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Nov

03

Social traffic - Results From the Recent Launch

Filed Under (Relationship Marketing, Social Marketing) by admin on 03-11-2009

For various reasons, the most of which being branding, social traffic Inc. has closed its doors. Simon will still offer his video training on how to get more social traffic to your website but he simply did not want to be lumped in with all of the various people out there who claim to be social media gurus but who are not actually getting social traffic nor have they ever been good at using social media to convert customers for their business.

Here’s a quick picture of my affiliate account:
Here's my traffic and sales stats
As you can see I sent 560 unique visitors to the various blog posts and sales pages and they looked at over 5250 different pages on the website. This means that each visitor I sent looked at almost 10 pages on the website so they were very engaged with the content and obviously very interested in it.

But in business as in life the only thing that matters are the results.

In this case the only result that matters since we’re in business is the bottom line profits. And as you look at the picture that’s where it’s a complete failure as there were zero sales.

That’s right 560 visitors = 0 sales

I did lots of work for this campaign and promotion. I was expecting this to be a big launch and I had all the pieces in place so now I feel like I’m left holding the bag.

I kept track of my time through a site called toggl.com. Now I will admit to you that sometimes I forget to start toggl and keep track of my time but this is fairly accurate. I spent 17 hrs and 43 minutes solely promoting this. And this is doing things like tweeting, Facebook et al.

This high amount of actual work time to get 0 return is very disheartening. But it’s only disheartening if I (and you) don’t learn anything from it.

So what went wrong? That is what I have left to ask. Obviously, I was reaching the right types of prospects that were interested in what I have to say because they read almost 10 pages a piece. If you know anything about web stats getting users to look at more than 1 page per visit is pretty good.

So this seemed to be the right type of traffic. The only thing I don’t know is the demographics on those people that were visiting and reading the launch sequence stuff.

Were they dirt poor?

The only two things that it could be are the traffic or the conversion.

So was the conversion process at fault?

Was the launch sequence of e-mails incredibly weak? Was the overall sales message and launch process just not compelling enough to get people to want to spend $497 or $1997 for the upgrade with live and interactive coaching?

All I’m left to think is that it was a combination of both. The people were obviously engaged in the content but maybe it did not do a good enough job compelling them that the value was there and this system could increase their business.

I thought the e-mail sequence and content release was good but did not really show any “results in advance” like Frank Kern talks about.

There was his free e-book giveaway which was a value add so they would opt-in to the list and get a taste of the type of information they could get. So that part was good.

I’m not going to blame the economy or the recession because as we all know people buy what they want which is why you see people in the trailer park with $50 or $100 per month satellite dishes and service.

So clearly, the value presented in the offer just wasn’t enough to compel people and pushed them over the edge to get out their wallets and buy. We could have built more value and obviously a much more irresistible offer to kick some of these people off the fence. Because I know that out of 560 unique visitors there were at least 1 or 2 who had the money to buy but the message just wasn’t compelling enough to get them to buy.

Click here to Follow me on Twitter.

Leave your comments on your speculation on what you think might have caused this dismal performance in the comments section below.

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  • Nice review Alexander.

    I think you have missed the most relevant point however. It's the same point that most people who fail to succeed online miss.

    Social Traffic Inc's launch model was not to sell hundreds of courses off a sales page. It turned out that way towards the end. This was only because our planned model had already failed in its conception weeks before the launch.

    Anyone who knows anything about online marketing knows that selling off a page blind to traffic that not targeted by key word search or trusted referral is impossible. It takes thousands of visits, split testing and altering any landing page before you can expect a positive net visitor value number per click. It took me well over 2000 paid clicks before I got the video courses sale page to covert after closing the doors on the coaching courses.

    A truer analysis of our launch off the sales page would be that we sent 2000 people who had already signed up for a FREE copy of my book into our sales page. A page that was untested. This list was filled with people who already think they are social media marketing experts. Most of them off Twitter or Facebook. None of them know what they don't know???

