When you start an online business, the one thing you need on your website is traffic. Creating brand awareness without traffic is impossible. But what are you gaining from this traffic? The objective is to convert this traffic into potential customers and then into customers.
Newbies can’t spend too much money on advertisements and need to engage free traffic toward their membership sites. Once you learn free traffic basics, you will be ready for the big fish, which is paid traffic.
Let’s find out some efficient ways to drive traffic to membership site.
1. Generate an Email List
In this digital era, it is of utmost importance to stay connected to the target market and understand their demands. Communication can do wonders for your membership site. If you have been hanging on a list for a long time, it is about time you cash it.
Sending out emails regarding updates and new content is a great way to call the audience to your membership site. You can use the basic standard of writing an email. However, you can get far more attention from the audience if you work smartly and turn it into a unique email.
Below is a list of essentials you must bear in mind before you send your email:
Audience
Keep your message closely related to the audience and clearly define who the audiences are before proceeding.
Subject Line
Write a catchy subject line to interest readers and entice them to open your email quickly.
Tone
Try to follow a personal writing style to make it more appealing to the readers.
Length
It should be to the point rather than beating around the bush and making the email tedious.
Rapport
Work towards building a relationship with the potential visitors rather than appearing to be greedy for traffic.
A Call to Action
Ask your audience to do the single thing you expect from them, such as viewing a blog post.
Incorporate Content Marketing
You can add teasers of your content in the email to encourage the audience to read more from your website blog. It is a great way to bag their interest and increase traffic. They would want to get their hands on the complete package of information rather than bits of it.
2. Social Media
If you want to drive free traffic to your membership site for your online business, then there is nothing more suitable for you than social media. But, are you a business owner who wants high amounts of clicks without any advertisement costs?
Well, social media is home to millions of users who are always looking to get information. So people are curious, and you can monetize their curiosity.
You can encourage visitors to share your content by adding sharing links in the text, allowing them to publish it on their profiles for their friends. Make sure that the content you share with the users is valuable. It should be enough to catch the people who would be interested in similar things.
Make a group with the same name as your membership site to post a part of your blog and receive feedback on social media. You can set up some poles for suggestions for audience engagement and offer them a discount on products.
Make pages that are accessible to everyone and use images to make them fascinating. Don’t rely entirely on content. Users appreciate pictures that make it easier for them to understand the written content.
You can start with famous social media websites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest to get as many visitors as possible. Just make sure you link everything back to your blog posts subtly. It is the best way to create sales.
3. Search Engine Optimization
Get a good rank on the Google Search Engine page. For example, 67.6% of the clicks are on the top five search results on Google.
These programs use spiders that crawl around the internet and analyze content to display the most suitable content. Next, they categorize the content and display the information in an index. Then, the engine scans the archives to get to the best websites to display.
You can optimize the content you post by using relevant keywords. Long-tail keywords are more appreciated by visitors as they tend to explain the topic in a line.
You can use Google Analytics to see how many people searched the keywords you used and can even get a report of relevant words that might have slipped your mind.
Set up internal linking structures to lead people to other blogs that you have written that can add value to the information they’re trying to find.
You can use accurate and descriptive titles and headings for the content as well. Include keywords in titles to help search engines know what your content is around. Do it so that it ranks your blogs and website higher than others. SEO strategies are great for your brand image as they help you secure a high rank while bringing traffic to your page.
If you don't have the technical SEO knowledge or you just don't have the time, you can try professional SEO services from companies like Human Proof Designs.
4. Paid Advertising
When you’re through mastering the basics of free marketing to get organic traffic on your website, it’s time to explore the realm of paid advertising online. You can advertise your membership site using two ways.
Contextual Advertising
Here you will focus on embedding links and ads in the consumer’s content. These ads are great because they target behavior and interest-based demographics to capture the interest of the right audience.
To help you get started, here is a list of all the platforms you can use this technique on:
- YouTube in-stream ads
- Facebook ads
- Pinterest ads
- Google display network
- AdRoll
- Instagram ads
- Twitter ads
- LinkedIn ads
Search-Based Advertising
Search-based advertising will display and suggest ads based on the previous search conducted by the customers. It revolves around keywords.
There are several platforms you can approach if you want to engage in search-based advertising for traffic:
- Bing Ads
- Google AdWords
- Yahoo Search Ads
- YouTube Search Ads
The following tricks will help you if you’re launching ads for your membership sites:
Ad copy should be consistent with your page. If you don’t, customers will be confused and might never revisit your website.
Ads should target buyer personalities. Write them as if you’re engaging in direct conversation with your customer.
Click ads are the best way to drive traffic to your page. A single click on the ads will land customers on your page.
5. Affiliates
If you’re looking for someone to market the site and products for you, then affiliate marketing is a decent way to achieve the target.
The best thing about it is that you can choose your partner yourself, so you don’t have to worry that you’re throwing your money away by paying commission to a mediocre firm.
Work with a successful one to make the most out of it. Here are some ways in which you can help your affiliate partner.
- You can create promo codes and tools to allow your partner to promote you well
- Set bonuses for the referrers
- Set up creative reward programs and provide visitors with a good experience when they visit your site
6. Sales Pages
Now that you have all the leads and helpful details get ready to redirect the traffic to your sales page on your membership site. If you want the traffic leads to subscribe to your page and stick by you, here is what you need to do:
- Tell the lead ways in which the membership site will make their experience and life better and convenient
- Tell them about the opportunity and ease of ordering by using buttons, links, and clicks to place orders
- Satisfy them by answering any objections they might have before joining your website. A subtle counterargument never goes to waste
FAQ
How Do You Get People to Sign Up for Memberships?
- Offer trial memberships to people
- Set up webinars and first-time offers for visitors
- Add creative blogs and content to call people to action and join
Are Membership Sites Profitable?
Yes, membership sites are very profitable and are often called profit-running miracles.
What Should Be Included in a Membership Site?
You can add online courses, webinars, community forums, member calls, content archives, member perks, and exclusive downloads on your membership site.
Conclusion
There is a lot of information in your hands regarding traffic and ways to drive it effectively to your membership website. Initially, every step or tip might seem as if it is a bitter challenge. However, you will receive the kind of attention you deserve for your hard work in the long run.
Instead of expecting an inflow of traffic on the very first day, you have to be calm and wait for some time.
Let’s say you’ll have to wait on an average of four to five months to have a considerable flow of traffic. This is because it takes time to rank higher on search engines and for people to recognize you enough to affiliate with you and share your blog posts.
