Entering the world of online marketing for a new career can be exciting as a senior who may be retired from their previous job. You have a slew of topics and business models to choose from, and you get to be the sole deciding voice about which direction you go in.
There are a few basic things you’ll learn first, like which niche to choose, which business branch you want to build first, and how to make money doing it. But before you get started, you’ll want to educate yourself about traffic and list building.
These two concepts go hand-in-hand and they’re what help you earn money from your efforts. You don’t want to make the same mistake many marketers have and plan on building a list once you see some success.
If you do that, you’re missing out on the ability to capture the contact information of hundreds or thousands of customers who could be loyal to you for years. This is something you need to understand early on, so that you’re not sabotaging yourself and missing out on future profits.
Understand Basic SEO Practices
One thing you’ll have to avoid is being tempted by anyone who advises you to try to game the system when it comes to getting your site ranked high in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs).
Many of these practices involve suspect strategies that Google eventually catches on to and then penalizes the sites who have implemented it. A better way to go is to create a solid site that both Google and your human visitors will believe delivers a good end user experience.
Think of how you like a site to operate when you land on it. You need to make sure your site loads quickly for users. Files that are too large or burdensome coding can drag a site down and cause you to lose traffic.
The navigation concepts on your domain should be easy for people to understand. There shouldn’t be anything disrupting the experience, like elements that move around and confuse the visitor.
Your content should stay relevant to the topic that you plan to talk about. If it gets too muddled, but Google bots and human visitors will land there, wondering what the site is supposed to be about.
Keep your SEO efforts clean and periodically check to see what the metrics are for your site. If it’s slow or there are errors popping up, repair them quickly so that you can continue rising in the ranks of search results pages.
Create a Lead Magnet and Squeeze Page
Before you send or attract traffic to your site, you want to have something ready there to tempt them to opt in to your newsletter. When you have a subscriber base of prospects, you can lead them in the niche, create a loyal bond with them, and earn money for your great insight and advice.
Many marketers take the easy way out and just say, “Sign up for updates.” If you think about it, that’s not really a good incentive. Why couldn’t they just bookmark your website and come back later?
You need something more that will incentivize them to sign up. There are two good ways to do this. The first is a series. An email series is just a promise to contact them a certain number of times with specific information, like a 7-day series on How to Lose Weight Without Frustration.
They know that for seven days, they’ll be getting emails from you. You don’t even have to have all of these ready to get started on day 1. You can write the first one, and then do one every day so any new signups have what was promised.
But an even better method to recruit subscribers to your list is to create a lead magnet or opt in report, as some call it. This is typically a short report – maybe 5 to 10 pages in length, that gives value to your visitors and showcases your teaching and sharing style.
The more valuable this offer is, the more you’ll wow them with your abilities, making them want to stay tuned to see what’s coming up in the future. You can even give away something bigger than a 5-10 page report if you want to.
You might decide to create an entire course for them to download, as the first in a line of courses you plan to launch later. Getting them hooked early is a good way to make sure they buy later.
Your course or offer doesn’t have to be text, if you prefer working with other medium formats. You might record a podcast they can access or download, or even a series of video modules they can watch and learn from.
In order to allow people to find the offer for your opt in, you have two places you can place it. The first is in the sidebar of your blog. It’s not extremely noticeable, but you’re able to put a small image and the opt in form from your email autoresponder company right to the side of your content.
That way, when someone lands on your blog to read a post they’ve found, they might see the offer, sign up, and allow you to cater to their needs for the months and years to come.
You’ll also want to create a specific, separate squeeze page – also known as a landing page. This is a page that is very low in content – just enough to hook the visitor and get them to sign up for your offer.
You might have the eCover of the report you’re offering on the left side of the page, with a headline, a sentence or bulletpoint or two, and then the opt in box on the right side of the page.
You don’t want to put too much on there, where they might get bogged down in content and leave. You can even put a short video under 3 minutes in length welcoming them and instructing them to enter their contact details in order to get the freebie.
There are templates you can use to create your squeeze page. Or, you can design one yourself to match the color scheme of your entire site. You can even outsource it to someone who can make it pop in appearance!
Be sure to log into your email autoresponder system and set up the welcome email so that it contains the download link to the freebie. You want the first contact you have with them to be impressive, so you might even consider adding a second, unexpected freebie that will add more value.
