Meredith - So I think you want to talk about traffic today, this has been a hot topic among our clients lately, lots of chatter about it. And so we're gonna go over the top five ways that direct sales and network marketing professionals can generate traffic into their digital assets. Which is huge.

Adam - Yeah, well, exactly. I mean, all businesses need traffic, right? This is not something that's unique to online businesses. Like, it's just, it's just, it just looks different for different businesses, right. So it's like, you know, in a retail store, its foot traffic, right? It's people walking in the door, and, you know, seeing all the things you have to say that you have to sell in your store, right? Or like, or, like, you know, actual traffic driving by a billboard on a busy highway, right? It's like it, you know, we all need traffic in one way or another. And we're going to talk today about some of the, you know, General like, really, really the five ways that you can drive traffic now within these, within these categories.

There are subsections, right, and we'll talk about that, and I'll talk about some of those things that I like about him, and then some of the downfalls. And then, you know, you, you know, you determine which, you know, which you think is going to be the best for you. And maybe we can even, you know, have everybody you know, or have, you know, you guys chime in, you know, which of these five are you doing now, which of these five, are you? You know, do you do? Do you see yourself like wanting to ramp up?

Meredith - Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So, I'm just checking in on the group here on Facebook, where we are going live right now, if you happen to be here, just we'd love it if you would drop your name, and where you're from, so that we can know who you are and who's joining us live. And if you're catching it on the replay, same thing, because we'd love to know what you think about these episodes of the digital, upline show and how they impact you. And I think it's important before we even dive into the top five types of traffic that you might want to have to just cover off a big misnomer that I think people have in the digital space.

They think if they put up a website, we see this so frequently, they think if they put up a funnel, they put up a landing page, they do something like that they run a Facebook ad, you know, whatever to messages or you know, something like that, that that's all that they're going to need to do that magically, somehow everything is going to come into alignment, and you're going to your business is just going to explode if you just put up this webpage, or if you just do this one thing.

And the reality is you've got to create traffic, you've got to capture leads, and you've got to convert the traffic into sales and enrollments into your business. And today we're talking about that first piece, which is traffic. So don't think if you have one, you don't need the others you need all three. And that's really what we specialize in teaching here at the digital upline is how to create how to capture and how to convert. So today we're in that creating traffic segment of the process.

Adam - Yeah, 100% Welcome. Shaniqua, Shaniqua from Denver joining the call. Thanks for being here. Shaniqua. Okay, so number one is paid ads. Okay, I'm just gonna start just going to start with, with one that's, you know, a real loaded topic paint, you know, paid advertising, right. And, you know, they're like, I've done paid advertising extremely effectively. And I've also lost money with with with paid advertising. And, you know, I think that for most people, you know, for most people in the home business industry, this is not something you know, it's not a place that you want to start Absolutely not. You know, and I also feel like, like, you've got to be willing to lose a little bit of money.

And the reason why I'm successful with paid advertising is because I've been okay, with, you know, like, quote, unquote, losing but it's like, as long as you're learning while you're losing, you know, you know what I mean? It's like, there's gonna be a stupid tax in the beginning, there just will right just like, you know, you you I think the reason why people fail in any traffic category is because they just they don't do it enough. They don't do enough volume.

And you know, if you're, if you're of the mindset that like, my first $500 that I spend on, you know, some advertising platform like Facebook ads, or YouTube ads, or I was just watching a webinar about Tik Tok advertising, which is a cool new paid advertising strategy that I'm excited to learn. But like, regardless of that, like you put $500 in, don't expect to get a return on your first $500. Like, like you want to, like you, like start putting $500 in a day, right?

And then you know, then, you know, you'll learn really quickly what's working and what's not working, and you've got to be able to adapt because just because you put something up there in I love it because people will say, Oh, you know, Facebook ads like that didn't work for me. Right? It's like, Well, you know, it's like there's there's more to it than that. I think that most home business owners do not have the mindset to do paid advertising effectively.

Meredith - I would agree. And I think it's because most home business owners don't really think that they actually need to do anything other than purchasing their initial package and be on a subscription every month in order for their business to you know, reach six figures. And if you want to, you know, make a few 100 bucks a month, if you love the products that you sell, or the services that you're representing, you want to share it with a few people have your products paid for making a little bit of pocket change, t

hen you know, you can continue, that's one of the beautiful things about this industry is that you can actually do that, honestly, without that much effort.

But if you want to treat it like a business, and you want to treat it like something that's actually going to return a true full time income for you, then you have to invest in it like a real business, you and every real business is going to have a budget, and they're going to have a section for personnel, and they're going to have a section for marketing. And in that marketing budget, there's going to be a section for advertising.

