Leverage this Traffic Acquisition Technique to Make Your Fortune

Of all the different traffic acquisition techniques we talk about on this blog there's one we don't spend a lot of time on, because it is perhaps the most expensive to pull off. In fact, as traffic acquisition strategies go, it's not exactly common, but it certainly works, but will usually cost substantially more than SEO, social marketing or just buying other people's traffic.

The technique itself is pretty simple : find someone who's offering could integrate with your own, and buy them out. Predatory companies like Google, Facebook and even relative newcomer Twitter have all acquired a number of different, yet related services.

(According to Wikipedia, Google's bought over 100 start-ups, Twitter nearly 30, and Facebook around 10.)

Considering most of my readers don's have a  spare $40 million in their back pocket, it may seem like a strange topic for the blog, but here's the rub : what happens if you're on the other side?

Show Me The Money

The process can be broken down as follows:

• find a predatory market leader in a domain that you have skills in;
• set up a service that is complimentary, and valuable to their users;
• allow users to sign up for free, monetize via adverts if need be;
• generate social noise;
• get bought.

I'll admit that re-reading that in black and white it feels a bit naive, but looking over the hundreds of high-tech acquisitions that have gone on over the last 10 years or so, one can't help wondering if, sometimes, very clever people haven't just adopted the above five step process.

At the very least, you'll learn a lot about traffic acquisition as you try to build up the service so that it hits the radar of your target predator. For that alone, it ought to be worth a shot!

Traffic Acquisition and The Comparative Cost of Customer Acquisition

Traffic acquisition is only part of the equation; another important part is customer acquisition. It's all very well to have the traffic, but how much of it actually converts into customers? If you can't answer that question, then you're in even more trouble!

Let's start at the beginning.

Traffic acquisition in web site terms is the act of getting eyeballs to a specific web property (page, video, blog post, etc.) It can be achieved through PPC campaigns, paid search placement, SEO techniques, social marketing, and so on - all of which have a cost.

Knowing that cost (essentially the price paid divided by the number of visits) enables you to work out the TAC. But there's also been a lot of talk recently of something else - the CAC, or Customer Acquisition Cost.

That's the cost of acquiring a single customer, on average, and needs to compare favorably with the average lifetime value of your customer base, if you are to remain solvent.

If your CAC exceeds the revenue generated by the customer base, you will begin to lose money. Typically, your CAC is equal to the TAC plus the cost of any additional resources that have been used to convert the visitor into a customer.

This is usually where the trouble starts. How do you know what your conversion rate is? How do you increase your conversion rate? How do you get inside your visitors mindset to work out why they do or don't choose to buy from you?

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All of these topics (and more) are covered in the Traffic Acquisition Insider newsletter, where we expand on the topics talked about on the blog, and give you real advice and step-by-step guides that you can use today to boost traffic, conversions, and expand your bottom line!

What is Traffic Acquisition Marketing (TAM)?

New industries have a habit of ushering in new buzzwords, and internet marketing now has a new one - following 'traffic acquisition', we now have 'traffic acquisition marketing'. But what is traffic acquisition marketing?


New York based Forward Branding & Identification, reference it a list of job requirements for a Web Project Manager:

"Experience in online consumer media, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, with success in online traffic acquisition marketing."

So, it's clearly something to do with social marketing and Web 2.0, and Miami, Florida's Apparent Internet Marketing would seem to agree:

"Apparent offers an array of white hat online traffic acquisition marketing services, in addition to strategic website and landing page optimization efforts, to help our clients build a loyal audience following."

So, what do we glean from these? Firstly, traffic acquisition marketing seems to be about generating traffic through a marketing message geared towards awareness and loyalty over advertising and traffic purchase.


It's also clear from Apparent that it's not about search engine optimization or landing pages, nor is it about straight up advertising. It's about generating (or acquiring) traffic because that traffic wants to visit the site, out of loyalty or brand attachment, and not just because they need to buy something.


Google returns around 13,000 pages that use the exact term, and using their Keyword Tool to research around the topic, another well-known phrase comes up : customer acquisition marketing.


Suzanne Taylor, a marketing consultant with clients including Adobe, Yahoo! and PayCycle, and member of Stanford University's faculty, defines customer acquisition marketing as having three main aspects:

• Awareness - does the target market know you exist?
• Learning - what does your market know about your benefits?
• Persuasion - do they want to buy from you?

She also notes that it's part of a model that she calls the 'Customer Experience Model', and notes that:

"It is driven by the other two elements of the Customer Experience Model—Product Wow and Customer Retention."

Putting all this together, we have a workable idea to answer the leading question - what is traffic acquisition marketing?


My summary would be as follows : Traffic Acquisition Marketing pulls in the target market by giving the marketing message an online personality, that can draw in, delight, and retain a loyal following online.


It's no longer just about the product. Now you also have to deliver a reason.

