Have you ever set up a lemonade stand at the end of a cul-de-sac? It’s really demoralizing.
You unfold the table under the early-Summer sun, carefully set your pitcher just so, and tape up your poster board sign with your best attempt at bubble letters. Then, you wait. And nobody comes. Well, maybe a sympathy purchase from your Mom and a nickel from that nice elderly neighbor.
What went wrong? You fell victim to the adage “build it, and they will come.” The truth is that no matter how perfectly balanced your lemonade is on the sweet-tart spectrum, you can’t help people who don’t know you exist.
The same is true for your landing page. “I’m a creator, not a promoter,” you say. But you’re only doing yourself and your audience a disservice if you keep yourself small and hidden away.
So toss aside your self-doubt and put on your business hat, because we’re going to cover how to get free traffic without feeling slimy.
A tale of two pages: Why you need to promote your landing page
You don’t need a massive audience to make money as a creator. What you do need is a bit of patience and persistence. Promoting your online course, ebook, or service across a few channels consistently can have a big payoff in the long run.
You don’t have to take our word for it, though. Let’s run through a scenario of a creator selling a $100 video course to a list of 2,000 subscribers and see how promotion boosts profits.
Scenario A: Posting a landing page link once or twice
Our imaginary creator has 2,000 email subscribers, so they aren’t a stranger to using email marketing. Still, they’re a bit shy about self-promotion, so they only share a link to the landing page once a month.
Assuming the average click rate is 5% of total emails delivered, this one email to a list of 2,000 people results in 100 landing page views.
The creator also feels like they should use social media to grow their business. They post a link to their blog’s Twitter page with 500 followers and get 10 landing page views a month from an average engagement rate of 2%.
Using their email list and Twitter account once each, our creator achieves 110 landing page views a month. Based on the average conversion rate of 5%, the creator makes 5 sales and earns $500.
Doing minimal promotion each month results in $6,000 in sales for the year.
Create a free landing page that converts
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Create a free ConvertKit accountScenario B: Sharing a landing page consistently across channels
Now let’s imagine the same creator with a $100 product and email list of 2,000 is more proactive with promotion. They’re going to share more often across more channels. Let’s see how that impacts annual earnings.
The email list is still a wonderful place to promote the landing page, and the creator shares the landing page twice a month in this scenario. With the same engagement rate as in scenario A, our creator earns 200 landing page views a month.
They also decide to share the landing page four times a month on Twitter instead of just once. This leads to 40 landing page views a month from their 500 followers.
Finally, the creator decides to share more of what they know in blog posts. Two of their blogs rank in the top search engine spot for niche keywords that garner 100 searches each per month. This means that with a 30% average CTR on the #1 search result, these two posts bring in 60 landing page views a month.
By increasing their sharing frequency just a bit and adding a new promotion method, the creator makes a lot more in scenario B. In a month, they have 300 landing page views, which results in 15 sales a month for $1,500 in total.
Consistent promotion across channels results in $18,000 in sales for the year in scenario B—a 3x increase over our first scenario.
Your marketing ROI increases with your promotion efforts
The two above scenarios illustrate how even small increases in effort and income can grow over time. Since many of your business expenses will stay the same regardless of your promotion effort, your ROI gets higher with each sale. The creator in our example used ConvertKit to build their landing page, sell their products, and connect with their email subscribers.
Since their annual ConvertKit cost is $290, the creator would have a 61x ROI if they followed the second scenario and earned $18,000 in sales.
How to get free traffic to your landing page
No matter the channel, driving traffic to your landing page is about providing value to the right audience. While paid marketing is useful for scaling your business, we’ll focus on free promotion tactics today.
#1 – Share relevant landing pages with email subscribers
“Wait, I thought you used landing pages to feed your email marketing funnel? How could it work in the opposite direction?”
While it’s true that you often use landing pages to widen your audience, they’re also useful for deepening relationships. Imagine you have a segment of readers who have been loving your blog posts on a particular topic. If you share a landing page for your ebook that can help them finally get over the hurdle they’ve been facing, they’ll be likely to check it out.
Jessica Abel uses an email to direct attention to the waitlist landing page of her Creative Focus Workshop in the examples below. The email calls attention to the challenges her audience faces and shares stories and tips from students.
Since the landing page relates to the very problems that Jessica’s subscribers signed up to learn about, promoting the workshop there is a natural fit.
#2 – Reach out directly
One of the best ways to grow your business is by building genuine human connections. Doing things that don’t scale is a method used by creators and companies alike, where they take a hands-on approach to make a bigger impact.
While automation is wonderful, reaching out to people you think you can help, or that you admire, or that have joined your list establishes one-on-one relationships.
