Introduction

There are a lot of different ways to generate traffic, some more effective than others.

Most people when they’re just starting out only really focus on one or two strategies without ever venturing to find out about other traffic strategies that might work even better for their offers.

e problem is that we have literally hundreds of sources of traffic you can choose from, therefore being able to know those ones which will ultimately generate the largest volume of traffic is very important.

Obviously you don’t want to waste time on a strategy that doesn’t work, so here are 5 great free traffic strategies that work like gangbusters:

1. Forum Marketing

For many years, many marketers have made forum marketing their leading source of traffic.

Forums are used to quickly connect you to your target audience so that you can find out what they want and then give it to them.

You can use forum marketing as a fantastic way to quickly build your market credibility, especially if your business has just taken off.

Also, it’s an excellent way of getting in touch with the movers and shakers in the same niche as you are while you research, evaluate and identify your entry points, such as the kind of products that will likely sell, what people are looking for and ready to buy and so on.

So how do you use active forums to drive traffic to your website in your niche market?

Well first you sign up to the most active forums in your niche and provide high quality posts, useful resources and tools to other forum members. If you do this correctly, then you will quickly develop a positive presence inside the forums and your audience will start turning to you as an expert or authority in your niche.

Almost all forums allow you to create a profile containing your website, a short biography and your personal information (name, email and, in most forums, your social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter). Most forums will also allow you to create a signature, which is going to be crucial to your success. Once you make any post, a signature box is attached to it. Within your signature you should have a call to action that links directly back to your site. Some forums allow you to put only one URL, but other forums allow you to enter several URLs as long as you can restrict your signature to a certain number of characters, so make sure you know the rules.

Don’t link your signature directly to your sales page; it should go either to your squeeze page (ideally) or your blog.

You can get a lot of high-quality, targeted traffic from forums, and the best part is you can get started right now.

 

2. Social Media Marketing

Social marketing is nothing more than a direct connection with your customers, an engagement of conversation with them and the building of relationships with your target audience. One of the best methods you can use to build a customer-based marketing campaign is by connecting with your target market on social media such as Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and Ning.

When looking for traffic from social media there are many ways to reach out to your target audience. On Facebook for instance, you could pay for an advertising campaign that allows you to target specific demographics.

This form of advertising is very cost effective and is good for marketers who want to test their campaign performance and at the same time send steady and quick traffic to their websites.

Also, you can use your Facebook business profile to set up cost-free marketing campaigns for your business and connect with potential customers. You can offer special discounts, savings and coupons to enhance your Facebook pages and make those offers available to those who liked your pages, joined your group or connected with you in other ways.

On social media platforms such as Twitter, it’s easy to connect with your audience by releasing notices, short updates and news of interest to them. Don’t market heavily in your social communities. Instead, always offer beneficial and hard-to-find information and materials, discounts, freebies, and other offers which will stand out from the crowd while you relate with your audience.

Remember to utilise other leading social communities such as Linkedin, a viable social media platform that helps professionals to extend their marketing outreach. Linkedin is regarded as a social media community for professionals and this is a medium you can use to display your live portfolio and other things such as your contacts, connections, business information and your resume of achievements.

On Ning, you can create a customized social media community for yourself, and provide your subscribers, customers and members an easy means for them to interact with you and with one another while having fun at the same time.

3. Press Release Marketing

You can use press releases in a powerful and effective way to connect with your target audience and also create buzz about your upcoming offers, products and launches. Press releases are also very cost effective to produce and they are very easy to distribute.

As a matter of fact, the distribution can be automated by hiring press release distribution and circulation outlets and use them to tweak and submit your press release to all major blogs, content syndication and media outlets.

Moreover, you can submit your press releases through both paid and free distribution channels. Therefore, whatever your budget and time press releases are very essential for positioning your business so as to get mass exposure.

