It sucks to pour so much time and effort into creating a landing page and irresistible offer for your sales funnel only to be met by crickets when everything goes live.
Sure, you could silence ‘em crickets by putting out paid ads. But paid ads and small budgets don’t work well together. In fact, the cost per click for Facebook ads alone has almost doubled over the past year. So, you’re spending more and are less likely to get the traffic you need for your sales funnel.
And without traffic, your sales funnel is basically dead and buried (despite the type of sales funnel you create).
Here’s the truth. The best type of traffic comes when you build a community where your aim is to create a sense of belonging among people who love your brand across digital channels. By building a community, you’re putting the needs of your followers ahead of your sales goals. That authenticity is what causes people to trust your brand enough to engage with your offer.
Justin Welsh is a consultant who has generated over $1 million in annual revenue through his community. Scott Blair, one of Justin’s followers, commented on one of Justin’s posts. Justin shared the post in the first issue of his Saturday Solopreneur newsletter.
Scott was Justin’s follower for over a year before he purchased Justin’s flagship course. He mentioned purchasing Justin’s course because of a specific post, but what actually happened over that year was that Justin won Scott’s trust through the helpful information he shared. It’s through consistently sharing helpful information that Justin has built a community of over 211,000 LinkedIn followers (at the time of writing this article).
Justin shared in one of his newsletters that the success of his business hinges on what he calls a creator funnel. This funnel has four steps: get discovered, build trust, deepen relationships, and get sales. In this article, I’ll show you how to drive traffic to your sales funnel (with examples of brands that are using them well) in a way that helps you get discovered and build trust.
So, let’s dive in!
Table of Contents
10 Powerful Ways To Drive Sales Funnel Traffic [Without Paid Ads]
I’ve divided this list into two parts. First, I’ll share features of a few popular social media platforms that can be great tools for attracting sales funnel traffic.
Second, I’ll discuss three website traffic tactics you can use (one of them may surprise you). Remember, the aim of this article is to showcase a variety of tactics that you can use — choose two or three that will work well for your sales funnel traffic plan instead of trying to use all of them simultaneously.
Part One: Social Media Platform Features
Let me start by making two things clear. This isn’t an exhaustive list of all possible social media platform features you could use. Social media platforms are constantly evolving so there’ll always be new features to tinker with.
But that doesn’t mean I’m encouraging you to get Shiny Object Syndrome where you try every new feature and spread yourself thinly across too many platforms. You’ll wind up with two issues if you do this:
- There won’t be consistency. You’ll give up on making one feature work in the long-term to follow the next best trend rather than stick to two features you know you can manage well.
- Your community won’t know what to expect from you and that causes a breakdown in their trust for your brand.
What I want you to do is choose two (and only two) features from this list that you’ll use to enhance your social media strategy and drive traffic to your sales funnel. Let’s start with my favorite feature, Twitter Spaces.
1. Twitter Spaces
Do you remember when Clubhouse was a thing back in 2020? It was the hot new social media trend that faded almost as quickly as it began, partly because social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook created their own audio-only experiences. The Twitter version was called Twitter Spaces and it has been projected that this Twitter feature will have 315 million users by 2023.
What Are Twitter Spaces Really?
Twitter Spaces are live audio-only rooms available to all Twitter users. Hosts of Twitter Spaces can invite up to 11 speakers and two cohosts. There’s no limit on the number of listeners in a Twitter Space.
Twitter has even included a cool feature that allows listeners to turn on live captioning, a feature that’s great for making the conversation more accessible to people with disabilities. Also, speakers can display tweets throughout the conversation to spark further conversation and get the audience engaged.
My Experience With Twitter Spaces
I hosted my first Twitter Space in March as a way to chat with people about a prevailing problem in the freelancing community — burnout. There are four things I loved about the experience:
- I collaborated with freelancers who contributed to the article to host the Space. The collaboration helped with visibility and provided rich discussions.
- It was like having a Zoom call without the video. Speakers could mute and unmute their mics so that we could have an open discussion about the topic. My voice wasn’t the only one being heard in the space.
- Everyone in the room could respond using emojis if they didn’t want to speak. It was a great way to keep the audience engaged.
