I am constantly seeking new ways to generate and increase traffic to
my offers. At the end of this article, I give my current stats and what
brought in the views. (This will explain the picture!)
I was
recently reading an article on MOBE.com about increasing traffic with
zero budget. It covered three basic ideas I thought I would pass
along. Gil Eyal was the author of this article and I have included some
excerpts for you. The complete article can be found at this link:
https://mobe.com/generating-traffic-with-zero-marketing-budget/
If you would like more information on my training program, click
HERE
- The
Grenade: The Grenade (tm, just kidding), identifies a controversial
topic that is being heavily debated by your target audience and targets
it. For example, let’s say you have a product that targets housewives.
And let’s say its early 2011 and rumors are spreading around Oprah
leaving her show. This is inspiring heavy debate between haters and
fans. This is your opportunity! Many of those Oprah fans are
housewives!So now you go on to all those discussion forums, Twitter
hashtags and blog articles and start posting comments that are contrary
to the popular opinion. For this to work, your “opinions” need to be
controversial enough to spark interest and discussion, but not so
controversial that people will dismiss you as a troll.You should have a
blog post set up with an article providing support and credibility to
your argument … and also packed with ads for your company’s product. It
goes without saying that the blog should not be on your domain or under
your name. For example, here you would buy the domain
“Oprahshouldhavequityearsago dot something” or something along those
lines, create a blog post, and generate 20-30 comments/discussions to
make it appear very active and have people feel like they need to join
in on the argument.Now all you need to do every time you engage in a
debate on a third party site, is forward people to the relevant blog
where they can see “evidence.”Did I mention that the blog should be
plastered with ads for your product? (Ideally, make it look like they
just happen to be ads served by an ad network.)Why is this called the
grenade? Because you pop into a battle zone, throw a grenade in, and
watch everyone evacuate (hopefully to your new blog.)
Obviously
the stronger people feel about the topic, the better. Imagine how well
this could work in elections, sports, reality TV and other context.
Here’s
a great example of a grenade where the scheming mind behind it was so
smart they actually got the gullible reporter to write a piece about the
awful epidemic of college students paying tuition by working as strippers, and endorse that particular person’s strip club in the article. Amazing.
The article ends with: “In fact, hundreds of girls apply to be strippers at Saint Venus every day via Craigslist, according to Lisa. The
real-girl appeal—the dancers have occasionally been paid by customers
to merely converse—sets Saint Venus apart from its seedy counterparts. They’re also getting a more tactile experience when it comes to the lap dances. While
it’s forbidden for customers to publicly touch a stripper at a
professional club, here clients can fondle or kiss a woman on her mouth,
face, even her breasts in full view of other patrons.”
So if you’re a concerned feminist you’re disgusted. If you’re a potential customer, you can’t wait to try it out.
2.
Be The Platform: Stop thinking about your product or platform as the
story. We’ll start this one with an example. TheChive (disclosure,
friends with some of these guys,) is an internet sensation and a great
site for “guy stuff.” This is of course a very crowded space, and
fighting for traffic is extremely difficult. They can do all the PR they
want, but no one is writing an article on mainstream media about how
TheChive is the best site for guy stuff just because they were pitched a
PR story about it.But what if something extremely interesting happened
on theChive?
October 2010, the brilliant guys at theChive post a
story that had all the characteristics of an internet sensation. Some
person sent them some pictures of a girl named “Jenny” who had grown
tired of her boss’ harassment and decided to quit her job in a unique and entertaining way.
The story had all the components needed to go viral.
- Jenny
has a vulnerable girl next door look and she was victimized by an
asshole male. Win with both guys who fantasize about being a savior and
women who hate womanizing men.
- Jenny is quitting her job in a
grand way. A way many of use can only dream of having the courage to do.
She’s now a hero. Gotta tell the people who work with me when the boss
isn’t listening!
- Start a discussion. HOPA? What the hell is
that? I’ve never heard the term but it sounds like everyone knows what
it is. How can I not know what HOPA is? Better look it up and start
using the term all the time so people know I’m meme savvy! Hot Piece of
Ass? But isn’t that HPOA? Better go argue with people about it.
- Mystery. Who is she? We know so much about her, someone must know who she really is? Let me Google/Bing it!
- Ego.
Hey Techcrunch–check out this story. This guy’s system backfired on him
and it turns out he spends more time reading Techcrunch than actually
doing his job! How flattering! (This was an intentional part of the
ploy–they referenced Techcrunch specifically.)
