How to Convert with Cold Traffic
This guide will teach you how to generate sales from cold traffic sources such as Simple Traffic, popup ads, push ads, or link exchange networks.
One of the key features of a good online marketing campaign is being able to convert cold traffic into warm or hot traffic. To help you do this successfully we will take you through what hot and cold traffic is, the key differences and how you can convert cold traffic into sales.
Many online marketers claim that hot traffic is more valuable with a conversion rate of up to 20 times higher than cold traffic. However, the real difference is not the type of traffic but knowing how to promote to each source and send them to the right places so they all convert into sales.
Cold traffic can outperform hot traffic if you use low cost sources like Simple Traffic and warm the visitors up to your offer before attempting a sale.
Once you understand the key differences between the two types of traffic it is easier to develop a strategy for higher sales conversions.
Cold Traffic
Cold traffic covers anyone who visits your website but who has little or no knowledge about your business or the products or services you offer. Cold traffic makes up the vast majority of website visits across the board, but more so when your organization is new.
Often cold traffic will come to the site via pay-per-view ads (PPV). This traffic source is harder to convert into buyers because there is no established loyalty or trust between the company and the customer, and they may not yet know the benefits of your offer.
The usual strategic aims when it comes to cold traffic is to either warm up the traffic and inform them more about your website, or to collect contact details by offering free newsletter, a free ebook, or some other special offer. Often the free offer is something of little value with little expectation of customer commitment but is a valuable way of gaining the customer’s information.
How To Warm Up Cold Traffic
Selling to cold traffic is hard, but you can do certain things to warm up your visitors and thus more likely to become your future customers. The idea here is to provide the visitor with more information about your product/service without the sales pitch.
You website will be trusted more if the visitor comes to your website already knowing the benefits of what you’re selling, and has also been recommended by a third party. So try to host videos or articles on well known third party sites such as YouTube, Medium, Buzzfeed, or other news outlets and send the traffic there first to learn about your product and arrive at your site in a more natural way.
Also, make sure that any article or video you send the traffic to covers:
- The benefits of your product
- The problem that your product or service solves
- How to use your product or service
- Some kind of recommendation or endorsement of your website
- A working link to your website
Again, you don’t want to include any sales pitch, you want this to appear as natural as possible.
If you are serious about creating landing pages that generate sales, then we highly recommend this video course that covers everything you need to get your first sale: Creating High Converting Landing Pages - Full Video Course
YouTube Videos
Sending cold traffic to a youtube video first is very effective because people already have a lot of trust in YouTube. You can make a simple review or how-to guide video so that people can learn how to use your website. Just make sure to include a link to your website in the description.
News Article or Blog Posts
You can send cold traffic to a blog post or news article that discusses the problem that your website solves and then directs the reader to your website to find the solution. This problem / solution method works great for niches such as the Make Money Online, Weight Loss, or Dating niches. The more trusted a website is the more likely the visitor will convert into a sale. You can get published on buzzfeed and other news sites with a cheap gig on fiverr.
Free offer to generate leads
If you only want to send traffic directly to your website then a effective way of warming up your cold traffic is to send the visitor to a page that is offering something they will perceive as being of value; a free product, e-book, or a resource that they want. If you can do this they will happily submit their details.
Once you have got their email address you need to send them targeted information. You can use a traditional newsletter for this or a drip campaign but the goal is to increase trust and confidence in your brand. Over time you can use these communications to build a good relationship with an individual up to the point where they decide to become a customer or client.
Warm and Hot Traffic
Warm traffic consists of people who return to your website as a result of a subscription, a discussion or because someone has recommended it to them. These customers are already familiar with your site and products. They can be warm or hot depending on how much they are involved with the site.
Customers who have already signed up received gifts, or who have interacted with your content are likely to be a lot warmer and are therefore more likely to interact. Once they like and trust your company they will be more likely to buy goods or services and in greater quantities.
This is the main reason why warm/hot traffic is considered so valuable. They already have an ongoing relationship with your organization, they are more likely to consider using your website and buying from you, and they are less likely to ask for a refund.
Difference to Approaching Cold vs Warm Traffic
You need to fine-tune your approach to each type of customer. Cold traffic sales pitches need to let the customer know how you can help them now. The aim is to be brief and to the point. You have to quickly let them know the reason why it is essential that they have this product or service and that they need to take action immediately.
It is often counter-productive to drive cold traffic to a landing page. Many visitors find this off-putting especially if they feel they are being given a hard sell.
With warm traffic they are already interested so you can be a little more refined in your approach but focusing on specific features or benefits.