- The recording was immediately available after the session ended. I retweeted it and included a link to the article that was mentioned during the discussion.
Voice conversations help people connect with you outside of your tweets. People can ask questions and hear your feedback in real time. These interactions are so much better than typing a response in an email or replying to a tweet.
How to Use Twitter Spaces to Attract People to Your Sales Funnel
- Build anticipation. Start telling your Twitter followers about your upcoming Space at least a week in advance. Hype it up and ensure it covers a topic that matters to them.
- Consider hosting regular Twitter Spaces. The greatest benefit of Twitter Spaces comes through hosting them regularly. For instance, Rosemary Egbo hosts a weekly Freelance Tales Twitter Space and I’ve seen her use that as a way to grow her Twitter following. Freelancers look forward to attending her Space each week because they actually learn something from the discussions.
- Mention your offer throughout the discussion. But ensure that the offer is relevant to the topic.
- Provide access to the offer post-event. You can retweet the recorded Space (like what I did in the example I mentioned above) and then include a link to your offer as part of the Twitter thread. Also, sharing the recording makes the discussion available to people who couldn’t attend.
- Use key insights from the discussion to create a Twitter thread. This is a great way to repurpose your Twitter Space. You can use a tool like Typefully to create and schedule these threads easily. Remember to include a link to your offer as the very last tweet in the thread.
Bonus Tip: You could be eligible for ticketed Twitter Spaces. It’s currently in beta but if you’re eligible, you can use the feature to earn revenue from your Spaces by selling tickets. Prices can be set from anywhere between $1 and $999.
How Geoff Knightly Used Twitter Spaces To Promote Summer Game Fest 2022
Geoff Keighley, Founder of the annual Summer Game Fest, hosted a Twitter Space as one of the ways to drive traffic to the event. His Twitter Space had over 10,000 listeners and they could ask questions about the event.
Notice the number of retweets and quote tweets for this post? Those helped with promoting the Twitter Space so that it got even more visibility and reached people who weren’t Geoff’s followers.
2. LinkedIn Live
“LinkedIn Live videos get 7 times more reactions and 24 times more comments on average than native videos produced by the same broadcasters.” (Source)
Juma Bannister, Co-Founder of Relate Studios, hosts the Useful Content Creation Show, a weekly LinkedIn Live event that features interesting guests in the digital marketing world.
I asked him why he decided to host weekly LinkedIn Lives and how they’ve helped his sales funnel. Here’s his response…
“Our company recently made a major change in our core offering. We needed to build credibility and awareness. Going live weekly presented our new services to people who may have only been aware of what we did previously. In addition, it opened the door to many new potential clients by demonstrating our knowledge and building our authority in the new offering because they hear us speak and see us demonstrate it in real-time.”
He also explained that these weekly LinkedIn Live sessions helped him build a community and establish strong relationships with prospects. Consistency has been his secret weapon. He said, “You must have constant contact and conversation over a period of time to move people to a place of trust. When they trust you, they’re more likely to do business with you.”
Juma shared three tips with me for making LinkedIn Lives successful.
Juma’s Tips For Hosting Regular LinkedIn Lives
- Schedule and promote your lives ahead of time and keep them at the same time weekly. This will set an expectation in the mind of the community and people will be more likely to turn up and engage.
- Structure your LinkedIn Live session. Plan your content using a guided script or turn topics into segments. Remember though that the topics you choose should be relevant to your audience. If possible, plan three to four lives in advance.
- If you have an interview show, have a guest booking and onboarding process (automate if possible) and be sure to book guests at least two weeks in advance.
3. LinkedIn’s Newsletter Feature
I call LinkedIn’s newsletter feature “LinkedIn articles on steroids”. LinkedIn basically transformed its article feature into newsletters for creators. Lorraine K. Lee, the editorial lead for the LinkedIn newsletter product launch, shared with the Content Marketing Institute that the feature was created to keep LinkedIn users up-to-date with the topics and conversations that matter to them while also allowing LinkedIn creators to connect with their audiences on topics they want to be known for.