Start Blogging for Traffic
Before you start driving traffic to your blog, you want to have something there for them to read. If you’ve never done so before, take some time to go to Google and type in your niche topic and the word blog.
Take a look at the competition. You’re going to see a variety of slants and styles as well as personas of the people who are competing against you. You don’t need to emulate any of them but pay attention to what you do and don’t like as a visitor on the site.
Look for things about the site (navigation, share buttons, the free offer, etc.) But also look at their contact strategy. Is it mostly just their thoughts? Is it product reviews? Do they have great tips and advice?
Some bloggers are in it as a hobby and a place to record their journey and others are marketers, like you, wanting to make a business out of it. You’ll want to also check out the engagement they have on their site.
If a blogger has zero real comments, not the phony ones that say things like, “You have a great site” so they can get a backlink to their own domain, then it’s a sign there’s no real interest there.
If they have lots of followers who comment about something relevant to their post, and the blogger replies, then this is a competitor who is someone worth learning from and possibly aligning with in the future.
You want to think of all the things you can blog about for your niche. You might have secrets and tips, how-to or step-by-step tutorials, product reviews for both digital and tangible sites, and more.
Start conducting some keyword research into how consumers are searching for that information online. You can use free or paid keyword tools, but look for longtail phrases that are easier to rank for.
Instead of just trying to rank for a phrase like survival shelter, look for a longer phrase or sentence like how to build a winter survival shelter. This is more specific, so fewer bloggers will have targeted it.
You’ll want to use these longtail keyword phrases in the title of your blog post as well as a few times in the content. Don’t worry about forcing it if it makes the content read awkwardly.
You can rephrase it to something similar, such as building a winter shelter for survival and it still shows relevancy to the overall topic. You should blog as much as you need to without stuffing the content just to lengthen it.
Focus on what the customer needs, not what the search engine spiders want to see when they crawl your site to index it in the SERPs. If you focus on end user experiences, you will naturally appease the search bots without turning off the human visitors.
Try to keep a consistent schedule with your blogging efforts. Don’t go months without blogging because you got sidetracked. If you need to, buy some private label rights in your niche and queue it up while you step away from the niche for other things.
Use Forums and Social Networking Sites
When your system is all set up and you have the ball rolling with your blog posts, you’ll be ready to start sending or attracting traffic to your blog and/or squeeze page. You can do both – send people to read a blog story, or send them directly to your landing page for the free download.
To send traffic, you’ll probably be using one of two methods – free social networking sites or paid traffic resources. If you’re a beginner, you might want to hold off on attempting paid traffic until you have the funds to risk losing as you learn what works best.
Social networking sites are great because they’re free for you to use, and you can easily learn how to market on them. On sites like Facebook, you’ll be able to use your Page or Group to post about what you put on your blog, or what you’re offering in your lead magnet.
Of course, you want to make sure that’s not all you’re doing, because then it looks spammy. You want to be a comprehensive source of good information and shareables for your niche.
Other sites and apps may not let you link to many different places. For example, on Instagram or Tik Tok, your bio can’t link out to multiple locations. But with some networks, you can.
For example, if you’re using Pinterest, Twitter, or YouTube, you’ll be able to link to a variety of things, including various blog posts that you make as well as the landing page you have up to remind people to get their freebie from you.
Know Your Paid Traffic Options
Paid traffic is something you need to be very careful about using until you’re a seasoned marketer. If you have money you won’t miss, then it’s fine to test things out and see how it works for you.
Paid traffic can be in the form of advertising on social networks, or you can buy solo ads from other niche marketers. You can even buy ad space on other marketers’ blogs, so that when a visitor lands on their blog and sees your ad, you can pay if they click through to your site.
Check out Google AdWords to get started. You’ll have an ad designed that will have visual appeal, and you’ll set an amount you’re willing to pay for the click-throughs. You can also use video components in some instances, if you want to.
If you’re using social networking sites like Facebook or Pinterest, see what their ad system looks like for you in terms of paid traffic. Each site will have its own rules about what the promotion must look like, so you might need to have an ad designed for each site you plan to use it on.
You can have ads designed on a site like Fiverr or Upwork, where professional freelancers will do the work for you and deliver it ready-to-use. Make sure you check out their portfolio and feedback before hiring anyone.
As a senior online entrepreneur, you’re going to love having a list that you can connect with and guide through their journey in your niche. Make sure that you respond in a timely manner to their emails and treat them like family if you want them to stick around.