Why You May Not Be Ready for Paid Traffic and What to Do Instead

**This may have been autogenerated and may not be 100% accurate or grammatically correct.

Topics Covered:

1. Introduction to the episode and the speaker, Marlon McPherson, an online strategist helping business owners with websites and online content.
– Briefly mentions previous episodes that focused on making websites more profitable and discussed the lead conversion system.

2. The limitations of driving traffic through social media platforms.
– Describes an algorithm or system that constantly looks for people to post content daily on social media platforms.
– Notes the short lifespan of social media content and the limited reach it achieves despite having followers.

3. The benefits of posting evergreen content on platforms with long-lasting relevance.
– Defines evergreen content as valuable pieces that remain relevant for months or even years.
– Mentions posting videos on the speaker’s YouTube channel that consistently bring in traffic due to their timeless topics.

4. Utilizing content platforms and search engines to publish online content.
– Emphasizes the use of a content platform and search engine as foundations for online content.
– Recommends using video to engage with the audience.

5. Establishing authority and building relationships through podcasting.
– Explains how regular podcast episodes can convert subscribers into warm leads and potential customers.
– Highlights the benefits of familiarity with the speaker’s expertise and offerings.

6. The importance of testing the advertising system before investing money.
– Recommends a budget of a few hundred dollars or pounds per day for testing purposes.
– Advises conducting the testing over several weeks to observe results and learn about the target audience.

7. The risks and uncertainties of relying solely on paid advertising.
– Mentions that making money initially is not guaranteed and requires luck.
– Recommends building a foundation of online content before considering paid ads.

8. The misconceptions and challenges of attracting organic traffic.
– Counters the belief that simply setting up a website will attract visitors.
– Stresses the importance of having content online that aligns with what potential visitors are actively searching for.

9. Leveraging different content types for online discovery.
– Speaker’s primary content mediums are podcasts and videos.
– Mentions written blog posts or articles on the website for further reading and learning.
– Acknowledges some level of social media presence, but advises against relying solely on typical platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok for desired reach.

10. Considering paid advertising once a business has a stable cash flow and proven organic lead generation.
– Highlights the challenges of competing with larger companies with bigger advertising budgets.
– Suggests working with advertising platform specialists to maximize results.

11. Exploring different content types: audio, video, and written content.
– Discusses the potential benefits of utilizing various content formats to engage with and attract audiences.

*This may have been autogenerated and may not be 100% accurate or grammatically correct.

Marlon McPherson [00:00:00]:
Today I want to talk about how you can drive traffic back to your website so you can convert those visitors into leads for your business. I’ve already done a few episodes on the topic of making your website more profitable. In a previous episode, I talked about having a lead conversion system in place so that when people come to your website, they can actually automatically quickly become leads and you can follow up with them without having to necessarily be watching your website. 24/7s but the thing is, in order for this all to work, you need to drive visitors to your website. And this is what I’m going to talk about in today’s episode. Hey, if you’re new to my content, my name is Marlon, an online strategist that help business owners get better results with their websites and their online content. Now I’ve done, like I said, a few episodes already where I’ve spoken about making your website more profitable.

Marlon McPherson [00:00:56]:
If you want to see all the steps, I have a free checklist over on my website. Marlonmcpherson.com/profitablewebsite. You can grab that checklist for free and go through the steps. Today I’m talking about the best way to drive leads back to your drive visitors back to your website so you can then turn them into leads. Right? Now let me talk about the two main ways, first of all, and give you some context of where I’m coming from with the information I’m about to give you. You can pay for traffic or you can generate traffic organically. Okay, so you can pay for traffic or you can generate them organically. The paid traffic options or sources is when you actually do advertising or you pay like an influencer to talk about your business or your brand or your product or service, and they then send traffic back to your website because they’re promoting your business for you.

Marlon McPherson [00:01:56]:
They’re like sales reps, essentially that go out there and promote for you. But these are paid options, and that’s fine. Most people who are new to the world of marketing and business or online business, they set up a website and they think that, okay, people will just find the website and it doesn’t work like that, right? You have to actually have content out there on the internet that people are going to find that are looking for this type of content or someone might have shared it with them because they know that this is in alignment with what they want. If you don’t have content out there, then chances are people are not going to discover your website organically. We’re not talking about people who already know you and who you’ve already spoken to about your website and they know how to find you or they know your name. They can Google you or whatever and find your website. Talking about brand new people who are fresh, they don’t know you exist yet, and they’re looking to solve their problem. The way it works online is that people will go to Google, they’ll type in how do I do this, or they’ll search for services, or they’ll search for whatever on this particular thing.

Marlon McPherson [00:03:11]:
Or they’ll go to YouTube, which is a search engine, okay, it’s primarily a search engine. It’s got a social media aspect to it, but it’s mainly a search engine. And it’s the second largest search engine out there, second only to Google. So that’s what people do currently. And there’s going to be other ways in the future where people will find the information. Obviously now you have your voice assistance on your phone or in your smart speaker and that’s how people find what they’re looking for. The information that these systems serve up to users are coming from websites. They’re coming from other places online, like online forums or on platforms that you can publish the information.