So even if you're just getting started, you need to ask yourself, how much money can I put into advertising. So let's say right now you're just enrolling one or two people a month into your business or a handful of customers each month, rather than taking that money and you know, going out to a nice dinner or saving for a vacation to go to Hawaii, start taking that dollar those dollars and putting them back into some initial advertising that you can do in your business. And certainly Facebook ads is one way you can go which you know, bleeds into Instagram, basically any social media channel, you can advertise on. There are also other things you can do.

You can buy clicks, you can buy names, you can do all sorts of different things to find people that are in your niche audience, hopefully get their attention and bring them into the fold. So that's really the paid traffic category. Adam, did you have anything else you wanted to touch on there?

Adam - No, no, we'll just move on just because it's something that very, you know, I mean, if you're like, I mean pay, paid advertising is a great way to scale. It's a very scalable strategy. But you need to really know your metrics, you need to know your numbers. You know, if if you've got the, you know, the mindset for it, if you're already making, you know, a few 1000 bucks a month and you're in your business and you want to scale faster, you know, let us know, we can certainly help you with paid advertising.

But I really, you know, for, for a lot of people, it's just not going to be the right fit. Holly from Texas. Welcome. Welcome, Holly. Thanks for joining. The next one is organic, right. And this is one that we teach a lot, we've got an entire You know, we've got a coaching program where, you know, a big portion of the program is teaching organic, free marketing on social media. And you know, it's great, because it's free, right? You know, there are certainly drawbacks to it. I mean, because nothing is ever really free, right?

It's gonna cost you your time, right? I mean, it's like, it's like, it's, you know, it's, it's, you know, free is just such like a hot button, you know, use it's like, you know, build your business without paid advertising. It's like, okay, so that you're telling me that it's going to cost me my time, right? Because it's not, you know, there's got it, there's got to be one or the other, right. But it's certainly a skill set that you can develop. And I mean, I know people that have $50,000 a month, businesses that don't even do advertising, they do it all with organic, but they have skills, and they're disciplined.

Meredith - Absolutely. And organic is also one that I love because it is duplicatable. One of the downsides of paid advertising is it's not for every person. And even if it is for you, many of the people who join you won't be interested or willing to do it. So it's also great to understand how to leverage organic marketing because that is something that really anybody can learn how to do when we teach it in. In our course, in our expert accelerator course, I talked about it frequently. It's like online networking, really, it's really like going to an old fashioned networking meeting and shaking hands and meeting people and seeing who may or may not be a fit for your business.

It's just done in a different environment, which happens to be done online happens to be done through social media. So it's great because it's a skill anybody can learn. It can be scalable, because you can get better and faster at it over time. And it can also be scalable because you can teach your team how to do it as their onboarding as well. And it's a great, easy thing that anybody has access to so there's really no reason to say no to organic

Adam - Do you think that extroverts like people like extroverted personalities do better with organic because it's like online networking?

Meredith - I think just some extent maybe depending on how they're doing it. You know, that's where I would look at the different platforms like I think extroverted people are probably doing a heck of a lot better. Tik Tok then introverted people and that's because I would think you know extroverted people I mean, it's totally video based format right 100% of the contents video based you got to be willing to be out there you got to, you know, be excited and interested and an engaging to be on Tick Tock and how people want to follow you or you can just be completely wacky and, you know, follow YouTube, but there's got to be something in there. Whereas on other platforms like LinkedIn, you know, that's, that's really a text based format, we don't see quite as much video there.

So a lot of connecting, it's much more on a professional level. And that might be a better platform for an introverted person. So I think it comes down to picking the platform that's not only right for your skill set and your values of personality, but also the platform where you're most likely to find the people that you're looking for a lot of the people on tik tok are really different from the people on LinkedIn. And that just shows that there's room for everybody in this, which is great.

Adam - Yeah, for sure, for sure. And I, I mean, I consider myself an introvert. And I definitely resonate with LinkedIn more than a lot of the other ones.

Meredith - Yeah, but you can, you can use all of them. And I think one of the keys with organic, and this is a mantra that Adam and I both have is, don't try to be everywhere, all at once. Like if you're just getting started in this, don't throw up an Instagram, or you know, a Facebook group, LinkedIn and try to start a tik tok all in the same week and expect to be successful. Like pick one platform, pick the platform that you know, the best, technically, the platform where your audience is living the platform where you are comfortable, and where you can express yourself appropriately. And stick with it until you start getting results.