The whole store was a clever hoax created by theChive.
The post on theChive immediately prompted John Biggs to post an article titled “It’s official: the best bosses read Techcrunch”, and who can blame him? I would do the exact same thing if I were in his position.
Notice
he posted a story about the girl, not about theChive! Nevertheless,
theChive is of course linked to in the articles and in the discussion of
HPOA/HOPA.
Mainstream media were soon to follow.
Reports
say theChive saw traffic jump dramatically as a result of the story,
from 15,000 unique views an hour to 440,000 the next. Overall, it’s
estimated that millions of unique visitors were exposed to theChive as a
result of the story. theChive has since grown to be one of the biggest
blogs in the space, if not the biggest.
Notice one key aspect.
theChive was never the story. At least not during the actual hoax. It
just happened to be the platform on which the story took place. However,
once the hoax was revealed, the creation of the hoax became the story
and theChive got plenty of additional press and credibility.
3.
Be the David Fighting Goliath or a Victim: It’s not that you don’t have
a marketing budget. It’s just that people keep doing everything to stop
you. You have such a wonderful product, but people can’t hear about
you. A few elections back in Israel, Eran Arden (disclosure, friend of
mine as well) was running the campaign for the Kadima party that was one
of the main parties in the Israel election. At the time, Kadima was a
very big party that has since fallen out of favor.It is very hard to get
media attention before the elections. So here’s what Kadima did. I’ll
translate from Eran Arden’s book.
“In a situation where you
have limited budget and manpower, one of the best tools to create
activity on your site is to create an anonymous media “spin”… in one
case for example, we posted information about our website being attacked
by Irani hackers. Concurrently, we planted hostile files on the site to
complete the picture.
Next an item was distributed
about our database being hacked into. Public complaints were filed. The
appearance of vibrant activity under the surface was created. A
commotion of plotting. Having an image of a martyr can never hurt.
Yes,
this sounds childish and provocative but it’s important to understand
that every spin of this type increases traffic but hundreds of
percentages. Hundreds of percentages as zero cost and almost no
logistical effort. These are the rules of the game, whether we like them
or not.”
The story granted Kadima major media attention and
It’s easy to see why. Even though their politicians weren’t the story,
being a victim improved their image. After all, if Irani hackers chose
Kadima as the party they want to battle with, they must think they are
the worst Israeli party from and Iranian perspective. And since the
target audience is Israel, they are likely to vote for the party Iran
fears the most.
How does this translate to your startup? Again, if
you pitch a reporter a story about your new startup and what it does,
you have a limited chance of getting attention. If you’re the victim of
some big unknown evil, or even better, a David fighting a Goliath, the
media will love your story.
For more on this check out the: What’s the Pillsbury Doughboy Afraid of Campaign.
The
key lessons from there are that (a) if you’re competing against Yammer
you should be fighting Microsoft (for the purpose of the story); and (b)
if someone is trying so hard to stop you, than it goes without saying
that your product is so good and superior that it deserves attention.
__________________________________
So
here is my update: I have two different blogs, have done SEO on both.
I have also done Facebook advertising, Solo Ads, Craigs List, Indeed
and Monster. I publish my blogs from Wordpress and Blogger.com to my
Facebook accounts, Google Plus, LinkedIn and Pintrest. Most of this
advertising was free. The solo ads and Facebook ads did cost, but I
have received great ROI.
I started online marketing at the end of
August, 2015 when I decided to join My Online Business Education. I had
no experience whatsoever beforehand and really did not know how I was
going to learn this, but MOBE seemed to offer a great format for me to
follow. I continue to go through training with MOBE. Here are some of
my best stats:
On Wordpress: 10-10-15: 193 views in one day to
my "How Your Cubicle Is Killing Your Brain Cells". I have used the
Halloween theme a few times this month, but this one really got a lot of
views. Out of those views, I had 14 folks get more information on MTTB
and 6 opted in.
On Blogger.com: 10-3-15: 125 views to my blog
"What My Friend Saw". Again, another Halloween themed blog. Out of the
125, I had 65 get more info on MTTB and 3 opt in.
On my solo and facebook ads I gained 361 new subscribers to my email list, 283 get more information on MTTB and 16 opted in.
I
am very pleased with the education and training I have been receiving
with MOBE. If you are interested in finding out more, they have a
$49.00 course which is a 21 step program available where you get your
own personal coach to go through the steps with you. Check it out
HERE
Remember, All Things Are Possible!
Susan Tuck susantuck.com
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