A lot of people have been jumping on the LinkedIn newsletter bandwagon. Here’s a screenshot of what my LinkedIn network tab looks like regularly.
And that’s only a small taste of the number of LinkedIn newsletter subscription requests I get. I don’t blame LinkedIn users for following this trend though because it’s been proven that these newsletters can help generate leads!
Take Andy Crestodina’s Digital Marketing Tips newsletter. It has over 130,000 subscribers.
Through consistently publishing his LinkedIn newsletter weekly, Andy was able to increase traffic to Orbit Media’s website by over 10,000 monthly visitors. The keyword here though is “consistently”. Your LinkedIn newsletter won’t help you attract leads if you aren’t consistent with it! As Trevor Young states,
“Do not publish a LinkedIn newsletter if you’re going to lose interest and run out of steam after a few issues. You’re better off sticking to publishing single articles on LinkedIn, or micro-stories in the feed (you now have up to 3000 characters which is enough for many people).”
I chatted with Judi Fox, owner of The Business Accelerator newsletter and a LinkedIn coach, about how her LinkedIn newsletter has helped her sales funnel. The Business Accelerator has over 12,000 subscribers and has also increased her visibility.
She shared that there are five ways LinkedIn newsletters help you reach more people:
- An email is sent from LinkedIn each time you publish
- A notification that you just published is pushed out
- You can view a list of current subscribers to connect and message,
- A newsfeed post gets you visibility to attract new subscribers
- LinkedIn increases your Google rankings with SEO results because LinkedIn articles do rank on Google (remember, LinkedIn newsletters are really just LinkedIn articles packaged in another format)
Judi’s Tips For Creating A Great LinkedIn Newsletter That Generates Sales Funnel Leads
- Create a pattern of consistency with your newsletter that includes sectioning your knowledge into bite-sized chunks for the reader to get value. This pattern also creates brand recognition and trust and provides a starting point for your sales funnel. You can choose to publish your newsletter daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly. Stick to a schedule you can realistically maintain!
- Leverage embedding external content like tweets, YouTube videos, presentations, and podcasts that can be played and consumed without having to leave LinkedIn. This will help you keep prospects on the platform and engage them in your sales funnel.
Here’s an example from Rachel Botsman, owner of the Rethink Moments with Rachel newsletter, who embeds her own podcast episodes into her newsletters. (If you have a podcast, you may want to try this approach too to give your podcast more visibility.)
- Include images that are clickable to start the customer journey at the top of your sales funnel. The image to click on could be your opt-in, calendar to book a sales call, sales landing page, webinar, etc.
Here’s an example from Judi’s newsletter on LinkedIn’s Creator Mode. She included a clickable image of her Calendly booking page to make it easier for prospects to book calls.
- Feature your newsletter on your profile with a subscribe button. Judi was able to grow her newsletter by 100 subscribers per day from profile views through LinkedIn and Google Search using this approach.
Here’s an example of this from Talia’s LinkedIn newsletter, The Conversion Corner.
- Ensure the quality of your content is good. If the quality of your newsletter content has earned you likes, comments, and shares, people discovering you are more likely to click your sales funnel links to check out how to start working together.
4. Tik Tok Videos
Tik Tok is often seen as a platform for Gen Z trends and comical videos. But there are brands, such as Microsoft 365 and Adobe, killing it with their Tik Tok videos. Stone Fredrickson, an entrepreneur and social media strategist, has been doing a great job using Tik Tok videos to attract B2B and B2C leads for his brand. He has over 200,000 followers and over 1 million post likes, and he shared with me that the secret for his success isn’t really a secret.
Give as much free valuable information to your audience as possible and be as transparent as possible. Transparency, value, and authenticity are all keys to building a strong audience and monetizing that audience effectively. Have no expectations of getting anything in return or having any expectation of selling anything from you giving free valuable content. This will allow you to focus on your audience and content a lot more along with building that connection with your audience to the best of your ability.
Here’s one of Stone’s videos that has helped him attract a lot of traffic.