Once you figure out what's working there, then say to yourself, okay, where else is my audience? You know, if you have a Facebook audience, they're probably highly likely either on LinkedIn or on Instagram. So which one is the next best move for you? Then pick the next one? And then take what you learned on the first one and apply it there with the rules of the road of that platform?

Adam - Yeah, exactly. Because at the end of the day, which is it is just people on the other hand, right, so it's like, you know, there's not going to be, you know, there's going to be, you know, little different little differences, but like, it's, it's a, it's about being an influential person, right? It's like the more influential you can be, the more you learn the skills of, of influence, there, you're gonna get better in every single one of them, regardless of like, the specific nuances of each individual strategy or platform.

Meredith - So our third type of traffic is referral traffic.

Adam - Yeah, and, you know, that's, that's, you know, that's something that like, you know, some businesses do a really good job of laying some businesses, he, I mean, all of these, like, every single one of these categories, there are businesses that operate extremely effectively, extremely successfully with just one, like people have our, you know, outrageously successful businesses, just with paid ads, just with organic, just with referrals. Right. So like, but, you know, however, I think that there needs to be some kind of, like, systemization to it, I mean, that's just how my brain works.

But like, it's like, you know, it, like, there's, there's got to be some structures around it, right? Like, if you want, if you want to, you either got to, you know, base your entire business off of it, and then obviously, you're gonna get really good at it, because that's your only source, which I don't really recommend that you do that. I don't think that referrals alone is, you know, the best way to go. But I certainly think that there's a lot of like, even, you know, our business, I think that we could do a much better job at, you know, getting referrals, encouraging referrals, and things like that, with better, you know, better processes around it.

Meredith - And I think with referrals, too, it also depends on your offer, some offers are really easy to talk about, and also offer very visible tangible results. And so those are offers that are very easy for people to share. Like I think about one of the clients that we're working with right now is in essential services. And so she is talking with people all the time about how she can help them reduce the cost of their cell phone bill every month. That's pretty easy to talk about. And if somebody saves me 100 bucks on my cell phone bill, I'm probably going to tell my friends about it when I go out for you know, wine on Friday night with my girlfriends, they're gonna be like, how are we going to be like, You'll never believe it.

This chick, saved me 100 bucks on my phone bill. They're all gonna be like, well, who is it? So that's easy to referral business. other businesses that are a little bit more complicated, maybe service based, it might be hard. So if you're if you want to step into referrals as traffic, start thinking about how you can make your offer extraordinarily easy for someone else to explain. If somebody else can explain what you do and the benefit that they got from In two sentences or less, your chances of getting referrals are going to be really, really high. But if they can't, because it's complicated, or you haven't made it simplistic enough, then that might be one of the first tactics that you would want to do. If you're thinking about trying to get more referrals for your business

Adam - Or treat it like, like an if this, that that rule for yourself, like, you know, if, you know, if one of my customers or one of my distributors, you know, share a win with me, like at that point, that's when I asked them, okay, hey, who else? Do you know that you know that that could, you know, better benefit like that, because they're the most excited at that point.

Meredith - Totally. Back in the day, I used to be a property casualty life and insurance agents. And that was exactly what we did, we would go through people's policies, we would combine them, we would save the money. And after we showed them how much money they saved, and they were so excited about the result, we would say, Who else do you know that I might be able to do the same for who else you know, that would like to save money. So that's a great, great way to do it. Our fourth type of traffic that we wanted to talk about today is earned media.

Adam - And you know, Meredith, why don't you kick that one off, because you did such a great job explaining,

Meredith - We were chatting about it before we came on live today, Adam and I were so I'll just tell you like our last two categories are earned media and then owned media. So we were really talking about what's the difference between earned media and owned media. earned media is where you get to leverage your expertise, your information in somebody else's media outlets, for free, you don't pay for it. And they somehow end up promoting you or sharing your information with their audience. So one of the best ways to think about this is if you are going to be a guest on somebody's show. And here, we're kind of talking a little bit on the digital side. But also on the traditional side of marketing.

Maybe you can be on a local TV broadcasts, maybe you could be on somebody else's podcast, maybe there's a woman who's talking about, you know, entrepreneur, entrepreneurial skills for women, and you want to come on and talk about the home based business industry and your experience in it, for example. And you can pitch yourself, to these organizations, to podcast, to media outlets, to television stations, radio stations, all sorts of different this is where you could get a speaking engagement, which you might even get paid to do that. And you put yourself out there, you apply for that spot, where you just contact that person and say, Hey, here's an idea for you for a show, here's something that I can bring to the table, I'd love to be your guest, that's earned media.

