3 Ways You Can Get Traffic And Sales Now Starting From Nothing

I just received an email from somebody who said “help me.” I need to learn how to get traffic to my website now so I can make sales. Here is more or less what I told him:

“I can give you some advice but you have to do the work.

1. Your focus should be on building a list in your niche. You should have a free report which solves peoples problems in your niche. Set up a Squeeze page and/or fanpage where people can opt in to your list. (You can see my review of autoresponders here: http://www.realreply.com) It does not have to be fancy. Actually simple sells better. Just look at Google’s web design. Very easy and simple and easy to navigate websites work best.

2. Create a fanpage around this subject. If people like your page they should then be able to opt in to your list and get your ebook. For an example see here. If people like my fanpage they are redirected to both an opt in form where they can re-brand the ebook with their affiliate links and the link where they can download the report right away as is.

I chose Facebook because the viral nature of Facebook is hard to beat for generating traffic. Whatever you post on your page shows on your fan’s page etc etc.

Then start making comments and being helpful on fanpages with that deal with this issue. Also join forums that deal with this topic and put links to your free ebook
page and start answering people’s questions.

3. If you want to increase your sales put your phone number on your pages and ask people to call you. Nobody is willling to do this anymore. If you are willing to offer real personal service you will increase your closing ratio immensely.”

This is essentially what I told him. One point on putting your phone number on your sales page. If you are willing to actually talk to people personally, listen to their problems and offer a solution you can beat your biggest competitors.

None of the big boys want to do this. With all the new social media noise out there there really is very little true 2 way personal interaction these days.

I used to have a music agency where I booked bands on gigs for conventions and private parties. (Hey you young whipper snappers out there. This way before we had them there internets! Long ago in the 80s!) It was a good business.

I would get the sale by dressing to the nines, showing up to the customer’s place of business, listening to his concerns and offering solutions.

Then I would look them in the eye and tell them that I would be there personally to make sure their affair would go off without a hitch. I would then show them over 100 hand written letters of people who were thrilled with my service.

I did not show them tweets, likes, comments on forums or blogs, they saw the ink baby! They could see the personal hand writing on the well worn comment cards, smudges and all. They could savour the satisfaction of my customers in a way that is just not possible online.

If that was not enough I gave them a list of names and phone numbers of past customer’s they could call as references. This was old school marketing up close and personal.

I almost always got the job when I did this. My competitors would just send them a tape in the mail. Do what Google, Yahoo and basically most businesses refuse to do. Listen to your customers and treat them like the real human beings they are. This is one way the little guy can almost always beat the big guys.

What advice would you have given our friend? Let us know if the comments area.

P.S. I really got going with this topic and wrote another post with a specific plan of action on how to use your online marketing skills to make money now. Check out the post here.