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Seeking Advice from the Elite!

by ForgeSite
11 replies
First of all, a BIG hello to you all, it's a pleasure to have joined your community : )

Secondly, I apologise if I have posted this thread in the wrong segment.

Condensed question:
Essentially, I would like to know the best marketing method to promote professional website services. What traffic sources would you recommend I use?

General question:

I have recently created my own website services company and I am learning how to market my services online rather than rely on referrals, cold-calling, and print marketing. Eventually I would like to set-up my company so that I could press a button and spend £XX to receive a client. My website is www.forgesite.com

So far solo ads & media buying (banners) have most appealed to me, and I have been driving visitors to my lander so that I can attempt to create a relationship and trust with them, as well as pitch to them in the future.

If you are able, could you please advice me on what traffic sources I should be focusing my time and effort on? I'd greatly appreciate it!

Many thanks,

Steve
#advice #elite #seeking
  • Profile picture of the author kk075
    Hey Steve-

    As you already know, content in king online. So use your blog to your advantage, pump out great content to Google+ and LinkedIn, and you'll quickly start to get those clicks. If you're not a strong writer, then hire one locally that you can train in SEO and work with moving forward.

    Also, Craigslist still works well for me...even though everyone else says it's dead. So write 2-3 variations of strong ads (mostly informational) and post a few times per week. Your phone will start ringing. Be sure that you're on every possible local directory as well; those routes do not take mass traffic but they do add up.

    On your site, video testimonials work extremely well. I haven't done that personally yet for my business, but all the other firms I work with have had huge success going that route.

    One final tip; reach out to the professional organizations in your area and network in real life as well. Have these folks leave you reviews on LinkedIn so other locals can see that you have community support. Then do the same on your website and your social sites.

    For ads/banners, the strategy would depend on whether you want to stay local or go national. So I'll skip that for now and let someone else answer once you reply.

    I hope that helped.
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    • Profile picture of the author ForgeSite
      Thank you very much for your advice and consideration, I appreciate it!

      Just so that I completely understand, you are advising me to forget about paid traffic for now and focus on building my blog, website (testimonials), and post adverts onto Craigslist?

      Cheers
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      • Profile picture of the author kk075
        Originally Posted by ForgeSite View Post

        Thank you very much for your advice and consideration, I appreciate it!

        Just so that I completely understand, you are advising me to forget about paid traffic for now and focus on building my blog, website (testimonials), and post adverts onto Craigslist?

        Cheers
        Not at all....but I wasn't sure if you were looking for local or nationwide traffic, and the advice would vary because of that. But it does always pay to get your website 100% optimized to meet your customers needs BEFORE you start paying for traffic...so that's why I started with the advice I did.
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        • Profile picture of the author ForgeSite
          Originally Posted by kk075 View Post

          Not at all....but I wasn't sure if you were looking for local or nationwide traffic, and the advice would vary because of that. But it does always pay to get your website 100% optimized to meet your customers needs BEFORE you start paying for traffic...so that's why I started with the advice I did.
          Ah I see, I get your point - thank you. I will start blogging at least twice a week. I will also learn how to leverage Craigslist, Google+ & LinkedIn.

          Many thanks,

          Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author Marx Vergel Melencio
    Steve,

    Originally Posted by ForgeSite View Post

    ... what traffic sources I should be focusing my time and effort on?
    Essentially, your first step should be to pinpoint your ideal customers ...
    Are your ideal customers individuals who want to venture into Internet marketing and affiliate marketing? (many of them most likely need your services)
    Or, experienced Internet marketers and affiliate marketers who want to venture and expand to other industries and niches? (yeah, this group, too)
    Or, service providers and small businesses that want to position their brand and reach wider markets by establishing their Web presence? (there are many businesses that don't have websites yet or any sort of Web presence, which means they may need your services)
    Or, small start-ups? (many of them most likely need your services)
    Or, established companies and corporations? (their inhouse and outsourced teams may not be doing agood job, or you may be able to provide results and value-added benefits that their inhouse and outsourced teams can't) ...

    Second step is to develop your ideal customer avatar ...
    Where are they based? What gender? What age and income bracket?
    What are they currently searching for / watching / buying / sharing / talking about (of course in relation to topics and sub topics that are relevant to your services)?
    Where are they hanging out? What publications are they viewing?
    Basically -- What does your ideal customer want in relation to your services?
    Where do they go to look for what they want?
    And, what are their relevant content viewing and product / service buying preferences?

