert.

You could pay a specialist or agency to do this. However costs vary greatly, with the average cost of an SEO professional running at $75-$200 per hour. Save on agency fees and optimise your own website using free tools for zero cost.

You can use tools like Answer The Public to find the broad search terms people are using. Narrow these down to find low competition keywords using Google Keyword Planner. Find the backlinks of your competitors using Ahref’s Free Backlink Checker. And gauge the level of competition with MozBar. While these tools may take time to learn and implement, they’re all available for free and can help you tap into the proven effectiveness of SEO without opening up your wallet.

If you plan on going the DIY route, subscribing to SEO newsletters and blogs will be your best bet for learning how to do it on your own. While SEO is a constantly evolving and broad topic, the key areas you should focus on as a beginner are:

  • On-page SEO (meta-tags, keywords, content quality)
  • Technical SEO (crawl errors, sitemaps, broken links)
  • Off-page SEO (backlinks, social signals, authority)

Are you ready to explode your site traffic?

You don’t need a monstrous budget to generate traffic to your site.

While it is possible for you to create ads that will bring you a positive ROI, there’s a much greater chance you’ll have to spend a large sum of money testing and optimising before you are able to scale your advertising.

Instead, try word of mouth, influencer marketing, and search engine optimisation instead.

Start with one channel and test it out in your market.

If it works, scale it. If it doesn’t? Move on.

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