One of the biggest concerns on entrepreneurs’ minds is how to drive traffic to your online store. After all, even if you have a gorgeous website and phenomenal products, it won’t make a lot of difference if you can’t get customers to your front door.
Which is exactly why I invited Matt Hagberg to join me on the How to Sell Online podcast. Matt’s a lifetime entrepreneur and has invested in tons of learning—especially when it comes to driving online traffic.
Starting with just $5 a day.
As you’ll learn in the podcast (click on that button above and listen!) Matt started his own online business in 2017. He knew it would be important to drive traffic to his new website but, like a bunch of us who’ve started businesses, didn’t have a substantial budget.
So where’d he find the money to use for online ads? Well, he chose to take the money he’d usually spend on his morning Starbucks and devote it instead to running ads. That amount was just $5 each day.
I loved that Matt shared this because it shows you don’t have to start out spending hundreds of dollars to drive traffic to your online store. Starting small is totally allowed (and recommended!) Now it didn’t stay at $5 a day forever; within a few weeks he was able to increase that amount as sales began to roll in.
(Not) Building an email list.
Most of my students know this mantra of mine pretty dang well: your email list is an ATM machine. Unfortunately, Matt hadn’t learned that lesson when he started that first business. He quickly grew his online store to be a million-dollar business…but didn’t build a strong enough brand or an email list to foster repeat business.
(Be sure to listen to what Matt learned from this experience, because it can help you avoid falling into the same trap.)
Fortunately, Matt knows how to fail forward, and all of the effort he put into learning about and trying to drive online traffic wasn’t wasted. When he took the opportunity to help another entrepreneur during a ClickFunnels event, his expertise was evident. That led to an offer working with the sales funnel company itself.
The top 3 ways to help drive traffic to your online store.
- You can never have enough ad creative.
Platforms like Facebook and Google collect piles of data about users and can help you target your ideal customer. It’s important to have ads that speak to problems that people have and the solutions your product or products provide. The more options you have to work with, the more audiences you’ll be able to reach. Matt is definitely a fan of having and testing ad creative.
- Do (better) market research.
You might be thinking you have to hire a big company to do market research, but that’s not the case. The best way to do it is to just ASK your customers what they want. What is the main problem they are experiencing? What would get them to go from point A to point B in their buying journey?
Just taking a few minutes to send a quick survey to your email list or ask for responses on your social media pages can save you way more time and money in trying to figure out what your customers are thinking.
- Focus on one thing at a time.
One common trait of entrepreneurs is that we’re always looking at the next thing we can do to build our businesses. Certainly, when you’re trying to drive traffic to your online store, it makes sense that you’re evaluating everything out there. But Matt says to choose one traffic-generation tool and focus on that. It’s not that you won’t EVER be able to try another one; just get one working well before you jump.
Top 10 Takeaways
Matt and I talked about so many other aspects of driving traffic (including working with influencers!) so be sure to listen to the whole episode. In the meantime, I’m including my own quick takeaways from our conversation, below.
- Have a competition (with a prize) with business friends.
- One and done – the first sale doesn’t build the brand.
- Re-engage and maintain the relationship with buyers.
- You can’t ever have enough Facebook ad creatives.
- Do better market research.
- Focus. Focus. Focus.
- You don’t need a big audience.
- Meta and Google take up 80% of the online blueprint, use them.
- Use influencer marketing.
- You don’t have to spend a lot on ads when you start!
Additional Resources
Connect with Matt:
- Online at: matthagberg.com
- Instagram: @matthagberg
- Facebook: @matt.r.hag
Connect with Alison:
- On Facebook: @alisonjprince
- On Instagram: @alisonjprince
- Learn about the 0-$100K System and how you can launch and grow your own online business here.
- Join the Print Sprint here.
