As Google Adwords becomes less viable for your average direct response marketer, it only makes sense to look for alternative sources of targeted traffic.
After all, the more diversified your sources of traffic, the less any single source of traffic can negatively impact your business.
If 90% or more of your sales come from Google Adwords traffic… and a disgruntled employee decides to ban your ads from running… you’ve just lost 90% of your business in one fell swoop.
But if you’ve developed multiple sources of traffic — Adwords, Bing, Twitter, social media, organic search listings, backlinks, etc — then you won’t have so much to worry about if the Google gods suddenly cut you off.
Lately, I’ve been experimenting with a new Twitter tool that helps drive free targeted traffic to any page you want. Basically, the idea is to send personalized @replies to multiple users with a few clicks.
So far, my @replies are getting click-thru rates up to 60% and averaging around 30-40%. These are impressive statistics. It means that my @replies are extremely relevant. So relevant, in fact, that some people are even re-tweeting my @replies.
Here’s a real-world example from this morning…
Today I sent 35 personalized @replies using this new Twitter tool. Within an hour, 10 people had already clicked through. I can see this because I’m using bit.ly to track clicks. That’s a 28.5% click-thru rate so far. I’m sure this number will climb throughout the day.
Here’s a screen shot:
That’s 10 unique visitors to my site in an hour. And the best part is I didn’t have to pay for that traffic.
To learn more about how this new Twitter tool works, check out this in-depth review: How to tap into Twitter to attract free website traffic
-Ryan M. Healy
P.S. Just finished writing this post and I refreshed my bit.ly stats… now up to 12 clicks. That’s a 34.3% click-thru rate in a little more than an hour.
P.P.S. Back from the gym and clicks are up to 19 (out of 35 tweets sent), a 54.3% click-thru rate.
Similar Posts:
- Am I Encouraging Twitter Spam?
- Mobile Pay Per Click: Start Here!
- Five on Friday, Issue #7: The Twitter Edition
- Are You Lifting Your Kilt for Google?
- Multiple Redundancies in Business
About Ryan M. Healy
Ryan Healy is a direct response copywriter. Since 2002, he has worked with scores of clients, including BoostCTR, Alex Mandossian, Terry Dean, and Pulte Homes. He writes a popular blog about copywriting, advertising, and business growth, has been featured in publications like Feed Front magazine, and is a regular contributor to WordStream.com, BoostCTR.com, and MarketingForSuccess.com.
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{ 8 comments }
Hi Ryan.
I don’t mean to disappoint you, but in a similar experiment to yours I conducted last year, it turned out that a lot of the clicks recorded by bit.ly were in fact bots. I discovered this when I started investigating their user-agent strings and ip-adresses.
You can read about it here:
http://www.hadermann.be/blog/41/twitter-traffic-might-not-be-what-it-seems/
I hope however that I’m wrong and that you traffic consists of real humans.
Piet.
Thanks for the heads-up, Piet. Sounds like I’ll need to do some additional investigating.
Just received this info from a blog reader:
“Last year, bit.ly did indeed record lots of bot traffic. These days, it’s pretty clean.”
Just received this info from a blog reader:
“Last year, bit.ly did indeed record lots of bot traffic. These days, it’s pretty clean.”
Hey Ryan – I used to test some of this traffic and got a good number of visitors from Twitter everyday. I used bit.ly too, and it did seem to have higher numbers than my testing software was reporting. That said, I was getting consistent reliable traffic that converted with a pretty weak squeeze page. I like Twitter traffic.
Cheers,
Stephen
I think Twitter is like any other media: it takes some work to figure out. But with the right strategy and technique, it can work well.
Ryan,
So, how would you lay out your Twitter strategy in a nutshell?
- John
I would actually describe it more as a blogging strategy:
1. Write interesting and/or valuable content.
2. Use RSS to auto-publish blog posts to Twitter and Google Buzz.
3. Bookmark select posts in Delicious and Digg.
4. Offer an incentive for blog visitors to become email subscribers.
I also send out new posts automatically via Aweber and that tends to multiply the viral effect… if the post resonates with a lot of readers.
I primarily use Twitter to stay connected with a handful of people. I recently used it to land an interview with a well-known CPA. Sometimes it’s easier to reach people via Twitter than it is via email or even a website “Contact Us” form.
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