Intro
A fundamental theme I talk about a lot in this email series is people need to know you exist.
And as a Finance Solopreneur, it starts and ends with eyeballs on your website.
From there it comes down to "conversion," which just means what percentage of people who view your website become paying customers.
A basic example, if you assume 2% conversion, that means if 100 people visit your site, two people will become customers.
If 1,000 people visit your site, then 20 people will become customers.
Therefore, the more website traffic you can generate, the higher your sales will be.
That's the name of the game, but first, people need to know you exist.
So let's talk about ways to get people to visit your website...
(and I'll do my best to put them in order of cost/difficulty)
Social Media Marketing
Barriers to entry: none
Cost: free
If you've read any emails in this series, you know how strongly I feel about this. You should be posting on social media daily (I prefer LinkedIn).
You talk about your expertise and tell people what you do. Then, you either point them to your website via the end of your post, in a comment, or through the link at the top of your profile.
I generally get a 0.4% Click-thru-Rate or "CTR" on my LinkedIn posts. Said another way, if 1,000 people view my post, I expect that 4 people will visit my website.
Sounds small, I know, but once you start posting regularly on LinkedIn, it's very common to get 25,000 to 50,000+ views per post. Then all the sudden you've got a few-hundred people on your website.
As your following grows (and if you're consistent), you can expect some traffic to your website each day. As of this writing I get anywhere from 50-500+ site visitors everyday from LinkedIn.
Bonus: You can also "re-purpose" your content for other platforms like Twitter, YouTube, etc.
Email Marketing
Barriers to entry: account setup, getting subscribers
Cost: free to low
Similar to social media but one layer removed, email marketing is what you're reading right now -- an email newsletter or series that has subscribers.
Now, how do you get subscribers? Well, that's why I go with social media marketing first. You have to generate attention somewhere.
But, once you have subscribers, email marketing is preferred to social media for two main reasons:
- You "own" your audience instead of "rent" -- this just means you have a direct line of communication with people instead of being at the whim of social media algorithms.
- You have established a greater level of trust with your audience -- by "trust" I mean trust in your expertise. People are more likely to buy when they trust the expertise of the person delivering the product or service.
A solid content strategy is to treat your email newsletters as "hub content" and your social media posts as "spoke content," or quick snapshots of what you'll discuss in detail in your newsletter.
Bonus: your email content serves as a decent script for a podcast, so you could re-purpose with audio as well.
HARO
Barriers to entry: account setup
Cost: free
HARO, or "Help A Reporter Out" is one of my secret weapons for website traffic and SEO.
Just like you, there are tons of reporters out there looking to create content, and they often need experts to weigh-in on their stories.
You can create an account as a Source and sign up for their daily emails (and probably just use the Business & Finance one).
Three times a day, you'll receive an email with a list of stories reporters are working on.
If you see a topic that you can add some expertise to, just submit a response!
If you're chosen, very often you will receive a "backlink" to your website (which is good for SEO), as well as the benefit of the natural traffic that the article creates.
As of this writing, my "success rate" on HARO is about 14%, meaning for every seven submissions I put through, I will usually get selected for one.
My one note of caution for HARO, since you are helping reporters and journalists you are technically "on the record," so make sure you don't say anything confidential or that you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
If you'd like to retract something, you'll need to state that you want to keep it "off the record and without attribution."
In a future email I'll go in detail on HARO and share the exact template I use to answer prompts.
Content Marketing / SEO
Barriers to entry: account setup, website design
Cost: low to medium
Similar to the content you would write in an email, you can also put this content on your website in the form of blog posts, but you will likely have to tweak it for SEO purposes.
SEO is short for "Search Engine Optimization" and the way my brain likes to simplify it is to say "make my website good so it shows up on Google."
In other words, if I search Google for "best dog food for Golden Retrievers," I expect to find an article that tells me all about dog food (and not furniture).
The goal of your website is to provide the best answer for the search, and that is done through SEO.
SEO can be a massive black hole, but I like to break it down into 3 main components:
- Using relevant "key words" in your posts (this is called "on-page SEO")
- Getting other websites to link to your website (this is called "off-page SEO")
- Making sure your site has a good "internal link structure" (this is called "technical SEO")
I will go into SEO in a different email because there's too much to cover here.
For now, a good starting point is copying your social media posts and/or email newsletters to a blog.
So long as you explain your topic accurately, you will likely do a nice job naturally optimizing for "on-page SEO."
I'll save "off-page SEO" and "technical SEO" for another day.
Networking / Forums:
Barriers to entry: account setup
Cost: none to low
This involves building relationships with other businesses and individuals in your industry, and leveraging those connections to drive traffic to your website.
This can be done by attending industry events, joining relevant online communities, and collaborating with other businesses on projects or initiatives.
You can also participate in online forums and discussion groups related to your industry or niche.
The downside to some of these forums and groups is that there can be a lot of noise and not much value gained for the time spent.
Influencer Marketing / Email Sponsoring
Barriers to entry: cold outreach
Cost: medium to high
You can try to reach out to Influencers or Newsletters in your industry and create a partnership around sponsored content.
Trusted Influencers and Newsletters can definitely drive traffic to your site but you will likely have to pay for placement or do some kind of Revenue share deal.
There's also no guarantee than a sponsored post will generate traffic, but it can certainly help.
I've done a handful of sponsored posts in Newsletters and it usually brings some healthy traffic to the site, but I was lucky enough to find some early Newsletters where I didn't have to pay upfront.
As the Newsletter grows in popularity so do the sponsorship costs, so you'll have to look around.
Paid Advertising
Barriers to entry: account setup, learning curve
Cost: high
Paid Advertising involves placing ads on other websites or search engines to drive traffic to your site.
This can be an effective way to quickly increase traffic to your website, but it can also be expensive.
You generally "Pay Per Click" (PPC) or "Pay Per Conversion," so your sales page needs to be effective in order for this strategy to generate "Return on Ad Spend" or ROAS.
As you can see, it's much faster than organic traffic but costs a lot more.
Action Items
As I've mentioned before, social media marketing has the lowest barriers to entry and also provides quick feedback in the form of engagement and followers, so I always feel like it's best to start there.
With that said, I would choose one platform. As you get better you can start re-purposing elsewhere, but I would start with mastery of one.
Otherwise, I'd suggest looking into email marketing and blog content since they're very similar, scalable, and relatively easy to start.
That's it for today. See you next time.
—Chris
How I Can Help Further...
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