    Third step is to develop irresistible offers that exactly match what your ideal customers want ...
    Use the data you've gathered at this point -- This is self-explanatory ...

    Fourth step is to create softsell and hardsell materials for your site and for Web platforms that they use and for offsite locations where they hang out and for relevant publications that they view ...
    Of course, use the data you've gathered at this point to determine how exactly to create your softsell brand positioning materials and your hardsell advertising materials ...

    Fifth step is to effectively integrate the six scientific principles of persuasion into your offers, softsell materials, hardsell materials, and basically into your entire frontend and backend campaigns ...
    This is self-explanatory, if you know the six scientific principles of persuasion, which include reciprocity, authority, social proof, likeability, exclusivity and commitment / consistency ...

    Sixth step is to develop traffic generation and traffic conversion campaigns using the data you've gathered at this point ...
    Your objective is to grab the attention of your target audience, entice them to view the rest of your content, engage them with your content and compel them to do whatever you want ...

    =>> Everything I said above in each step involves some sort of creative process ...
    This means everything about your offers, onsite and offsite softsell and hardsell marketing materials, frontend campaigns and backend campaigns will primarily depend on your ideal customers, their preferences and what they exactly want, what they're currently searching for, what they're currently watching, what they're currently buying, what they're currently viewing, what they're currently sharing, what they're currently talking about, where they're currently going and what they're currently viewing in relation to your services ...

    =>> And, this also means platforms like Google Adwords, Bing Search & Display, Facebook PPC, LinkedIn PPC and Sponsored Updates, CL and so on, which work for others that offer the same products / services, may or may not work for you ...

    =>> This is because you may or may not have exactly the same ideal customers in mind ...

    =>> And, personally -- This creative process is exactly why I've been fascinated with running and growing and expanding my own brick and mortar company for more than 9 years now ...
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    • Deep Learning & Machine Vision Engineer: ARIA Research (Sydney, AU)
    • Founder: Grayscale (Manila, PH) & SEO Campaign Manager: Kiteworks, Inc. (SF, US)
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    • Profile picture of the author ForgeSite
      Originally Posted by Marx Vergel Melencio View Post


      Essentially, your first step should be to pinpoint your ideal customers ... [ ]

      Fifth step is to effectively integrate the six scientific principles of persuasion into your offers, softsell materials, hardsell materials, and basically into your entire frontend and backend campaigns ...
      Really interesting stuff Marx, insightful and damn useful.

      Your sentence referencing Cialdini's heuristics really reminded me of how powerful those persuasive techniques are, and I'll be sure to trail through my website and implement them in the very near future. It also reminded me of the great saying "people buy benefits, not features" (which I will also be sure to utilize).

      When it comes to targeting my market, I have a concern & a question. I have heard several times that in this industry it is better to become niche in a particular market (such as the few you mentioned), rather than be all-sweeping - but must I build my entire brand around a particular niche, or could I keep my main website universal but make my lander pages pin-pointed?


      Originally Posted by icoachu View Post

      Here are my recommendations

      1) Build a SOLID BRAND by blogging

      2) Reach out to sites that cater to your target market and contribute content

      3) Link from contributed content to your blog

      4) Get people to sign up to your mailing list by offering FREE Email-based seminars

      5) Upsell through your list

      It's all about TRUST. People won't trust your brand the first time they come across your link or offer. You have to PROVE your authority to them.
      Hey Icoachu (your name is both terrible & brilliant, haha).

      Thank you for the solid advice - brilliant! I have heard that "content is king" many times, and this might be a silly questions, but does blogging really give a brand so much? I can see it doing wonders for building trust but only if I can get people to see it (and preferably sign-up to my news letter).

      How exactly do I reach out to websites that cater to my market? Do I ask to do a blog post or offer them an affiliate link?

      Originally Posted by Brent Stangel View Post

      How is this working for you?
      Hey Brent, so far I have bought one solo ad from a vender called "Christopher **" on Udimi. I bought 50 clicks to my lander www.forgesite.com/your-website and received 98 clicks (47 filtered), 28 opt-ins & 14 double opt-ins. So far the list has been unresponsive.

      Today I am going to use the advice given here to optimize my lander and I will then purchase 3 more solo ads from different vendors at Udimi to have a decent "feel" for their traffic quality as well as my offer / landing page.