Lauren Mabra, Co-Founder of Lauren Labeled, has helped her B2C clients build their Tik Tok presence in a way that fosters community relationships. Her advice on creating great TikTok videos was simple,
Tik Tok’s advice puts it in the best way: Make Tiktoks, not ads. My best advice is to understand your audience’s pain points exactly and SHOW (don’t tell) how your product or service makes their lives easier—better yet, make it a story. Tik Tok is such a unique platform and what works on Facebook and Instagram probably won’t work on Tiktok. The audience on Tik Tok wants you to be real with them. They love getting to see the process, behind the scenes, your face, and why you do what you do. It’s much more than just ‘buy from us’.
There are also two powerful benefits of using Tik Tok videos:
- Tik Tok videos spark user-generated content. People can create reaction videos using the green screen feature and also use common sounds from your videos to create their own. Both features give your Tik Tok account more exposure.
- The power of sharing. Tik Tok videos are frequently shared across platforms in a way that’s remarkably effective. Here’s an example from Todd Clouser, Brand Marketer at Refine Labs, of a Tik Tok video that he repurposed into a LinkedIn post.
Todd shared some great tips with me about how B2B brands can use TikTok well for attracting leads.
- Educate your audience without expecting anything in return. Todd said, “When you have a mindset of ‘how am I going to feed the sales funnel’ the content inherently changes to be more sales-led which leads to ineffective content.”
- Use self-reported attribution. The Refine Labs team uses self-reported attribution in demo requests to find out where prospects have learned about the company. In this case, self-reported attribution is a required open-text field on their demo request form that asks, “How did you hear about us?”. This helps Todd and his team know whether the Tik Tok videos are truly having an impact.
- Give employees time at work to create content. “If you want to be successful on Tik Tok (or any other social platform) you need time at work. Most companies want people to post but expect people to do it on their own time. Create a culture that encourages and rewards content creation,” says Todd.
5. Pinterest Boards
I’m getting married in July and Pinterest was the first place I went to for ideas. As a side note, I don’t know why my partner and I agreed to plan a wedding in three months. Wedding planning is crazy! Not only is it hella expensive, but there are also so many ideas to choose from. Thankfully, Pinterest helped me narrow down some ideas.
I view Pinterest as THE PLACE for amazing creative ideas, and I’m not alone. With approximately 431 million active users, Pinterest continues to be viewed by many as the best social media platform for stunning ideas and useful tips for everything from weddings and home decór to fashion, recipes, haircare, and much more.
A lot of brands use Pinterest well, including Hubspot. The HubSpot Pinterest account gets 4.6 million monthly views and has 58 Pinterest boards.
Joy Cho is another great example of someone who uses Pinterest well. Her Pinterest account has 15.2 million followers, 2.1 monthly views, and 15 Pinterest boards.
The beauty of Pinterest is that posts created on the platform are discoverable in search engines. Collecting all your pins related to a highly searched topic into a Pinterest board makes it easier for people to find your Pinterest account and be led to your offers.
In the GIF above, I searched for “wedding ideas” on Google and “240 Wedding Ideas on Pinterest” was the fifth search term. I clicked on it and one Pinterest account completely dominated the feed — Six Sisters’ Stuff. They collected all of their favorite wedding ideas into a Pinterest board, used the relevant keywords, and got their Pinterest account to be discovered as a result.
Being the curious person I am, I checked out their Pinterest account and saw a bunch of interesting recipes. That’s where their sales funnel really is because cooking is what their account is mainly about. I then found a 5 Days of Dinner Challenge that they were promoting which led me to a link on their website. That’s one of the many offers they have on their Pinterest profile that attracts people into their sales funnel.
I’m going to discuss challenges later in this article but I want you to notice the flow of discovery here for Six Sister’s Stuff.
Wedding Ideas —-> Tons of pins grouped in a Pinterest board —-> Checking out their profile —–> Finding their 5 Days of Dinner Challenge
Pinterest boards can really be powerful tools for attracting people to your sales funnel offers. Here are some tips that can help you create discoverable Pinterest boards:
- Use a visually appealing photo as the main image for your board.
- Add relevant keywords in both the board’s description and the description for each pin.
- Use two relevant hashtags in your pins.
- Share pins that will help people; don’t be overly promotional.