Typically, in that situation, you would then at the end of your interview, or spot or whatever it is, the host is going to say, well, gosh, Meredith. You know, if somebody wanted to learn a little bit more about what you do, where could they find you. And then I can say, well, you can find me online here, or you could find me, you know, on Instagram there, and my website addresses this. Sometimes they'll even let you give away a freebie, if you have, you know, hey, anybody listening today can get a free copy of my book for the next 48 hours if they go here are there. And earned media can be really, really valuable. Because what it does is it establishes you as an expert in circles that you do not yet have influence in.

And so figuring out ways that you can talk about whatever expertise is that you have. So how does this apply in the home business industry? Well, it can apply a couple different ways every single one of you could simply be talking about entrepreneurship and this industry and why you think it is so critical, important and valuable today, you know, in this post pandemic or still kind of during pandemic world so a lot of conversation going on about that right now and you can get involved in the conversation. But you can also do it in relationships specifically to the product or service that you offer.

What if you are a health coach and you happen to be partnered with a network marketing company that offers health products you can easily put yourself forward as an expert in some category of health talking about immunity or in you know, inflammation or weight loss or whatever it may be. And then the sideline to that is your network marketing company. So lots of information on on how to get that going. It's it's often not done I would say of the types of traffic we're talking about today. This is probably the least utilized because people just don't understand. Well how do I get myself onto the front page of the paper? And my rule of thumb is to say you know what? Just ask.

I've got an idea i think i should be on the front page of your paper here. Here's a story idea for you. I think I should be on your podcast here's what I'd like to talk about.

Adam - I think I think I think you have to be like very opportunistic to like totally like be in like I'm not saying like some people are like naturally that maybe maybe so maybe not but it's like, like, like you I mean you can learn how to you can like train yourself to see opportunity in places where most people don't are totally blind to that thing. Right and I definitely did this in the beginning before I had the I mean I you know I started in the direct sales industry 12 years ago before I had any credibility before I had any authority in fact it was how I built a lot of my credibility and authority and I did it a little bit different I would I would go into affiliate programs in the home business industry right I would you know I buy the thing the system the tool whatever

And then and then I would promote it to my list and I would get you know i'd make sales and I would get notoriety from you know that the creators of the of the offer I did this with Ray Higdon his affiliate program back when Ray Higdon was when he was doing his top earner academies when Ray Higdon started doing his own events in the home business industry. I took like second place I think in an affiliate contest and it gave it allowed me like Ray was kind of lifting me up on his platform and exposing you know my expertise to a lot of people because it's so like earned media it's like I earned it right by producing you for him and I did and I did this with with an affiliate system that I was with for many years called myleadsystempro I would get results using their platform they would put me on one of their Wednesday webinars and I would you know share my expertise get all kinds of people in their community reaching out to me and then I would you know sponsor a bunch of them into you know, into my Instagram and my primary business and I've done I've done it so many times over the years so that might be something if that a you know, if affiliate marketing is something that you're interested in, then that's one of the ways you know, be a producer for somebody you know, in their affiliate program and they will lift you up and expose you to their entire audience.

Meredith - Absolutely. And that's really the backbone of earned media is someone with an audience that you want to be in front of? What value do you offer so you know, as an affiliate, Adam offered the value for them showing that their system worked. So they wanted to highlight him because he was kind of you know, their guy, right? Well if you have some type of expertise and often people will think that they don't but I'm sure you do. What do you really good at what part of your business is really your specialty, and find a platform to share that story and see what happens so the last type of traffic we're going to talk about is owned media and that is different from earned media. So Adam, how about owned media?

Adam - okay, so owned media is like, like I can send it if I have an offer or a promotion like maybe my company is doing a promotion or I've got some something that I want to promote, I can get a lot of traffic for free by sending it out to my email list by you know, texting it out to my text message list because over the years I have built up a list and an audience in a way that like outside of social media right so like it cannot you know, it cannot be taken away from me I own the list.

I own the asset, right and it can be a tremendous source of recurring traffic, right and it's something that I think that they just don't they don't quite get it like the value in building a list so it's like rather than then driving traffic to you know, your network marketing company, and like which I hope at this point that everybody knows that that's a bad idea, right it's like just sending them to like your distributor ID you know, some random person on the internet hopefully they click and then they convert never gonna happen. Right?

It's like, rather than doing this send them to a lead capture page, get make them an offer of something that they want, capture the lead and then you can market to them for a very, very, very, very long period of time. I've had people on my list that that told me like I've been on your list for three years, I finally just bought every single thing that you have to offer. I've so many times Has that happened to me. I've been building lists for you know, 10, 11, 12 years now and I've had so many different times when he that you think that somebody is like a dead contact but they've actually been paying attention like it but it's they're just waiting till it's right for them.