Techniques to Drive TAC Costs Down

TAC, or Traffic Acquisition Cost, is a measure of the amount of money required to buy in traffic. It is usually calculated on a percentage basis, using either revenue or visitor numbers to yield a figure that can be measured over time.


For example, if you pay out $5 to Google in AdWords fees, and receive 1,000 visitors, then the cost per visitor is 0.5 cents (actually, it's more common just to say that the cost is $5 per 1,000 visitors, otherwise known as CPM).


Others may choose to measure it in terms of revenue - if you sell an eBook for $15, and pay $100 in advertising fees to sell 500 copies, then you have generated $7,500 for $100 of advertising. That's quite a margin!


Actually, these numbers might be a bit optimistic, and so helping reduce TAC costs is usually high up on the list of priorities for online entrepreneurs.


One method might be to hunt after JV's (Joint Ventures) where partners each get something out of the relationship. An eBook can be exchanged for the traffic that this might bring, for example - one partner offers the eBook to their list, and the eBook contains links to the other's online store.


Or, a software manufacturer or online service provider might pay a third party to pre-install software on a piece of hardware, or even supply software with certain settings that provide an opportunity for third party promotion.


This last example is use by advertisers to buy advertising in applications (so-called adware), which is a method that works, but can be costly and obtrusive to the end user.


When formulating your TAC cost reduction strategy, remember one thing - it's much better to offer something of value if all you're after is traffic; otherwise it may end up costing more than it brings in.

Reducing Traffic Acquisition Costs using Destination Sites

Traffic acquisition costs are probably one of the highest direct costs for online businesses. Anything that you can do to reduce traffic acquisition costs must, almost by definition, be a good thing - but there's a right and a wrong way to do it.


Like the hotel industry, the web is split into two kinds of page - destination and everything else. Budget hotels that people use whilst traveling offer a very different experience to so-called destination hotels, which have to give customers more than just a bed for the night.


Likewise, destination sites are places people go to for something, unlike 99% of the other random search results which are just places people find themselves almost by accident.


Look at your own mental bookmark list. The chances are that you have a favorite site for social networking, video sharing, even email. There's also a good chance that these don't need to be in your browser bookmark list. You know the URLs by heart.


Now, I'm not suggesting for a moment that you try to become a destination site. That's part of the misconception that people have about the web - everyone wants to be the next big thing, the next mental bookmark, but very few people reach that status.


Mostly, we're all part of the 99% of pages that people visit on their way somewhere else. And that's okay, because it's what makes the web tick.


However, despite the fact that Google AdSense is available on many of these destination sites, and despite the fact that you might be paying for prominence on them, what happens when traffic acquisition costs outstrip the earning power of the target site.


We're in a world wide recession, after all, and people are cutting back spending in the so-called power niches of health, money and sex. Never mind hobbies, dating, and suchlike.


However, the power of the destination sites can still be harnessed by offering content in return for traffic, thereby significantly reducing direct traffic acquisition costs.


Right now, for example, there's a WSO (Warrior Special Offer) that uses the power of YouTube to drive traffic. It's called the Royal Affiliates Banker, and seems to be a process, coupled with some software which purports to drive traffic to a web site with only 15 minutes of real work.


(Disclaimer - that link makes me no money. Zero. I have NO affiliation with the product, and am just citing it here as an example.)


If the Royal Affiliates Banker works, it could significantly reduce traffic acquisition costs, and boost profits. And, it's likely that a very similar process can be applied to other destination sites - it's all about giving potential customers valuable content, and a reason to click through to the target site.


Just like a promotional blog, but potentially with much more power, and certainly a lot more fun to put together!

The Online Media Challenges of Traffic Acquisition

It used to be easy to get traffic. Well, easy-ish, anyway. Back when all we had were static web pages and a generic email address (webmaster@somewhere, usually) traffic acquisition was just a case of making sure that the page was indexed by the search engines, was relatively unique in terms of keywords, and was useful to the visitor.


This was back when we all edited our sites in a text editor, mobile (cell) phones were still almost a novelty, and certainly very, very few people had heard of social media.


These days, anyone can have a web site, and throw up any old traffic-catcher garbage, and it tends to clutter the search engine indexes. Of course, the boffins over at Google are making incredible headway in weeding out the rubbish, but it has still forced the rest of us to spend slightly more time (and hence money) making certain that we get seen.


Were it not for social media, it'd still be a case of throwing money at the issue.


Solving Online Media Challenges


See, these days, the challenge is not getting indexed. It's getting people to be aware of the site/brand at a number of different levels. Sure, people still use Google as a search engine, and they still type in words that they hope will return information, but they're a lot more savvy about choosing the results.


For all those people who continue to say "you gotta be on the first page of Google SERPs, otherwise it's a waste of time", I say : you're at least half wrong. I say this because people are using Google search engine results in a more canny way. They can spot if the top 5 places are going to be selling them things while offering them nothing.