6. Story Pins
Pinterest introduced Story Pins in 2020 as a way to “tell dynamic and visual stories with videos, voiceovers, and image and text overlays.” I love how Joy Cho used a Story Pin to direct traffic to an article on her website.
Think of Pinterest’s Story pins like Instagram Stories. Here’s what this story pin from Joy looks like frame-by-frame.
Joy used her Story Pin to take us through the steps she used to create her pink guest room. It was only after sharing these steps that she directed us to her CTA.
Here are some quick tips for creating Story Pins that drive sales funnel traffic.
- Share useful tips your audience can easily follow. You could even use these pins to share step-by-step aspects of your process.
- Always end with a relevant CTA. In Joy’s case, she directs people to search for “pink femme room” on her website. She also includes the link in the pin itself.
- Use attractive and realistic images to illustrate each point. Pinterest is a very visual-heavy platform so you have to appeal to those senses in the best way possible.
7. Youtube Shorts
According to Wyzowl, “86% of marketers say video has helped them generate leads.” This isn’t surprising since Youtube is the third largest Google search engine. Youtube Shorts is a YouTube feature that was introduced globally as a “short-form video experience for creators and artists who want to shoot short, catchy videos using nothing but their mobile phones.” This new feature can be likened to Instagram Reels, but what makes them particularly exciting is that they provide Youtube channels with incredible visibility.
Here’s an example from Chris Do, Founder of The Futur channel. One of his Youtube Shorts got over 1.5 million views and led to over 1,000 new subscribers!
If you visit Chris’ channel, you’ll see that a lot of the videos he now produces are Youtube Shorts.
I don’t blame him — who wouldn’t want to create short videos that attract a crazy amount of traffic? Let me be real though, chances are you won’t get 1.5 million views on your Youtube Shorts. But the visibility you’ll get from them will be far more than what you’ll get on a regular Youtube video in the short-term.
Tips For Creating Great Youtube Shorts
- You only have 60 seconds, so focus on one central story. For instance, you could create a Youtube Short that answers a specific question like what Chris did with the Youtube Short featured below.
- Use an attention-grabbing title. The title of your Youtube short is the first thing that will attract a prospect’s attention. You want it to stand out in a way that will make the video come across as helpful, educational, and entertaining.
- Add a custom thumbnail. One of the things Youtube creators obsess over is thumbnails because that’s the first thing that grabs someone’s attention on a Youtube video. Aside from the title, the thumbnail for your Youtube Short will also encourage people to click through to watch your video.
- Include a CTA to your offer in the comments and pin that comment. You don’t necessarily have to mention the offer in the video (after all, you only have 60 seconds and you want to use that time to create valuable content). But some people will look at the comments and see your offer thus giving you an opportunity to get more people into your sales funnel.
- Post at least one Short per week. As with anything in content marketing, consistency is key. You can’t post a Youtube Short once and expect amazing results. Post at least once per week and watch how things grow over time.
Part Two: Website Traffic Tactics
There are ways to attract people to your website beyond using specific social media features. Two of the most commonly used tactics are on-page SEO and community challenges. Let’s look at each tactic more closely, and also discuss how research reports can be helpful.
8. On-Page SEO Tactics
On-page SEO is the process of optimizing a website so that it ranks higher in search engines and provides a better user experience. It’s important to get your on-page SEO strategy right so that search engines will recognize exactly what your content is about and put it in front of your intended audience. Some of the most popular on-page SEO tactics include:
- Strategic keyword usage in blog articles (without compromising the quality of the content)
- Improving URLs to better target keywords
- Image ALT text optimization
- Image compression to reduce page load speeds
- Using the right heading tags
- Internal linking
…and much more.
A common misconception is that on-page SEO is exclusively for blog articles. It’s not. On-page SEO can be used across your website, especially on the landing pages for your offers.
The GetUplift team recently helped Teamwork revamp their Wrike comparison page. Detailed customer and competitor research was involved, a customer-first approach was taken to the landing page copy, and on-page SEO was used to increase organic search traffic. The result was a 54% increase in conversions from organic traffic.