      If you like, I'll be sure to update this thread with my results?
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      • Profile picture of the author Marx Vergel Melencio
        Steve,

        Originally Posted by ForgeSite View Post

        Really interesting stuff Marx, insightful and damn useful.
        Happy to help!

        Originally Posted by ForgeSite View Post

        It also reminded me of the great saying "people buy benefits, not features" (which I will also be sure to utilize).
        Benefits exacted to what they currently want.

        Originally Posted by ForgeSite View Post

        ... Or could I keep my main website universal but make my lander pages pin-pointed?
        Yeah, you can do that. It's up to you. Your mileage may vary.
        Personally, I prefer starting business development campaigns that have room for both growth and expansion; and

        Dealing with niche markets, instead of niche subject areas, from the get-go works well in this regard. For example:

        If you start out with a niche market of say Canada-based non-tech savvy individuals who are new to Internet marketing and currently want WordPress websites for their affiliate marketing campaigns, then:

        In the future -- You can grow your service offers to also cover other platforms aside from WordPress, such as Joomla and Drupal and even static HTML sites.
        You can also start offering custom plugin programming services for these platforms on top of your other Web development and graphics design service offers; and

        You can also expand to non-tech savvy individuals based in the US, UK, Australia, other English and non-English countries.
        You can also offer your own custom WordPress plugins, SAAS platforms and so on (your own products and relevant affiliate products).
        You can also expand to those who want to use your services and products for building Adsense sites, ecommerce platforms and so on (not just for affiliate marketing), among other relevant areas for growth and expansion.

        Originally Posted by ForgeSite View Post

        How exactly do I reach out to websites that cater to my market?
        You can start by regularly participating and contributing insightful commentaries and thought-provoking perspectives not found elsewhere to relevant discussions and social conversations in your target partner sites / blogs / social communities.
        This will improve the likelihood of getting a positive response from the owners of those sites when you send out your partnership and collaboration proposals to them, such as guest posting offers, content syndication arrangements, ad banner / advert placement deals and so on.
        This is since you'd be a familiar name to them due to your frequent participation in their Web properties by the time you contact them.

        =>> And, it's all in your offer and what you want to do. For example:

        We have strategic alliances with popular brands in certain industries because we provide them with free inbound phone, email and live chat support services in the languages we support (English, Japanese, German, French, Italian and Spanish); and

        Our main benefit is that we get highly convertible traffic for relevant upsells of our own products.
        And, our partners also get value-added benefits because we split profits from upsales based on a mutually agreed fixed commission percentage.
        We also upsell their other premium offers (also with a mutually agreed revenue share arrangement).
        This mainly works well for us and our partners.
        25% conversions on average last year and the first few months this year across our inbound campaigns for all languages we support.
        Our upsells provide added value and supplemental benefits that are directly relevant to what prospects and customers want, based on the data they provide us during support conversations.
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        • Deep Learning & Machine Vision Engineer: ARIA Research (Sydney, AU)
        • Founder: Grayscale (Manila, PH) & SEO Campaign Manager: Kiteworks, Inc. (SF, US)
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  • Profile picture of the author icoachu
    Here are my recommendations

    1) Build a SOLID BRAND by blogging

    2) Reach out to sites that cater to your target market and contribute content

    3) Link from contributed content to your blog

    4) Get people to sign up to your mailing list by offering FREE Email-based seminars

    5) Upsell through your list

    It's all about TRUST. People won't trust your brand the first time they come across your link or offer. You have to PROVE your authority to them.
    Signature
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  • Profile picture of the author Internet Trillionaire
    If your website offers a free service like free hosting package then your target market could build a relationship with your product/service like that.

    Also create a WSO teaching people how to effectively make money using your website service. Offer it as a free WSO to build your list or offer it for a really low price like $5 to $10 to ensure you get buyers on your list. That's a really fast way to drive targeted traffic to your website.
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  • Profile picture of the author Brent Stangel
    So far solo ads & media buying (banners) have most appealed to me, and I have been driving visitors to my lander so that I can attempt to create a relationship and trust with them, as well as pitch to them in the future.
    How is this working for you?
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    Get Off The Warrior Forum Now & Don't Come Back If You Want To Succeed!
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  • Profile picture of the author selfdisciplineacademy
    It's all about testing.

    There are many great traffic sources, and you can't get a straight up answer for your question.

    Test:

    Facebook
    Adwords
    BingAds
    SoloAds
    BannerAds
    List Mailings/Ad Swaps
    Free Traffic
    SEO
    etc...
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