If you’re driving a business and need to generate traffic, the first thing that comes to mind is spending money on ads. But there are other ways to drive free traffic!
In this post we’ll discuss five different methods for driving free traffic without wasting your budget.
Why is generating traffic important?
No matter how awesome your product or service is, and how beautiful and high-converting your website is, you will never make a single cent without traffic.
Driving traffic is important for pretty much any online business.
Driving free organic traffic is one of the most effective ways to drive visitors, likes & shares towards your business. This type of traffic has high engagement rates compared to paid advertising – which often gets ignored by users.
Driving traffic is also great for the long-term, as it’s free and you don’t need to worry about ad costs or whether your current campaign will be profitable. It is one of the most sustainable forms of driving visitors & generating leads in comparison to paid advertising – which can become costly if done wrong.
You can also use driving traffic to build up your brand online, gain exposure for your business and more! Overall, driving free organic traffic is a great way to increase website visits that are targeted towards long-term growth – which is why it should be one of the main strategies within every marketer’s arsenal.
Although driving traffic is important, it won’t guarantee sales and conversions. Another big topic that would require its own blog post.
The main 3 ways of driving traffic online today
There are mainly 3 different ways to generate traffic online.
Paid traffic
This is where you pay to play. You are driving traffic with money. This is most likely through advertising platforms like Facebook, Google Adwords and others.
Your traffic typically stops completely as soon as you stop running ads.
Influencer/Affiliate traffic
This is a semi-paid type of traffic. This involves paying an influencer in your niche to promote your products and services on their social media profiles. In return, you get traffic.
The best part about this is that the traffic can last a little longer than paid traffic as long as the influencer doesn’t delete the post or it get it buried deep down in their profiles.
If it’s a YouTuber, it’s even better. YouTube videos don’t get buried like with Facebook or Instagram so you can keep getting traffic for years.
Affiliate traffic is traffic generated by other digital marketers. This can be hit or miss. If the digital marketer is really skilled and they decide to promote you often, that can generate you free traffic without you having to do anything.
Organic traffic
Organic traffic is free traffic. It’s traffic where you don’t pay money and where the internet itself does the promotion and advertising for you.
This type of traffic typically has the highest engagement rates (as people aren’t forced to click through to check you out through ads or influencers).
It’s also long term traffic and will continue to drive traffic to your sites for years to come. I would argue that it’s difficult for your traffic to completely stop unless your website goes down completely.
12 best ways to drive free traffic without spending a dime
Here are a few ways you can drive free traffic without spending a dime.
This is the number one, most effective way to get organic traffic online today. If done correctly and often enough, you will be driving thousands of visitors per month from all over the world absolutely for free – as long as this is done in moderation (i.e. don’t spam your friends, but post regularly to social media).
This will also help you build up trust with people in your niche and can lead to massive long-term success for driving traffic & generating leads or sales! I would argue that it’s the most effective way of driving free traffic online today if done correctly.
Focus on driving traffic to your YouTube videos
YouTube is the second biggest search engine out there. It’s only behind Google when it comes to getting organic traffic online.
If you can build up an audience on YouTube, that will lead into long-term success for driving free traffic & generating leads/sales in the future (i.e people will subscribe to your channel on YouTube).
There are so many ways of driving traffic to you videos. I would say that organic search is the best way but there are other methods as well including driving free traffic with Facebook Groups, getting influencer shoutouts and/or collaborations with other influencers in your niche to do a video together.
Videos have the highest engagment rates on social media, so be sure to create high-quality content that provides value. It’s also a quicker way to build up that know, like and trust factor. Create fun and engaging videos that will encourage viewers to share, like or visit you!
You must have heard of the term “passive income” right? If not, then here’s a quick definition. Passive income refers to money that continues to generate even after it has been made, without needing you to do anything. You can take a vacation for 3 months and come back to find out that you’ve earned money while you were away.
Creating videos on YouTube is a great way to generate passive income as you can continue driving free, organic visitors even after the video has been created! It’s not like Facebook or Instagram (or pretty much most social media platforms) where content can be buried after a certain amount of time. A video from years ago can still generate consistent traffic and even explode years after publishing.
It’s also really easy to create videos if you have access to editing software such as iMovie or Adobe Premiere Pro. The hard part is writing the script, taking the time to edit, and putting your face on camera.
Build up a list
If you can build up a list of people who opt-in to your website in some way (i.e signing up for free, driving traffic and generating leads), that is the best thing ever!
