Connor BrookePay per click. Social media. SEO. If you’re like most traffic-hungry small business owners you’ve probably spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars on these tried and true traffic strategies. As you may have noticed, all three of these internet marketing standbys are becoming more crowded, more difficult, and more expensive.
Fortunately you’re not bound to this trio of traffic tactics to drive potential customers to your sites. It’s time to get funky, branch out and tap into these little-known ways of getting boatloads of targeted traffic.
Tutorial Websites
What if I told you there was a site full of potential customers just waiting for you to show off your knowledge, personality, brand and expertise so they could visit your site and purchase your products and services? Well, there isn’t just one site like this, there are several. And they’re called tutorial sites.
Tutorial sites are where people go to learn a new skill, ranging from archery to cold calling. No matter what business you’re in there’s probably a category on top tutorial sites for you.
Here are a few high-traffic sites to check out:
- Instructables.com (US Alexa rank of 585!)
- VideoJug.com
- 5Min.com
- Tutsplus.com (specializes in graphic and web design)
- Good-Tutorials.com
Get involved in the community, share your expertise and you’ll be rewarded with ton of new visitors.
List Building and Email Marketing
With all the buzz about Facebook Likes and Pinterest followers it’s easy to forget this old-school traffic tactic that works like gangbusters. In fact, big-time business owners like Mark Cuban have largely abandoned Facebook because of its limited reach. Why work your tail off getting 1,000 Facebook followers if less than 10% actually see your message — when you can build a list that you control — and easily get a 50% open rate?
Email marketing gives you more flexibility when it comes to promoting offers and keeping in touch with your site’s fans than social media. In other words, you can get significantly more repeat traffic from your email list than you can from most social media accounts.
Guest Posting
Guest posting is one of the best ways to get your brand in front of a completely new audience without having to spend a dime on advertising.
Guest posting isn’t just for starving bloggers: the popular Twitter app Buffer gained traction from a guerrilla marketing campaign focused on guest posting. They targeted sites where social media users hung out, posted a piece of quality content and waited for the traffic to roll in.
And you can do the same. Simply reach out to bloggers in your niche and send them a ready-to-go to-notch article. If it’s good enough — and if the site has a loyal following — you can expect some serious referral traffic.
Infographics
You haven’t published an infographic yet? Then I guess you don’t like getting thousands of visitors from a campaign that costs less than $1000. Because that’s what a well executed infographic marketing campaign can do for you.
That’s not to say you can fire up Photoshop, patch some pictures together and expect your work to go viral. With an ever-crowded medium like the infographic you really need to make something that’s unique, original, high-value, relevant.
Once you’ve solicited the help of a professional graphic designer that specializes in infographics, it’s time to reach out to webmasters in your vertical. Ask them to share the infographic with their followers. You can sweeten the deal with a unique description, which helps the infographic become more search engine friendly.
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Connor Brooke.
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Spencer,
To be honest, I found your article to be quite a good read. It was enjoyable to read something written with a new and unique twist.
That is one thing in particular that will drive traffic. At least it drove me to visit your site and bookmark it for further reading. Judging by my Alexa toolbar you have put some considerable time and energy into your site
But what I want to comment on in particular is this statement.
“As you may have noticed, all three of these internet marketing standbys are becoming more crowded, more difficult, and more expensive.”
Yes, it is certainly getting more crowded and I am sure the PPC has been going up as well. However I must say that SEO has always and still does work. Mind you, I am NOT talking about any of the myriad of ways that people try to scam the SE’s. But in basic optimization techniques that will always work even in the face of Panda and Penguin attacks. Like it or not we are still going to be putting in those hours into our site, that is if we want to keep it current and relevant to our (ever changing) key words.
While I have heard of instructables, the other four are new to me (thanks for the tip) And I would be remiss not mention that a guest blog does work quite well. (You have shown that here)
Thanks for the tips and providing a refreshing read, Wishing you continued success.
Hi Greg,
So glad that you got some value from the article. As you alluded to, many of these strategies are old school, timeless approaches that never get stale (unlike the social media flavor of the month).
Best,
Spencer
Interesting article I will checkout the tutorial web sites you listed, thanks!