9. Create A Community Challenge
There are two great things about community challenges. First, they bring people together to work towards a common goal. Second, they help build brand awareness and ultimately more business opportunities. But community challenges have to be focused on, well, the needs of the community if they’re to effectively drive sales funnel traffic.
I’m not a huge Twitter fan and, if I’m completely honest, I rarely used Twitter prior to participating in Jay Clouse’s #Tweet100 challenge.
The challenge is simple — post consistently for 100 days on Twitter and include the hashtag #tweet100 so that your progress can be tracked on the leaderboard. It’s a challenge I could rally around because of my love/hate relationship with Twitter.
But the challenge did so much more for Jay. He gained more than 1,600 followers in 100 days, grew his email list faster than ever, and opened his business to tremendous opportunities. Most importantly, he attracted a community of people who support his work and the website gets traffic for the term “#Tweet100” as more people become aware of what the challenge is about.
Tips For Creating A Challenge That Will Attract People To Your Sales Funnel
- Your focus should be on helping your community members solve their big pains. That should always be at the forefront of your mind because it’s only through solving their pains that the challenge will be useful.
- Create a simple way to track each participant’s progress. Jay teamed up with Aron from Automate All The Things to create a no-code leaderboard in Airtable for the #Tweet100 challenge.
- Encourage support within the community that emerges from the challenge. Here’s a quote from one of Jay’s recent LinkedIn Newsletter articles about the challenge.
“I’ve been blown away by how supportive people in the #Tweet100 challenge have been to one another, just by following and connecting with each other on Twitter! Up until this week, there was no formal community platform. But a strong community formed nonetheless.” ~Jay Clouse
Jay actually posted tweets that encouraged this type of community spirit throughout the challenge. In fact, the challenge took on a life of its own and is still active today because of the community that was built. Make community-building the primary focus of your challenges rather than solely a deliberate effort to get more sales funnel traffic.
Maybe you don’t want to create an elaborate challenge with leaderboards and no-code software. An email list challenge is a great alternative. Here’s an example from The Spanish Mama.
Email list challenges offer a more personalized approach to helping people succeed. For instance, The Spanish Mama’s challenge helps families work together over ten days to start improving their language skills. Always remember though that your challenge should help your email subscribers accomplish a particular goal.
10. A Brand-Specific Research Report
Research reports help establish brands as thought leaders and drive website traffic. They also provide a great opportunity to add people to your email list, people you can create specific email sequences for based on what’s covered in the research report.
Here’s an example from Udemy for Business. I read this 2022 Workplace Learning Trends Report and, trust me, it’s fantastic!
It was published earlier this year but is already moving towards page one rankings for relevant keywords. Also, the landing page for the report already has 200 groups of backlinks at the time of writing this article!
The report also acts as a lead magnet because people have to download the document to see all the insights.
Tips For Getting The Most Value From A Great Research Report
- Use the data to tell a story that matters to your audience.
- Share insights people can learn from and act on. This is how your research report will help you build a community of loyal fans.
- Display key insights from the report on the landing page before asking people to download it. People should still get value without having to download the full report.
- Include a CTA to your offer at the end of your report.
- Promote the report. This helps you get initial traffic (and backlinks) to the report.
- Create an email sequence specifically for people who opt-in to receive emails from your brand after downloading the report.
It also helps to hire a content writer who can:
- Work with a data scientist to create the survey and anaylze the survey results.
- Transform the data into a story your audience can relate to.
- Pull key insights and takeaways from the data that will empower your audience to make the changes necessary for their businesses (and lives).
Final Words
There are many ways to attract traffic to your sales funnel. But the 10 tactics highlighted in this article will help you reach your audience in a way that builds loyalty and a sense of community. Your aim isn’t to use all 10 tactics and hope one sticks. Instead, focus on the tactics you can work on consistently and use to get more traffic to your sales funnel organically.
Check out Talia’s Emotion Sells course to learn more about how to use emotional marketing to increase sales from your sales funnel.
Christine McLean
Christine is the CEO and Founder of CEM Writing Services. She does more than write blog articles; she provides a complete content marketing experience based on a proven content strategy. Her work includes customer research, content creation (articles, videos, podcasts, guides etc.), and content promotion. You can find out more about her by visiting her website.
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