3 Types Of Internet Traffic & What To Do With Them

While some people will argue that content is king, others will dispute that traffic is king. Regardless of which one is king, if you’re going to be generating leads & earning money online, you’re going to need both.
Before I jump into the 3 types of internet traffic and what to do with each one, let’s make something very very very clear here.

Traffic = REAL people. Real People Are The Traffic

People who are looking to solve a problem.
People who are seeking to attain a specific desire.
People with logic and emotions.
People who have credit cards and are willing to make an online purchase, pick up the phone or visit a physical location to complete a purchase.

I wanted to take that quick timeout to put a human element back into this word traffic. Remember that as you sit behind your computer, isolated, alone and in creation mode.

The 3 Types of Internet Traffic

If you read my previous blog 'Sell Your Ideas Online For Fun & Profit', you can recall the 4 core steps to generating revenue online:

Select an interest/nicher
Have a website/funnelr
Generate trafficr
Earn profits

Before we rush of to Facebook or send an email blast to our contacts, let’s take a moment and really understand who these people are… [clearing my throat]… I mean understand this traffic.

I’m not going to go into all the statistics here because it quite obvious that the consuming public will search for a WiFi (internet) connection quicker than they will a television remote control or a newspaper.
All these connections to the internet are in fact people, jou
eying along through traffic on the information highway. They are moving at speeds up to 1GB per second (residential speeds) with virtually no boundaries. All they need to do is simply type or say a phrase into a web browser and Google will provide a plethora of results matching their inquiries.

How can we make sense of all this traffic?

Well, it’s really simple once it's broken down into the 3 types of traffic. Once you make sense of it, then you can create a strategy to best reach those whom you are looking to serve and keep them coming back.

The 3 types of traffic are:

1. Traffic that you control.
2. Traffic you have no control over.
3. Traffic that you own.

Let’s go ahead now and make sense of this traffic…

Traffic That You Own

Traffic that you own is by for the best traffic to have. And by “OWN” I mean that you have instant access to them with no additional marketing expenses. This traffic will be on your email list, following you on social media, subscribed to your podcast or blog. The goal is to own all the traffic that is relevant to your business.

Any time you have more value to offer, you can send it to them very quickly. This can be done without having to do any SEO or PR and no having to paying Google or Facebook. This is why people go around saying they have their very own ATM (automated [bank]teller machine). They can wake up in the morning realizing they need a few extra dollars for whatever guilty pleasure they might have. What they do is create a sweet offer and broadcast it through their entire media distributor centres in no time at all. By noon, they have the money that wanted just like hitting up an ATM.

Within the make money online industry, for every subscriber on your email list, that can amount to $1 per month. Can you see the importance of focusing your efforts on building your email list?

10 subscribers = $10/month
1,000 subscribers = $1,000/month
100,000 subscribers = $100,000/month

Remember, these subscribers are real people. Just because they are on your list doesn’t mean you’re going to get anything from them. You must first provide great value and build trust. I know it sounds cliché now but it's true. People buy from people they know, like and trust!

With that said, the above figures are for illustrations purpose only and I cannot guarantee how much money you will earn based off the size of the list that you own. Consider this though; for every $1 dollar you put into email marketing, current statistic suggest you can receive between $38 to $44 return on your investment.

Traffic That You Control

Traffic that you control is a key component of the ‘Customers Now + Customers Later’ digital marketing and branding strategy. It’s fairly quick to set up (if you know what you’re doing) however, it does require that you have some money to spend on ad space. The whole objective of this traffic is to convert it into traffic that you own.

Some examples of traffic that you control include:

Paid ads (Facebook, Google, Bing, etc)
Email distribution list (solo ads, IG shout outs, etc)
Native display adsr
Banner adsr
Joint venture

To get this type of traffic you pay the owner of the traffic, such as Google or Facebook, and they'll send a certain amount of traffic to whatever website you ask them to, so long as you meet their terms & conditions.

In the online world, the page that the traffic is sent to is generally called an email capture page or lead magnet. However, it can be for a webinar registration, application form or a sales page. Whatever it is, this traffic has two options once they hit an email capture page - they can submit their contact information or leave the web-page - that’s it.

Of course not everyone will decide to move forward and will just leave the capture page. However, with a high converting capture page, it’ll be worth the money and effort to eventually own your own traffic.

Remember, for every dollar you put into email marketing your ROI can be $38 to $44. That's the highest ROI compared to all other online marketing mediums and direct mail.
Traffic That You Don’t Own Or Control

The last piece of traffic is just out there. You have no control of them. This is the traffic that searches on Google, visit blogs and otherwise just surfing the internet. There's no control of where they come from or where they’ll be off to next.

Sticking with the goal of owning all relevant traffic, there are still ways to convert this traffic into traffic that you own. The most effective way of doing this is by having a powerful content marketing strategy. This increases the chance of them stumble upon information that can help them decide if they want to do business with you or at least to learn more about you.

As an example, someone could be searching for ‘high performance brain fuel’ and Google will return millions of results. One of them is a blog post or even a single page website which is really just a glorified lead capture page.

Yes the content on the blog post or single page website is great, however the objective is really to ethically bribe the visitor to enter their contact information into the email capture system. Like I just mentioned, some of the best marketers out there will turn some of these websites into glorified email capture pages.

What To Do With The Traffic

In a future blog post I will elaborate on what to do with these 3 types of traffic. For now, simply to get you thinking more about how you can get started with this new-found internet marketing knowledge, let's take a bird's eye view.

With traffic that you own, keep sending them both free yet value information and also value that they while gladly whip out a credit card to pay for it. Let them get to know you better by increasing your trust value. They will continue to buy from you and even recommend you to others as long as you continue to give them value and don’t offend them. Send traffic that you own to content that you created and irresistible offers they can't refuse.

With traffic that you control, send them to some sort of information capturing system. This can be a free report that they can sign up for, a webinar registration page or an application form. Your options are only limited by your creativity. Whatever you choose, the goal is to convert this traffic into traffic that you own.

With traffic you have no control over, the only thing in your power to reach them is to implement a strong content strategy. Content that is built around specific questions/queries and content that provides laser-focused answers. At the end of each piece of content have a strong call to action that leads them to an email capture form or something similar.

If you’d like to have a discussion about how to build a custom “Customers Now + Customers Later’ digital branding and marketing strategy for your business, feel free to free schedule a strategy call.

I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about these 3 types of internet traffic. Please comment below!