Marlon McPherson [00:03:52]:
And that’s all that content is. It’s packaged information around a specific topic or subject area that is then presented to a user who’s looking for this or who is a good fit, and it gets suggested to them. So it’s critical that you have online content going back to paid advertising. People want to shortcut the process thinking that, okay, this is an easy way, I can just pay for some ads and I’ll just get leads, visitors coming through, loads of traffic coming to my website, and I’ll just get leads off the chain, right? But this is not something that I do personally or recommend that you do, especially when you’re inexperienced, just starting out and you don’t have a ton of money to waste, right? Paid advertising can be super expensive. It can be something that make or break your finances when it comes to your business. And if you’re just starting out you’re bootstrapping or you don’t have a lot of cash flow to invest into that that you can put aside to say yes, this is something that I can just say that’s for marketing through paid ads. Then if you rely on that money, I’d say invest it in some other way and focus on doing content. If you’re going to do it paid ads, that is, you need to understand what you’re doing.

Marlon McPherson [00:05:11]:
You need to know that this is not just, okay, I’ll put some money in, I’ll get money out, or I’ll get visitors out or leads. You have to be able to test the system. So whatever platform you’re going to advertise on, make sure you have a budget. We’re talking about a few hundred dollars or pounds per day to test out the system over a period of time, let’s say for weeks. So you could see, first of all, you could see what’s happening based on the ads that you’re running and the platform can get to learn who your audience is and who to put your ads in front of and so on. That’s just how it works. Initially, you’re not going to be making money, you might get lucky. And that’s not something you can rely on.

Marlon McPherson [00:05:53]:
And on top of that, you’re going to be competing with other people in your space who have a much bigger budget, let’s say a big company, massive company, that have almost an unlimited budget to put into ads. There are companies that are spending 10,000 or more per day of dollars or pounds on ads. And if you’re competing in a space that’s highly competitive where ads are concerned, you’re going to spend a lot of money on your ads and you’re probably going to get drowned out by these competitors. So my argument is this. I think ads you should be doing once you’ve got the cash flow and once you’ve proven that your lead funnel, your lead generation system works organically already, and then you can start putting people through by driving more traffic through ads. And then you have someone that you can work with who specializes in that particular platform to help you with it. Let’s go to content, which is what I help people do. The type of content that you can do generally, you have audio content, you have videos and you have written content.

Marlon McPherson [00:06:53]:
So I’m doing a podcast and I do videos right. And this is how I publish my content primarily. I also have blog posts, or you might call them articles on my website. So these are things that I’ve written that people can go to my website and read and get to learn more about the subject, learn more about how the problem is solved. I also do some level of social media, but I don’t focus on social media. Most people that try to do some sort of organic online content, they default to the general or typical social media, which really doesn’t get you the type of reach. And you’re going to end up getting frustrated if you’re not paying for ads on these platforms. I’m talking about the Instagrams, the Facebooks, the TikToks, and platforms like that.

Marlon McPherson [00:07:51]:
They have an algorithm or a system that essentially is constantly looking for people to post, like regularly, daily, at multiple times a day. And your content actually isn’t going to get seen for more than a very short period of time, let’s say an hour or two or a few minutes. And the majority of people won’t even see your content, even if they follow you. You’re probably going to get frustrated because you’re on this treadmill, this constant social media treadmill. And my advice is to post to platforms that are more evergreen and post evergreen content on these platforms. What do I mean by evergreen? It means that these are pieces of content that’s super valuable to your audience and it’s going to stay relevant for a long time. And this can continue to serve you for months or years to come. So I’ve posted videos on my YouTube channel that keeps bringing in traffic all the time because the things I post about in these videos.

Marlon McPherson [00:08:52]:
People are constantly looking for these. This is the most evergreen or the best evergreen content platform because that’s what it is. It’s a content platform and search engine to allow you to publish online content. So that’s where I recommend people go to when it comes to if they want to do video. The other way is to do a podcast. Podcast is not necessarily search friendly, but it’s a way to establish authority. You’re listening to me on a regular basis when I publish my episodes, hopefully, and you’re realizing that okay, there’s a substantial amount of knowledge and information and wealth of expertise that I can share with you just by talking to you through the podcast. And this is a way for people who become subscribers to then automatically convert into warm leads before they even speak to you because they already know what you’re about, they already know what you do and they know that okay, when it’s time for them to pull that trigger, the only person they can think of is you.

Marlon McPherson [00:09:52]:
So it keeps you top of mind. The beautiful thing is that the way I use social media, I just repurpose my content. So whatever I publish to YouTube or in my podcast or on my website, I then share that out. You can post it manually or you can use a system that automates it for you, where you map out the next month or six months or a year of content to post to your social media. And that’s really the way that you should be doing it so that it’s posting for you. And then you can jump in and do the odd posts here and there. But focus on a content strategy. Think about what people are asking in your space.

Marlon McPherson [00:10:29]:
Write down some topics, have a content plan for publishing something at least weekly, whether it’s a podcast episode or a video, and then you can share that out to social media. Have the content posted to your website as well in the form of a blog post, or just post a video or embed your podcast episode there. If you found this helpful, don’t forget to leave me a comment to let me know wherever you’re watching this, or if you want to drop me a line, head over to my website and leave me a message there through my contact form and I’d love to hear from you. Check out one of my other pieces of content and I will catch you in the next one.