Caitlin Bacher:
My name is Caitlin Bacher, founder and CEO of Scale with Success® and I’m on a mission to help course creators all over the world grow their business in a way that is profitable and scalable. We are sharing revealing conversations about what it really takes to scale an online course business to millions of dollars per year. Join us here to discover the tough decisions we’ve had to make, the biggest failures we’ve had to bounce back from, and the learnings that emerged every step of the way. We are so grateful that we have the chance to share it all with you right here on Scale with Success®: The Podcast Built for Course Creators. Let’s get started.
When it comes to increasing traffic to my webinar, what I’m going to do again is use this same framework to highlight where it is within the framework that we need to focus because having this framework helps us from getting in the weeds on the wrong section. So if traffic is a problem, then we need to focus on channels. If traffic is a problem, we’re not focused on the assets and we’re not focused on the funnel, we’re just focusing on the channel itself. And if we’re not getting the traffic that we’re looking for, then we need to start thinking about, “Okay, how can I best optimize these channels?”
And when it comes to channels, there’s really three different investments depending on which channel you’re choosing. There’s always a trade-off. If you don’t want something to have a big money investment, it’s probably going to take a time investment or it’s going to take a relationship investment. And if you don’t want to spend time on relationships, then you’re going to have to spend time on social media content or you’re going to have to make a money investment on ads themselves.
It’s really important if traffic is the issue, there are so many opportunities to really unlock that and it’s just a matter of making sure that you’re focused on the channel that’s going to have the biggest bang for your buck depending on your unique situation and limitations, right? Because you might not always be in a place where you’re able to make that time investment, or maybe you’re not in a place where you can make a money investment, or maybe you’re not in a place where you can make that relationship investment, right?
And so when we think about things, channels where we’re promoting the asset, so we’re promoting either the lead magnet or we’re promoting the webinar, the channels that require time are things like a Facebook group, Facebook feed, Instagram feed, Instagram Stories, Instagram Reels. There’s tons of different opportunities here. All of those require time. It’s either your time or someone else’s time.
The second piece is money. If you’re looking to really drive more traffic and if you are willing to pay with money as opposed to time, then you have Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, YouTube ads, Google ads, Instagram. There’s so many different options in terms of paid traffic and I of course would highly discourage you from doing paid traffic and a whole… Like pick one first and get it going. And then once that, then you can move on to the next paid traffic channel, but you can start to layer these channels on top of each other. So you can have a paid traffic channel coming in from Facebook ads and then you can have another paid traffic channel coming in from YouTube, and then you can have another one coming in from Google Ads specifically. It’s all about layering things on top of one another. But before you start to layer, you have to get the one thing running first.
And then the next thing is relationship investment. And these are huge. You get so much traction. If I were having a traffic problem and I didn’t have money to spend on ads, the number one thing that I would be doing is affiliates. I would be reaching out to people that had either audiences the same size of mine or bigger audiences or even smaller audiences and I would be dedicating my time to getting on a regular affiliate promotion. Maybe you might start off with having a different person each month promote your program. Then maybe you could get it up to a different person each week to promote your program.
And again, over time, someone on your team can fully be responsible for these kinds of channels, right? We do have a training called The Profitable Partnership™ which walks you through how to set up a partnership so that someone else can share a link to your webinar. And then any sales that come through, you pay them a commission on that. The benefits of that is you’re not paying them up front. You’re only paying if people buy. So there’s less risk involved in that than there is for ads, because for ads, you start paying money from day one and then you work towards being able to get a positive return on that.
And it’s possible to do two things at the same time. So if you have a Facebook ads manager or if someone is running paid traffic for you, then use that time wisely. If that’s freeing up your time because someone else is managing that, then spend your time on this so that you have a steady stream of like you know every week you’re going to be on a different podcast. And it requires planning in advance and it requires a routine and a system and all of that kind of thing, but it’s really, really important not to get so focused on just one of these specific things.
So the idea is to have multiple things running at the same time. Eventually you’re going to be in a spot where you’re going to be able to have these all running at the same time, but if you’re starting out really small, then the goal is to try to have at least two of these things. And honestly, there’s so much reward on these relationship investment things, and not just being on a podcast once a month, but really getting a system or routine so you know, “Okay, I’m going to take one Friday out of my month and that’s when I’m going to book all my podcast interviews.” So it’s one day a month, but you’re able to record for maybe like five different podcasts or whatever.
And so then it becomes just something that.. it’s a system, so you always have that running in the background, so then you’re not left last minute thinking, “Oh my gosh, this month was really terrible with ads.” Depending on the month or whatever, we all have months from time to time that are not going well with ads, but if your only focus is this, it’s difficult to bounce back from that, whereas if you have the time investment channels running in the background and if you have some of these relationship investment things already systemized, already scheduled throughout your quarter, then it doesn’t hurt so bad if these things aren’t working.
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