On top of which, Google is going to be using (and has started using) social media techiques such as +1, and G+ Circles, to inform search users as to the perceived value of the page behind the result. 

 I have no proof of this, beyond what you can see on every search page, if you're logged in to Google, but it's a logical extension.


It also means that we have to be similarly more canny about the way we approach traffic acquisition. We need to leverage social media and rise to the online media challenges in making sure that if we are the best, then the online world knows we are the best, and, more importantly, Google recognises that we are the best.


How do we do that? Twitter. Blogs. Forums. In a buzzphrase, Social Media. We've come full circle, and we're back to word of mouth advertising, the best kind. Only, these days, they're digital mouths and ears.

Using PLR to Generate Traffic

PLR - Private Label Rights - is a term used to describe material that has been created for the express use of being re-used to create web site content. The seller hands over a number of rights to the buyer, amongst them, the right to use the text in any way that they wish, and assume the ownership (or at least the right to be recognized as the author).

So, in theory at least, you could take the content, stick it in a blog, and then drop the URL on Google, Twitter, Facebook, or whatever, and watch the traffic come rolling in. Right?

Well... if everyone does that, then everyone's pages end up looking the same and you'll irritate the PLR owner into the bargain. On top of which, they'll be optimized to rank well in search engines for a variety of keywords, but there are a limited number of spots - 10, if we're trying to hit the first page of results.

Those top ten spots will quickly go, if all you do is copy and paste the PLR content in it's entirety. Using PLR is clearly as much about re-branding it, as it is about re-using it. Unless it's an eBook, or something to be used for newsletter content, which keeps it relatively private, it is vital to re-work the PLR content to make it your own.

In the final analysis, PLR is about research, getting snippets for insertion in your own products, and pulling out likely keyword phrases.

JustOutsourcing.com have a list of 101 things to do with PLR, and it's well worth a look, as there are some great ideas for turning PLR content into traffic acquisition content. Be warned, however, what might seem like a quick short cut to traffic actually does require some work to make it worthwhile.

A great place to get PLR content is from ghostwriter extraordinaire, Tiffany Dow, from her PLR Mini-Mart. They're bang up to date, seasonal where appropriate, and her blog is full of useful tips and tricks. Learning from the trenches of PLR and ghostwriting is a great way to get ahead in the internet marketing game, so I heartily recommend Tiffany's blog.

That's PLR, in a nutshell. It's a great investment when used correctly, and should be at the top of your traffic acquisition checklist.

How do you Calculate Traffic Acquisition Cost

One question that is often at the forefront of people's minds when it comes to generating traffic is how to calculate traffic acquisition cost. Every method of traffic acquisition, be it paid or free, has an underlying cost.

Clearly, free methods, such as using Twitter, a blog, or even a service such as Traffic Swarm are attractive because there is no direct financial cost. However, the traffic that is acquired may not be highly converting, and there is an investment in time, which has an inherent cost.

Let's take a quick example. If we assume that you spend 30 minutes crafting a short Traffic Swarm advert, then another 30 minutes to set it up, and then 60 minutes generating some credits by clicking on other people's adverts, you have spent 2 hours of time.

A copywriter can earn upwards of $200 in that short fraction of a day!

So, any traffic that is acquired has a cost of $200. And that's not the end of the story, because, if you generate 100 credits, that only means that your advert will be displayed 100 times. What percentage of those displays will generate visits? 1%? 2%? 10%?

There is an upside - over time, the investment might be worth it, but only if the cost of other traffic acquisition services are higher.

AdSense CPC Explained

One way to pull in traffic is buy buying clicks through a PPC (Pay Per Click) broker. Google's AdSense is such a service - you can pay them to display your advert whenever certain keywords are displayed on a given page.

(Get the inside scoop on AdSense here with the Keyword Cracker's Free AdSense Report.)

The CPC (Cost Per Click) is the amount of money that you (and competing content providers) are willing to put down for each person that clicks your advert. This can be as low as $0.05, but as high as $50!

Clearly, it is easy to calculate traffic acquisition costs in this case. If you want 100 visitors, based on a keyword that costs $1 per click, it will cost you $100. Now, this compares favorably with the analysis we did above for Traffic Swarm, but there's a problem.

Highly converting keywords often cost much more than $1 per click.

In such cases, free and low cost traffic acquisition models will be more favorable, but in order to figure it out, you need to know how to calculate the cost of traffic acquisition. Something you now know how to do.

A final note : if you are selling a high ticket item, like a used Ford SUV, then the commission on that sale might make PPC worth your while. If you're selling a $17 eBook, it surely will not be, unless you find a highly converting, long tail keyword phrase, at a low cost.

The Keyword Cracker was designed with that in mind, and is highly recommended by all who have used it to better their traffic acquisition strategies.