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Cold traffic. It sounds daunting, doesn’t it?

The word “cold” implies chilly, frosty, cool.

Cold traffic are those web visitors who’ve never heard of you.

They don’t know of you, your brand, or your business.

They will be chilly, frosty, or cool – at least, initially.

Not because they, themselves, are “cold” people, but because they don’t even know you yet.

That doesn’t mean that they’re not open to getting to know you. It means that at this moment, they’ve not yet warmed up to you.

At this stage of the buying cycle they’re being introduced to you.

Up until this time, they didn’t know you existed!

A steady stream of website visitors will allow your business to grow.

Whether you’re new to online business, or you’ve been here for a while, you need to be targeting cold traffic – and driving them to your website.

Now you may be starting from ground zero with very little content on your website for your visitors, or you may have tons of great content but not enough traffic.

Driving cold traffic to your website, where your original content should live, requires a plan.

After all, the content you create should introduce your cold audience to you and your brand, build your credibility, and move them into your funnel so that you can start building a relationship with them, provide the solution to their problem(s), and achieve a return on your investment.

But first – a warning: don’t start driving traffic to an unproductive website. If your website needs some work, or you haven’t created a basic opt-in funnel to collect email addresses, then you need to start there.

There are many effective ways to target cold traffic and drive them to your website to consume your content.

How Cold Traffic Finds You

They’ve found one of your videos on Youtube through a search or a related video
They’ve done a search on Google and found one of your blog posts
They land on your website from a link in your tweet
They click on a Facebook ad in their newsfeed
They get an email from someone they follow with a link to an offer you have

How To Approach Cold Traffic

Imagine walking into a new shoe store and being accosted by the sales staff as they grab a pair of size 8 pink stilletos off the shelf and tell you all the wonderful reasons why you should buy these shoes.

What’s wrong with this picture?

A. This is your first encounter with the brand, the store and the staff. You don’t even know them yet!

B. They don’t know whether you wear stilletos.

C. They don’t know what colour shoes you’re looking for.

D. They don’t know what size you wear.

Approaching your cold traffic like this will turn them off and eliminate the opportunity of them purchasing from you in the future.

These are casual browsers who are looking for information to solve a problem they have or seeking information.

Now, you might have the solution for them, but it’s unlikely that they’ll buy from you at this point because they don’t yet know you, like you, or trust you.

They’re at the very start of the buying cycle.

To convert cold traffic to warm traffic you need to first create brand awareness and build your credibility.

Creating Awareness

You’re reading this blog post because you’re an online educator, or are thinking about creating an online course or program.

In order for anyone to actually buy your course or program, they need to know you, like you, and trust you.

They need to know that you have the expertise and experience to teach them what they want to learn.

They need to like you if they’re going to listen to hours of audio, video, or live sessions in your course.

And they need to trust you to help them with the solution to their problem.

At this point in the buying cycle though, you need to allow them to get to know you and create awareness of you, your brand, and your business:

Snapshots (images / videos) of a day in the life of you
Short videos that express your personality and brand
Blog posts sharing your expertise

Introducing Your Topic Without Trying To Sell Them

Introducing the topic of your online course or program is NOT the same as trying to sell them on it.

Behind the scenes footage of the program/course creation
Short snippet videos from your course
Assessement
Interactive quiz
Survey

Providing mini-solutions to their problems

As mentioned earlier in this post, cold traffic is finding you for the first time – and they weren’t looking for you specifically.

They were online looking for a solution to their problem.

Imagine if they were on Google searching for:

and they found your blog post:

They click on your blog post and are immediately taken to that blog post on your website.

They read through the blog post, which helps solve their immediate program, and they get the sense that you may have some experience with this stuff.

Now, because your blog is on your website, they click on the About page to learn more about who you are.

Now they know who you are.

They’ve been introduced to you.

They like you because you’ve helped solve a problem that they have.

You haven’t tried to sell them anything, you’ve simply introduced yourself to them and helped solve their immediate problem.

Now they’re starting to warm up to you!

Learn as much as possible about them

These ‘cold traffic’ interactions are invaluable for you learning more about your audience.

The better you understand your cold traffic, the more likely you are to be able to warm them up and eventually convert them to buyers.

Use heatmap tools like Hotjar to understand what users want, care about and interact with on your site by visually representing their clicks, taps and scrolling behavior.
Use Google Analytics to monitor which pages your visitors are landing on, which ones they’re leaving on, and their pathway while on your website
Pay attention to the comments visitors leave on your Youtube videos
Note commonalities in the questions you’re asked on your live streams

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