Having returned from Funnel Hacking Live 2019, in Nashville Tennessee, we wanted to share some insights on traffic with you . Building a funnel is great for sales conversions, but it only works if you first you drive traffic to it.

There Are 3 Kinds of Traffic 

The first is traffic you can control. You don’t own it, Facebook owns the traffic and if we give them money, they will point it towards our funnels. You are usually paying for traffic that you don’t control.

The second type of traffic is traffic you earn. Maybe you get on someone’s podcast, or you’re endorsed on someone’s mailing list, that way you earn your way in by being exposed to their subscribers.

The goal is to convert both these types of traffic into traffic that you own, the third kind of traffic. The only real valuable asset you have is your list, that’s your customer base. The more you can grow your list, the more valuable your business becomes.

The reason why Facebook is so powerful is because they control the eyeballs, so they are able to push whatever they want to those viewers, that’s the true value of those companies, the customer base.

You can keep buying Facebook ads, but the problem is if you don’t convert that traffic, you never have an asset. So the goal is to convert it into traffic you own, so when you have a funnel, you can send that traffic there for free. So how do you build your list, with opt-ins at the top of your funnel.

Traffic is just people

The next thing is when we hear about traffic, we usually think in terms of numbers, stats, etc. The thing that we have to understand, is that traffic is just people. You need to understand who your dream customers are.

How do we find those people? We discussed this in an earlier blog, it’s about building audiences based on your ideal customer. If you don’t do this step, you’ll end up with customers you hate. This is super important, always start with your ideal customer in mind and target them specifically.

These people are going on a customer journey, so timeline it out. Your customers are trying new things before they find you. They are in pain and are trying to get out of it. Somewhere along the line they are introduced to you and hit your funnel.

Now you have this opportunity to talk to them. They have tried so many other programs, then they stumble upon you and if you do a good job serving them and they get value from you, they will want to go on the journey with you and then you got them for life. People will continue to buy from you unless you either offend them or stop selling them things.

Remember that people are at different points in their life and so you need to develop different funnels to bring them in, to educate them and to get them to know, like and trust you. That is the customer journey.

Search vs Interruption

Next we are going to talk about how do the advertising platforms work together? Back in the 1800s, back before there was Internet or TVs, think about how people bought. They were home and when they had a desire/need they would go out and buy that thing. People bought based on what they needed. That was all searched based. The yellow pages came out in 1886.

Then things changed from searching for things to interruption desire. In 1927, the first TV commercial came out. It was 13 years after the television was invented and it was an ad for a Bolivia watch. It lasted 10 seconds. It was the first time people were interrupted with an ad. They had a chance to sell them on the desire.

When the Internet came around, the exact same thing happened. We would at first go to search engines and search for things. With search, you have Google, Pinterest etc. When Facebook came out, it became interruption based. So, you need to seriously consider switching your ad campaigns from search to interruption.

With search, the pros are that traffic is really hot traffic but the cons are that it is a price race to bottom. 

With interruption, the pros are it’s warm traffic, but the cons are that you have to be really good at hook, story, offer because they are not actively looking for your thing. If someone’s on Facebook and they are looking at their feed, they are not looking for whatever it is that you are selling. Instead you are coming in there and interrupting what they are doing and saying, “Hey, you should buy my thing! Check this out, this is amazing!” 

Where are my ideal customers?

The final question is, where are they congregating? They are on Facebook, Instagram, Google, etc. When you hear the word congregation you think about church, but think about it.

If you look at Facebook, here’s where all the people that are interested in just about anything are congregating in groups around their interests. Go there and get involved, add value to groups and that will add value to your business.

Where are people congregating on the search based platforms? For search they are congregating based on keywords and on interruption when scanning search results, make sure you stand out when you advertise there.