How to Drive Traffic to Your Landing Page: Unfortunately, landing pages are not a case of ‘build it and they will come’. Simply having your landing page up and running is not enough to start making money – you need to make sure people can find it.

One way to do this is with SEO – Search Engine Optimization. Another is with social media marketing which will involve building lots of fans and followers on Twitter and Facebook and then shouting out to them.

Just one problem: those strategies both take a lot of time. The goal of this book is to get you 1,000 subscribers in 1 month. You just can’t do that with SEO – but the good news is that we’re going to prove that you don’t have to use marketing techniques to quickly build a huge list of subscribers.

Using Solo Ads and Ad Swaps

One option you can use is solo ads or ad swaps.

We mentioned solo ads earlier in the book – this is when you send an e- mail out to someone else’s mailing list usually for a fee.

Unfortunately, we also said this wasn’t a good way to make sales and conversions because those people wouldn’t know you and thus might resent you contacting them. So why is this here?

Well the good news is that this strategy is useful for growing your list. While you shouldn’t use ad swaps to generate income, there is no reason they can’t be used to grow your own list and then to monetize that subsequently.

Ad swaps meanwhile mean that you’re swapping your mailing list with someone else’s. This is a more advanced method for when you already have your list that you can grow it – but in the meantime you can use ad swaps by trading something else. How about writing content for someone or promoting their product in exchange for a shoutout?

The best way to use this system is to find a big-name blogger or internet marketer in your niche who already has a great reputation and then to ask them to help you reach out to their audience. This can be highly effective because it means that you don’t just get the exposure, you also essentially get a testimonial from someone who has already done the ground work building up trust and loyalty.

How do you find these big names to ask? Look for blogs that are successful in your niche with email newsletters and just ask. A lot of success when it comes to digital marketing and the web generally is just about being ballsy enough to put yourself out there and make connections.

There are also ad swap marketplaces such as safe-swaps.com which is primarily for email swaps. Another service is called Udimi (udimi.com) where you can buy solo ads from sellers.

Using PPC

PPC stands for ‘Pay Per Click’ and is a form of advertising that you can use to get immediate visitors to your landing page. The idea behind pay per click is that you only pay if someone clicks on your ad. This is great news because it means that as long as the people visiting your landing page are converting well, you will get guaranteed results for the amount you spend.

To make PPC work, you need to use ads that are upfront and forthright. Say right in your advertising message that the ad is for a free newsletter in X niche. This way, the only people who click on the ad will be people who

might be interested in signing up. That means no wasted cash on people who are just going to leave your landing page right away.

Another strategy is to advertise your free incentive. ‘Click here to get a free eBook on X’. Again, the only people who click will be people who are interested in what you’re offering meaning that you won’t waste any cash on unsuccessful ads or clicks.

There are two particularly PPC networks. The first is ‘AdWords’ which puts your ads above the search results on Google and the second is Facebook which places your ads in the sidebar on Facebook’s Home Feed.

Google ads are great because the people who see them will be actively looking for whatever it is, you’re looking for. If you market your mailing list   as a ‘course’ then you find people are actively searching for ‘finger painting courses’. If that’s your niche, then you can pay to appear as one of the ‘sponsored ads’ for that particular search term and this will help to bring lots of people who are interested in your subject to your page. What’s more, those people will be interested in signing up right now – that’s where the real value of AdWords lies.

Another useful thing about Google ads is that they help you to test out the keywords that are most valuable. If you will later be doing SEO, then you can use this strategy to find keywords you know will help you to build your list/make sales.

Facebook meanwhile allows you to target your audience in a different way. On Facebook, you look at the details that users have given about themselves to identify viable targets. For instance, if you are writing about wedding dresses, then you will likely want to approach engaged women who are in a certain age bracket. You can do this through Facebook ads and thereby ensure that specifically those people are seeing your ads.

Which platform is better? Neither of course – it all comes down to which works best for your particular niche. Try both and stick with the one that works.

Of course, you could also try display advertising (which can also be PPC) which will appear on websites and blogs in your niche. These are less targeted but they allow you to use graphics to make your ad more enticing. AdSense is the name of one of the most popular display ads networks.

Using Forums and Communities

Another strategy is to reach out through forums and communities in your niche. If you can find a forum that discusses the subject you’re dealing with, then posting and telling them about the fantastic free eBook that can provide them with tons of great information is one good strategy. Alternatively, you can try reaching out to a forum that you are already a member of. This is an excellent strategy if you already have some clout there and if you’re already spent some time building up a reputation. That way, you will find people are more likely to sign up because they know that you provide good quality information and because they want to help out – feeling as though they have some kind of relationship with you.

In addition, most forums allow you to insert a “signature” which is embedded on the bottom of all your responses. This is a great opportunity to add a call-to-action with your landing page URL.

The forum signature above is an example taken from the Warrior Forum.

Forums these days are in relatively short supply but Google+ communities and Subreddits can still be very effective.

Using Content Marketing

Another strategy is to use content marketing. Content marketing is a huge subject and really is involved in every other aspect of digital marketing. Essentially though it boils down to using content in order to bring people to your site and to demonstrate your worth/gain their interest, trust and loyalty.

Content marketing often works by gradually establishing yourself as a thought leader in your niche through consistent, high-quality blog posts or articles.

At the same time though, content marketing can also be effective immediately if you know how to use it correctly. Here, you just need to create one very high-quality blog post or article and publish it on your own site, on social media or even on someone else’s site.

This article should be long, in-depth and should provide real value. What’s more, it should utilize a headline that makes people really interested and want to click. Don’t be cynical and try and ‘dupe’ people – look for a genuinely unique and interesting angle on a popular subject and think about what you would click.

Now share the link to that article or blog post on Reddit, Digg, Google+, LinkedIn etc. and make sure that you include in it a link to your landing page. This way you can then refer everyone who found the information useful, interesting or helpful to your free mailing list where they can get much more like it.

A successful Reddit post can easily generate hundreds of thousands of visitors to a single page in no time at all – as long as it’s genuinely interesting and provides real value. If you do that, you can then convert a lot of those visitors into subscribers who will be very eager to hear what you have to say in future.

Know Your Audience

Note that the users of Reddit can be very savvy and if they suspect you’re just trying to promote yourself, they might take offense. While landing pages have been shown to work and can be highly effective with the right type of customer, it’s important to know your audience and to tailor your approach accordingly. If you’re using Reddit to bring in a more high-brow audience for example, then you might not want to direct them to your landing page – instead it can make more sense to simply add your opt-in form to the bottom of the article and to be less pushy.