    The traffic buying my video course today are searching Google for social media marketing solutions. They have a problem. Their problem is not knowing the space but wanting to. They know what they don't know and they want a solution. One my video courses provides and satisfies very well. It's a completely different market.

    The Social Traffic Inc campaign and business model that failed was that of the 50 people with their hands up as founders of the coaching company. 50 people I invested 6 months into training. Not one of them sold one coaching course to one customer.

    Now to put this into perspective. I had invested 6 months of my time and knowledge (and resources) into training and coaching 50 strangers into learning what cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars to learn in courses, time and trial by error.

    My intention and in fact Social Traffic Inc's launch model (the one that failed), was for each of these 50 people to at the very least. Sell one coaching course to at the very least one customer that already knew, liked and trusted them so would take their word for it that the course was worth the money.

    Forget your 560 clicks and page views. What about human beings you know? Surely there is one person on earth who you know who could value from paying to be coached in social media marketing for ten weeks???

    If not, why were you or any of these 50 people investing any time into building a Social Media marketing coaching company anyway?

    Anyone who has ever started a real business. A business that earns actual money knows that there is one ingredient that is absolutely needed. If you want to start up a new business you "MUST" have a "FIRST CUSTOMER". Every new business that is started across the world is started by the founder of the start up bringing one customer on board and adding massive value to that first customer by solving their problems with their products or services.

    One customer will only ever become two customers if the first customer testifies to a second, that the businesses solutions are worth paying for. The price point to which a second customers is usually prepared to pay will be settled by the testimony of
    a "FIRST CUSTOMER".

    The bottom line is very simple. Without a first customer there is no start up??

    First customers can only ever come from a start ups founders trusted network. People who already know them through friends, family, previous business dealings or contacts of family and friends. People who either directly or indirectly through association trust them.

    Social Traffic Inc's model was to start a new social media coaching company though giving away enormous value to our first 50 people who showed they were committed enough to on sell their coaching experience to at least one paying customer after I trained them?? The fifty people I invested my time and knowledge into were people who indicated a willingness to become either co-founders or customer evangelists of our coaching company in return for enjoying FREE access to all of my time and knowledge over 6 months.

    What I asked for in return was that each of these people introduce one new customer into this new coaching company. One new customer per person I spent 6 months training would have yielded our start up 50 new customers on our launch. Fifty new customers on launch is enough to lift any new company off the ground.

    Where we failed was in the fact that not one of these 50 people sold one coaching course to one person?? The sales page was suppose to be little more than a place for these pre-sold prospects to go and pay. Their should have been at least 50 people landing on that page who were completely and utterly pre-sold. It should not have mattered what was on it. They were there to buy off a referral from one of the Social Traffic Inc's coaching courses founding partner's (or a customer evangelists). People they have known and trusted for years already??

    It had nothing to do with traffic and conversions off the page at that stage of the game. Poor conversions off the sales page is a truism. However that fact has nothing to do with why Social Traffic Inc's coaching business failed.

    Social Traffic Inc as a company is very much a commercial success today. It became so once I withdrew my investment into these 50 strangers and the coaching course business and started investing my money, time and knowledge into all of the prospects who know, like and trust me. Into listening to what they wanted in terms of my knowledge base and providing solutions for them through paid employee's and partners who have actually invested skin (money) into the game.

    Social Traffic Inc failed to get off the ground as a social media coaching company for one reason. The 50 people I trained to introduce at least one founding customer into the company each failed to do so. That was the plan and had it had worked. Fifty new clients would have been more than enough to ensure Social Traffic Inc's long term success as a coaching company.

    At the end of the day it was my plan that failed. I take responsibility for the failure of it. Just like all of my other business and marketing failures I turned what I learned from my failure into an asset which is currently being realized through http://www.SocialTraffic.biz

    Of the 50 people who failed to sell one coaching course. Those who like me are busy taking the lessons they learned through their contribution to our failure and turning them into assets will succeed as entrepreneurs in long term. That's what being an entrepreneur is all about.

    The difference between successful entrepreneurs and not are the lessons they take away from failure and what they are able to make of them.
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