With hot traffic, you want to make sure you can up-sell your product or service and because they have used you in the past these customers are much more likely to buy again. The trick is to get them to buy something else, preferably something more expensive. You want them to continue to engage with your content and if they have fallen away you need to inspire them to re-engage by offering them targeting information based on you analysis of their past purchasing behavior and the
Once a customer is established you must continue to remind them how much they need your product and how wonderful it is. You can do this reasonably easily using PPC advertising and sending them to relevant sales and landing pages, or pages dealing with special offers and so on.
Increasing conversions with segmentation
To properly target your audiences you need to look at a technique called segmentation. This enables you to group people by age, gender and so on, and then look at behavior specific to those groups. This involves figuring out what they are clicking on and then producing information that they will resonate with.
If you monitor your cold traffic properly, you can then send them content they find relevant they are more likely to pay attention. You can then measure the effect in terms of impact and conversions. Make sure you send them to the blog posts that you know they will find interesting. These ‘power posts’ can be in various sizes and formats but they must be of interest and value to the target demographic. You want these people to become more and more interested in what you have to say, then they will be ready for the relationship to develop further.
You can send different segments of your audience to pre-sale pages and landing pages that are customized just for that segment, further increasing conversion rates. The more specific you can be with people's interests the better content you can offer and this increases the likelihood that they will sign up for your newsletter, guides or e-books.
Increasing sales with Retargeting
Re-targeting is a key part of any marketing strategy and you must make sure that all the content you send to your customers is targeted and relevant to their needs. Looking at previous purchases, or things left in a shopping cart can easily form the basis of a targeted message, sending them to look at similar or related products.
To retarget visitors you need to install a tracking code to your website that will remember the visitors and allow you to advertise to them.
The two biggest companies offering visitor retargeting are Google Ads and Facebook Ads, both will provide you with a tiny bit of code to install on your website. The code will allow you to segment and target your visitors with ads on Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, and a huge network of blogs and other websites. Thus allowing you to bring the customers and abandoned carts back to your website with a much higher chance of converting.
Retargeting often costs more per visitor, but also has a very high return on investment due to the hot nature of the traffic. It’s also a great way to warm up cold traffic that you have sent directly to your landing page.
Live Chat and Chat-bots
It is important to take account of the fact that most customers like to speak to a real person but unfortunately, customer sales calls are expensive and often impossible to implement. The best solution to this is to use live chat.
Live chat has not only proved popular with users, but it also gives your organization the chance to build a warmer relationship with them. Developing trust and making the customer feel comfortable means they are more likely to sign up for your products or services and can make all the difference between losing a cold contact and keeping a warm one.
Live chat means that you can address many of the barriers that stop people from buying online. You can close more deals and encourage them to sign up for your newsletter which helps you to keep in touch with them over time.
It is always worth remembering that a first time visitor is unlikely to purchase, keep in mind that your aim is to encourage them to sign up so you can build your relationship with them. The sales will come later.
Chat-bots are a game-changer
Many smaller organizations do not have the resources to hire customers service personnel for live chat, but chat-bots mean that they can automate the service and have all the benefits associated with live chat without any of the drawbacks. The visitors to the website receives a more personal experience and the company saves on the costs of setting up a whole new customer service team.
A chat-bot is a virtual assistant that is similar to regular customer service. They have learning capabilities so that they improve over time and they can answer any of the common questions your customers may have. They are likely to be the future of online marketing because they can replace personnel and mobile apps and can even become part of your social media.
Some smaller companies find the idea of setting up a chat-bot quite daunting but they are not too complicated even for those without technical knowledge. They are well worth the time and effort because of the huge benefits that increased customer engagement will bring.
Not all customers are the same and understanding how to target the cold, warm and hot traffic groups is an essential skill for any good digital marketer. If you are not targeting your message appropriately to each group you will be missing out on many opportunities to develop a good relationship with your customers. Make good use of your advertising budget and make sure that you warm up your cold traffic, leading the way to better, more successful conversions.
Ready to start with cold traffic?
Now that you have a good understanding of how to warm up cold traffic to generate leads and sales you should be eager to start flooding your site with traffic. Here are a few sources for cold traffic you can start using today:
Simple Traffic: Forwards real visitors to your site from their large network of domains. Prices start at $0.36 per 1000 targeted visitors, plus a free trial.
Adfly: A URL Shortener that displays your website for 5 seconds before taking the visitor to the shortened URL. Prices start at $1.00 per 1000 visitors
RapidHits: Makes your site popup on their network of blogs and news sites. Prices start at $1.00 per 1000 visitors
Want to read more? Check out the 5 best free website traffic methods below..
