You'd have to be crazy not to get this in-depth report while it's free!
This week I have been reading through a recent traffic survey released by Paul Smithson at Intellimon in conjunction with the University of Bradford. To be honest, I’m not a huge lover of survey data after having to sift through 1000 surveys and write a thesis on the information they contained. But…
That said, this one contained a lot of interesting information about the current online business world. Better still, there was a good amount of information about using affiliate programs, social media, PPC, article marketing and more. I guess you could say that there’s something there for everyone.
The report is based on the massive survey that Paul undertook a couple of months back, and to say it is fact-packed is an understatement.
It tells you everything from what people are doing to acquire traffic, through to how effective (or not) things such as social media, pay per click and article marketing are. And that is just for starters.
The best bit is that all this information is available to you free! I HIGHLY recommend you go grab yourself a copy while you still can.
Click here to download you copy of the Traffic Survey now
What does the data suggest?
I thought that I would pick out a couple of graphs and look at what their results showed and how they might apply to an affiliate marketing business. Remember, this is my interpretation and it could mean something quite different to you depending on how you run your business or see opportunity in the numbers.
Webinars
The first thing I noticed was the high percentage of people who said that they had never used webinars to promote their business. 92.8% tells me that although a lot of people talk about webinars and how good they are for teaching, selling and promoting a product, the majority of people never ACT upon the advice.
Over half of the people who ran webinars found that they were effective to very effective in driving more traffic to their sites. I know that based upon my own experience running a weekly traffic building webinar, that people enjoy learning this way. However, you do need to record your sessions so that those who couldn’t login can watch you in their own time.
These recordings can be promoted and bring traffic to your site from the search engines too. If you build a sales pitch subtly into the training, it will also keep selling for you for years to come.
“Overall, webinars and teleseminars seem to be most used for businesses that target other businesses and everyday consumers (39.1%). This stands to reason, since both can be effectively used to reach out to a wide audience (consisting of businesses and individuals).”
So, how could you use webinars to increase your sales and conversions?
Affiliate Programs
In this case, the results came from people who run sites that have implemented affiliate programs to increase their market reach. I think that it’s important for you to understand just what part that you, as an affiliate marketer, play in the success of some businesses.
46.2% of businesses that use affiliate schemes said that up to 10% of their traffic is generated through affiliate schemes. This equates to about 7.02% of all businesses.
Now that might not sound like a lot of business but if I put it into approximate numbers, for every $1000 they earn, $70 is from traffic sent by an affiliate. It’s only a small percentage at present but a majority of them, 68.2%, said that their affiliate program will become more important for them in the coming years.
I guess you could say that they are starting to appreciate the power of an affiliate’s marketing skills. Maybe we are seeing only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to making money from affiliate marketing?
I thought the comment, “Affiliate schemes allow for the offsetting of some of the traffic generation that the business would otherwise have to do in-house” reinforces the opportunity that exists for you, the affiliate marketer.
Another thought: If you can track it, there may be a huge opportunity for you to partner with real world businesses to pick up a referral commission, as it’s known offline.
Social Media
I’ve often debated with people about the importance of social media to businesses. I’m yet to be completely convinced that it’s worth the time and dedication for most real world businesses unless they have a dedicated staff member. I think the following statement, from the traffic survey, compounds why I think this way.
“The majority of Facebook for business users (41.0%) actually find that it has been neither ineffective nor effective. Only 29.2% of businesses using Facebook find it at least effective at generating traffic.”
Looking at who is doing the social marketing probably gives us a clue to why this is. 86.7% do it themselves. With all of the different things you can do to build traffic, it’s sometimes hard to put effort into all of them. If you are going to use social media, focus fully on it because it can be very rewarding, as I’ve discussed in an earlier newsletter.
One of the most interesting suggestions to come out of the survey was the following:
“Facebook is probably best suited for social media marketing on a small scale, and can be managed without the need of a dedicated individual for a reasonable return of traffic. If however, social media marketing is central to the business plan, and the resources (staff and money) are available, Twitter will by far give the greatest return on investment than the others.”
This sparked my interest because I’ve always thought Facebook was the better option. I’m now going back the drawing board to see what I’m missing. Maybe this is a generational difference?
So why would you bother to read through all this data?
Because we can track our visitors and what they do online very easily, it gives us an advantage over many business owners because we can respond to change quickly. This is one of the reasons I love marketing online.
Data like this allows us to decide how we should be building our traffic, what things we need to improve and what we need to learn to drive our businesses to the next level. I’ve learned that often, the difference between success and failure can be a very simple change. It could be a new headline or just a better way of building links.
Get the inside run on what other business owners are learning… I highly recommend you go grab yourself a copy while you still can. You can also get the “Getting Traffic” report at the same time!
Click here to download your copy of the Traffic Survey now!