Your audience will grow organically with time and when they trust you enough – they may actually buy something from you at some point. This is a great thing as it means that those potential customers who buy from you are real buyers, not just people looking for freebies or discounts.
An email list is the best way to build an audience.
Why?
It’s an asset that you own and can control.
Unlike social media and paid advertising methods, you can decide what content to send out and when.
Social media platforms change their rules and algorithms all the time which may likely affect you at some point or another. Also, if your account gets shut down or some other issue occurs, you’ve lost your audience pretty much overnight.
An email list doesn’t have that kind of issue as you own their email address. You’re not reliant on social media platforms and can always continue driving free traffic to your website even if one day those social media sites decide that your account is not welcome anymore.
An email list provides you instant access to people who have opted-in, which means that they’re interested in what you have to offer! This makes it easier for driving free traffic & generating leads.
Email marketing has been around almost since the invention of email and still continues to be the most popular form of driving free traffic & generating leads. It will most likely stick around well into the future.
Drive traffic with Facebook Groups
There’s many ways of driving visitors to your websites and generating leads online including paid advertising – where you typically pay per lead or sale.
However, driving free traffic by using Facebook groups is what I would recommend. You can get a lot of views on your website and generate leads pretty quickly within just one day or so!
You can also look into using your Facebook profile as a way to drive traffic.
Blogging
Blogs are a great way to drive free traffic and build relationships with like-minded individuals. It can be regarded as an asset that continues to earn you a passive income for months and even years, without needing too much involvement from you.
Guest Blogging
Driving traffic and building your business by generating likes, shares or visits through guest blogging on other people’s blogs. This is done with relevant content that will provide value to the viewers (such as a free ebook download). The point here is that you’re leveraging the authority of other people to direct traffic to your own business.
Networking
Meeting new people in real life can also be a great way to drive free traffic and build relationships with like-minded individuals that could help promote your business later on! Use these relationships to help promote your business by driving traffic and generating likes, shares & visits.
Participating in online communities
Online forums, Reddit and Facebook Groups are a great way to meet new people in real life that are interested in your niche. This will help you build relationships and drive traffic to your website organically.
This is highly recommended if you’re just getting started with your online business as you need to build up that trust early on.
Participating in relevant forums can be a great way to start, along with Facebook Groups! Driving traffic on Reddit or Quora is a highly effective method that will help you increase your website visits. You do need to be a little careful with Reddit though. They are so anti-spam that you can get banned very easily if driving traffic to your website is all you’re interested in!
Listings on marketplaces
Listing your products and services on marketplaces is a great way to drive traffic, as interested buyers will often come across you. This can be done through sites such as eBay, Shopify or Etsy – both of which are digital platforms that allow you to list physical products online for free. If you sell digital products like online courses, then places like Udemy and Skillshare are great marketplaces that can help you get more exposure online.
Direct Referrals
You can also build your business by encouraging others to share, like or visit you. This can be done through promotional content that is helpful for the viewers such as a free ebook download, or through another promotion (such as an affiliate link). A great way to get free traffic without needing you to actively promote your business.
Word of mouth traffic
Simply the best form of free traffic that has been around for centuries. It continues to be the best free method of traffic today and will continue to be in the future. The main reason is that it has the highest engagement rates as people trust their friends and family.
Although it’s the best method of free organic traffic, it is also the most difficult to pull off. It involves not only gaining the trust of your potential customers/clients, but getting them so excited that they talk about it with others and start discussions.
You would need to focus on creating an amazing product or service that provides value, then driving traffic to your website in order for them to experience it first-hand. It’s also a good idea to include social sharing buttons on your site/product pages so people can share with their friends and family when they are done using it!
As always, don’t forget to include social sharing buttons on all of your website content so that users can help share with friends and family when they’re done!
Summary
In this post we have explored five ways to drive free traffic without spending a dime. While driving traffic is often associated with the cost of advertising, there are other methods that don’t require you to shell out any money upfront. As long as your website or business has online visibility and generates enough content, driving organic search engine results can be an effective way to generate free web traffic. In addition, social media marketing, participating in communities like Reddit or Quora, and using keywords will help bring people back to your site where they may convert into paying customers!
If you need help generating more traffic or visibility for your business, contact our team at BrainStackers today! Our experts will create a custom strategy tailored specifically for your needs so that you can drive traffic and convert leads long term.