Here are the crucial elements you should include in your release:

• Your release Date and Time: On top of all your news releases, you should put the date and time either indicating when the document will be made available to the public, or simply write “for Immediate Release” if you want to make it ready for immediate distribution.
• The headline: Create the summary of your message or storyline in a few words. The aim of this is to instantly capture the attention of your clients and potential customers.
• The subhead: This can be used to give further details on the headline and allow the readers to collect more information about your branding message.
• The dateline: Add the day of release and place of origin of your document (city and state). You can simply add your website address or even include your company’s address.
• The introduction: In the first paragraph at the beginning of the press release that should explain the basic elements of the press release such as how, where, who, when, why and what.
• The body: Use this to expand the introduction and dive into your story. Support your assertions with statistics, details and trend information to help you pass your message across.
• The biography of company: Write the background of yourself and/or your company and the services it offers.
• The closing marks: Make use of the symbols ### or -30- to formally signify the end of your press release.
• Your contact information: You should include your contact information, website URL and any other details people can use to contact you

4. Ad Swaps Marketing

Ad swaps have been in use for many years, and there’s good reason for that; they work very, very well. Those who spot and appreciate the value of ad swaps can instantly exploit the endless supply of targeted traffic for building their lists much faster, and they’ll be able to maximize their business exposure while applying very little effort.

The objective of ad swaps is resources exchange.

You just look for ezine publishers or newsletters in your own niche market, and request for an ad swap with them. This means that they advertise your offer and you advertise theirs in exchange.

To succeed in ad swap, it’s important you find marketers at the same marketing level as you are. The reason for this is that you want to ensure you want to deliver the same number of subscribers and views, as you are going to get from them.

Although ad swaps can be fundamentally an advertisement exchange, where you agree with someone to send out each other’s product advertisement, the most efficient ad swaps concentrate on the exchange of valuable resources and subscribers.

For instance, let’s say you are in the work at home niche market, you can get plenty of ad swap opportunities for yourself. Consider many work-from-home sites just starting up, which cater for single parents or the communities of work at home moms.

A lot of such websites are just beginning to acquire traffic and are growing a list of very loyal subscribers, customers and repeat visitors. If you could contact one of these publishers with and offer to provide their subscribers with valuable content, you’re going to get a good response.

The key is to provide good quality information, and send visitors to your squeeze page so you can build your list as well.

No matter what niche market you are in, there must be ad swap opportunities within your reach. Naturally, you will like to build a sufficient list for yourself before approaching your potential partners so that you can deliver clicks and subscribers to your ad swap partners as well. Even if your list size is very small (200-300 for example), if your open-rate is high and you have responsive subscribers, you’ve got a viable asset which you can offer your potential ad swap partners.

When you want to look for potential ad swap partners, start by searching for start-up websites in your market since they are usually the easiest for you to approach.

Also remember that even if you contact someone who has a list which is much bigger than yours, an autoresponder account allows easy segmentation; therefore the list owner could decide to send out mails to only a particular number of subscribers, depending on what you yourself can deliver in exchange.

Use forums, groups and social communities as great resources to find potential ad swap partners in the same market as you are. So take time to do proper research and come up with a list of 20-30 potential partners.

Next, prepare an email that entices ople to click on to your page. This email is what your ad swap partner will be sending to their list in order to advertise your offer. Don’t hide anything because you want the publisher to see precisely what you’re offering and what benefits they would derive from the partnership.

When sending out emails to potential ad swap partners, put them in your focus. How will they benefit? What can you do for them? You should customize and personalize each email as much as possible.

Also remember you’re not just looking to get marketing partnerships, but, more importantly, a relationship with key players in your niche market as well.

A great place to get started with ad swaps is Safe-Swaps.com. Check it out and get started now.

5. Document Sharing Marketing

If you want a fast, easy and cost-free means of generating massive traffic to your website then you should explore the potential of content sharing and distribution networks.

An example of a great content sharing site is the ever-growing DocStoc.com.

DocStoc is a very easy-to-use website for sharing documents and you can start generating traffic with it almost instantly. Just create a free account for yourself and start to upload your content. Adding a resource box is unnecessary at DocStoc but you can embed your links directly in your content itself.

Another site that is similar to DocStoc is Scribd.com. This is another very popular site for sharing documents and it works in a similar way to DocStoc where your contents can be uploaded and added to specific categories.

The great thing about DocStoc and Scribd is that virtually any type of document can be uploaded, including letters, reports, articles, ebooks, tutorials and several others.

Give it a try yourself; just find some PLR ebooks, redo them to fit your style, include links back to your squeeze page or website, and upload them to both sites.

Conclusion

So there you have it, 5 great traffic strategies you can start using right now. The key here is to try one of them out first; test it out to see what kind of results you get, and keep trying it until you’re happy with the results.

Then move on to another one and do the same; test, tweak and get results.

Want to learn about my advanced strategies?

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To your success,

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