And then they'll go and buy everything. And we're like, Damn, it's just such a such a fantastic. It's like the best I would say it's the best traffic source there is because you own it, it can't be taken away from you. And you can use it over and over and over again.

Meredith - I totally agree. And especially coming off of a week where Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram and everything just kind of you know was evaporated for a day and people were completely freaking out because they had no other way to talk with people or to put offers out there. Because that was the only platform that they had, that that should have been a wake up call if that was you, if you were, if you were freaking out earlier this week because of that, then this lesson today is perfectly designed for you. I'll say that, you know, hindsight is 2021 of the biggest mistakes that I made in my business, for sure. I love events, I actually used to own an event based business, I love meeting people, I love talking to them, I love sharing, you know, my story, hearing their story.

That's something I absolutely love. So I did a ton of events, well, I collected people's information at the events, but then I didn't really, I wasn't really very consistent, you know, I would give away a prize, or I maybe would call them once or twice, and they would have little cards that they had filled out. But I wasn't putting those into any kind of a system at all. I literally had like a box, like a really pretty box that I had these little cards, and I was so proud of the box, all these people that I had met, and some of them were buyers, some of them enrolled with me, but I never was consistent about following up with them.

Even though I have this huge marketing background, I was just thinking about this business so much differently than I had thought about any other business that I had run my first event based business, I had an email list, I managed it, I did all of that. Let everybody knew, we know when the next event was coming and how they could get in and offered coupons and all those types of things. But when it came to this industry, that's not how I was trained. And that's not what the people that showed me how this business works, told me that that's not the way that it was done. And I look back now and I'm like Meredith, right, I knew better.

But I didn't act better, because I didn't have an example of anybody around me acting any differently. So I did what most of us will do will follow the leader because that's what we're really good at right, we'll follow those leaders. So I did what my leaders did. And I didn't get the results that my leaders did. And here I was sitting on probably a gold mine. And by the time I figured it out the gold mine, you know, it had kind of like the door was shut, and like bolted closed on it because those names were so old.

So now if I do an event, which obviously we haven't done so many in this last year or so, but I know they'll come back around again, I know we'll be able to do them again. But now I do things online and you bet I gather people's information, you bet that they get regular emails from me, and you bet that some of them eventually do buy. And that's why it's so important to have a system that and an understanding that the biggest asset that you can build for your home based business is your contact list. If your company, you know, gets shut down closes down, you decide you don't love them anymore, whatever it is, you still have a list to market to. If Facebook goes down, LinkedIn goes down, if Tik tok, you know, shuts off or something crazy happens you still have a list to market to.

And if you decide that you want to market something other than what you're currently marketing, either as a replacement or in addition to you've got a completely baked in audience that knows you likes you and trust you for you to sell to. So that's really what we specialize in here at the digital upline is teaching you how to build that asset. And we have a proprietary system that Adams actually created that allows you to do that with ease and simplicity. It's just awesome. It's called the Digital Copilot.

Adam - Yeah, I'll put a link in the comments to the Digital Copilot. So just click that link, if you want to take a look at it. But I mean we have a one time lifetime membership where and we say this right on the page. I mean, it's if you were to get all the tools that you get access to in the Digital Copilot elsewhere, you'd be paying about $177 per month. And then we give it to you for a fraction of that one, one. But you know a one time price and you have access to it forever. So click that link, get yourself the Digital Copilot. copilot because it's the like, you've got to start building your list, right?

We've been preaching this for years, right? And here's in this in this industry, I just saw a post from my friend Mark Harbor, they said the same thing he's like, he's like, he's like, you know, I thought Facebook was out for six hours like I've been talking about it for 10 years, you got to be building your own list. And but like you can be doing a lot of these other things, you know, and building your list at the same time. So it's like you can be getting conversions driving traffic with all of these other but then but just make sure that you make capturing the lead a priority capturing the lead in your own system that you own that you control that's not owned and controlled by your company. But that's owned and controlled by you. The Digital Copilot system makes that available to you. If you don't already have the tools to make that happen. yourself.

Meredith - Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So go check out the link. See what the Digital Copilot can do for you. That's gonna wrap this episode of the digital upline show. Unless you had anything else that you wanted to share it for today, Adam.

Adam - No, no, that's it. Great episode of the show. Thank you. Thank you, Meredith. And we'll see you same time next week.

Meredith - Yeah, see you next week. Everybody, take care.

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