Here are a few ways to use one-on-one relationships to learn about your business and drive traffic to your landing page:
- Start conversations with followers and subscribers, learn about their problems, and suggest solutions
- Reach out to creators you admire to collaborate or learn from
- Participate in the ConvertKit Community to learn from and be inspired by fellow creators
#3 – Social media
Social media marketing holds a lot of potential for driving traffic to your landing page, but it can feel difficult to “get it right.” Rather than slapping a link on your Facebook or Instagram story once, use social media to share your knowledge to help people (for free) before asking for anything in return.
Provide free lessons, contests, and vlogs on YouTube
YouTube’s longer format than, say, an Instagram video means you have more space to get creative. pianoTV's YouTube channel has an assortment of piano playing exercises, behind the scenes “create with me” content, contests, course announcements, and more. Each video then links to a related piano course in the description box, which will consistently drive traffic back to their website.
Share tips, ask questions, and promote resources on Facebook
It’s tempting to share a link to your landing page on Facebook and call it a day, but there’s so much more potential than that. Aim to use social media as a two-way conversation by posing questions for followers and engaging with their responses. When you do share content and resources, include a preview of the tips in your Facebook post.
Help people get to know you on Instagram
Instagram is where you’re likely to see creators sharing their day-to-day life. Blogger Christabella Travels shares photos of herself in exciting locations with captions about what she’s learned as a digital nomad.
When it’s time to promote a landing page for her course, she offers tips as a preview and directs people to the link in her bio. Her free ebook and paid course are all linked in a Linktree, which means her Instagram drives landing page traffic anytime someone checks out her bio.
Ps- want a free Linktree alternative that offers more? Check out ConvertKit Link Pages.
Show behind the scenes and post quick thoughts on Twitter
Twitter only gives you 280 characters to speak your mind, so it’s best for sharing quick thoughts and lessons. If you want to expand on an idea, try creating a thread of tweets. Or, take a two-step approach as Latesha Byrd does.
First, she tweeted a quick thought about resumes that garnered a lot of engagement. Then, she replied to the tweet with a link to her resource for job hunters. If a particular post seems to resonate, you could update the headline on your landing page to match the message.
Create eye-catching graphics for blog posts and landing pages on Pinterest
Gaining blog post traffic from search engines is a great goal, but it shouldn’t be your sole strategy. Instead, you can actively promote content on Pinterest by creating eye-catching graphics. House of Creators makes a pin for each new blog post and includes a link to a free ebook in their profile’s bio.
Create short videos on TikTok
Tik Tok was downloaded 113 million times in January 2020 alone and went on to become the most downloaded app of the year. This means you can likely find target audience members in the midst. Creators like Tabitha Brown share short videos of their creations and perspective, which creates a relationship between them and their viewers. Including a link to your landing page or products in your Tik Tok bio is an easy way to call attention to those pages.
#4 – Forums
Online forums and discussion boards are handy for both market research and promotion. To research, see which questions and topics come up most often. For promotion, aim to make your resource complementary to your post and not your sole reason for showing up. You should spend time engaging with the community outside of your promotion to avoid setting off “salesy” alarms.
A perfect example of this is LSAT Hacks’ Reddit post. They include a CTA for their newsletter at the beginning but then share a plethora of insights and resources for anyone interested. There are forums and communities for parents, dog owners, canoe makers, and just about anything else you can think of. Forums for your niche are more likely to have interested readers, and making your landing page copy actionable and memorable helps seal the deal.
#5 – Create your own community
If you want to take social media a step further, you can create your own Facebook group focused on a topic. Having your own community gives you a little more control than visiting other forums. Plus, you may be the only one allowed to promote resources there routinely. Engaging in your community will be similar to the Facebook strategies we mentioned earlier. When it’s time to promote something, create a new landing page for each new offer.
#6 – Content marketing + SEO
Content is a great (and free!) way to share your expertise with new people. Creating high-quality pieces focused on the keywords potential subscribers are looking for helps you rank on search engines. It’s best to check that your content and landing pages work well across all devices for the best experience.
You can even use blog posts to repurpose video content like Tessie Fay did in the example above. Then, link to your landing page as the next step for readers. Don’t forget about the SEO on your landing page to maximize searchable opportunities!
#7 – Be on podcasts
Our final tip for driving traffic to your landing page is to get involved with podcasts. Hosting or appearing on a podcast gets your story and perspective in front of an interested audience. Plus, guests typically have a chance to shout out their website and product on the podcast’s website.
Promote your landing page with ConvertKit
Creating an organized and beautiful landing page is the first step in promoting your product, but the work doesn’t end there. Spending even an hour a week to create content across channels and engage with your audience goes a long way in consistently driving traffic.
In a way, promoting your landing page is like moving your digital lemonade stand from the cul de sac to a grocery store entrance. A lot more people will see what you have to offer, and hopefully, you’ll make more sales.
If you’re ready to start collecting subscribers in just a few clicks with a free landing page from ConvertKit, sign up now.
