Pay Me Attention: How to Grow, Fast.

Ahhhh, attention (aka traffic, aka your ‘top of funnel’ in marketing speak).

The darling of the Internet!

Understandably so, it’s the tip of the proverbial Internet iceberg and the ONLY thing that’s visible when we’re scrolling online. And for that reason, we’re obsessed with it and start to think that the ultimate success of our online businesses lives and dies by it.

And whilst it’s true that it matters, it’s just one piece of the marketing funnel pie.

Let’s talk all things top of funnel – aka traffic, aka the darling of the Internet – and five ways to use it to grow your audience, fill your list and the attention your business needs to thrive.

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#1: Top of Funnel Comes Last, Not First

There are gajillions of people teaching Instagram strategy, and how to grow on Tiktok, and YouTube channel hacks and how to DIY your Meta ads.

For that reason, you could be mistaken for assuming that it’s the ONLY thing that matters when it comes to building an online business right now.

But without the stuff underneath the iceberg – a trust system to build rapport and a sales system to convert that traffic successfully into sales – top of funnel strategy look like a sexy guy at the bar with NO game:

All looks (grabs attention). No depth (can’t keep it!)

That’s why I recommend that focusing on your top of funnel actually comes last when building out your marketing strategy, which is the opposite of how most people do it.

Instead of pouring a whole lot of people into a leaky bucket?

You instead work backwards:

1. Work out your sales system/goals (bottom of funnel)

2. Then, build out a trust system (middle of funnel)

3. And then finally (last, NOT first), start dancing on Reels (just kidding, you don’t have to dance, and Reels isn’t the be all and end all anymore anyway) (top of funnel).

When you:

a) build out your marketing backwards this way, and

b) you’re clear on the job of attention aka traffic and don’t try to give it every role in your business and get hella mad when it’s not doing them all,

.. a solid top of funnel marketing strategy will have maximum impact.

It will fuel your entire marketing system, and help you reach your big business goals.

And getting it won’t burn you out, because you’ll also have clarity as to how much you actually need.

So! Build. It. Backwards.

Don’t start with top of funnel – even though it’s the thing that is the most visible.

Start with your offer, and sales funnel.

Develop a trust ecosystem.

And only THEN start pouring fuel on the proverbial fire and filling it with enough of the right people to achieve your goals.

#2 Q. How Much Traffic Do You Need? A. Mo’ Sales, Mo’ Traffic:

So, how much traffic do you need to sell your stuff?

The answer is – it depends, mostly on your business model.

What are you selling, and how much does it cost?

This one decision has a huge impact on your business because it ultimately determines how many sales you need to meet your goals, and how much traffic you need to achieve that sales goal.

The higher the price? The fewer sales you need.

Which means the less traffic you need.

Which means that you can spend less time focused on your top of funnel (but likely, more time in delivery).

It also works in the inverse.

The lower the price? The more units you need to sell.

Which means more traffic.

And, MUCH more time spent marketing and filling up your top of funnel.

Does that sound fun an exciting to you? If yes, great! You can spend your days on creating content, and filling your funnel.

If it sounds like the marketing equivalent to pulling teeth without a drop of anesthesia? You might want to consider focusing on a higher ticket business model. This will allow you to focus mostly on creating a piece of longer form content a week to develop trust, but likely you won’t need to do much more than that to fill your funnels and reach your goals.

#3 Don’t Fill Your Funnel, Build Your List

If you have an online business right now, here’s how I recommend you approach traffic.

What not to do:

Try to shove people into a five day sales funnel, and then cry when they don’t buy your $2,000 thing stone cold having never heard of you before.

According to Google, even if someone IS the right fit for your offer only 5% them are ready to buy immediately at any one time.

Which means that if your funnel does an incredible job, 5% might be (likely more like 1% or 2%) and 95% won’t.

Instead, you want to focus your traffic and top of funnel strategy on starting a relationship.

Here’s what to do instead:

Get them on your email list.

That’s it.

That’s your top of funnel goal.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll pass the baton to middle of funnel to nurture them, build rapport and develop trust so that the next time you run a live or automated promotion they might be more ready to purchase from you.

With this logic in mind, the mantra is this:

The bigger and higher quality my email list, the better chance I will have to sell.

Over time, you will start to get to know how many people from your email list and audience (eg social) you are able to drive over to an offer when you run promotions (I call this your click power, here is a podcast about it), which can help you to more accurately forecast how many sales you might make.

By doing things this way, you are building the most valuable asset you can own online right now:

An inbuilt audience that knows, likes and trusts you and that you can deploy at the click of an email send to ANY funnel you decide to run.

#4 Get Message/Market Message Match Right FIRST

Traffic is two things:

Message, and distribution.

And honestly? Once you have the messaging piece right, SO MUCH of the work is done.

It’s so important to get that bit right first, because there is MANY a small business owner who feels swamped, overwhelmed and yet INVISIBLE because they’re doing allllllll of the marketing tings and still sitting on 126 followers, 26 email subscribers and donut days of sales most week.

The right messaging makes everything else so much easier.

So, how do you do it?

The short answer? Take a message, and make it so specific and resonant to one specific person that they WANT to hear more.. they’re seeking it out, nodding their head, INVESTED.

The long answer? I’ve created a five part series over on Substack, so check that out.

Once you have that in place, marketing becomes about effective distribution.

This is where traffic ‘getting’ comes in, which is the one thing everyone is obsessed with but that doesn’t work if you don’t have everything else in place first!

#5 Now FINALLY, HOW DO I GET ATTENTION?

Okay, so now we get to the good stuff!

It was essential to cover the bit before though, and most people don’t so they end up posting on social with NO funnel or trust system, having no idea of the amount of traffic they need and with a poor message that doesn’t resonate.

So now we’re clear on those things, let’s answer the big question.

How do you get attention – aka traffic?

At the end of the day, it’s not rocket science.

There’s three ways, you pick one and track the action you are taking on it and whether it is having the desired outcome.

Here is your menu of options:

Build:

Building requires you to consistently publish content that showcases your thought leadership, and then to distribute it. Here are the steps:

1. Pick a discoverability channel: This is a channel that allows you to get in front of new audiences. Some channels are better at this than others.
   
   A simple hack to help you overall make your entire marketing funnel operate more efficiently is to choose a channel that has both discoverability and middle of funnel nurture opportunities built in.
   
   An example of channels that have this? YouTube, and Substack. Both are channels that allow you to create content to nurture, but that also have in-built discoverability.
   
   For example, on Substack you can create blogs/newsletters just like you could on your website. However, it is also a social media platform and you can post notes, and have others discover your Substack or get recommended by others.
   
   A more traditional discoverability only platforms is Tiktok. It’s a great way to get attention, but generally you will want to get people over to another platform and your email list to further nurture and develop trust with them.
   
   Instagram is a little of both.
   

2. Create growth focused top of funnel content: There is a big difference between top of funnel content, and more middle of funnel nurture content.
   
   Generally, top of funnel content is content that will help people who have never heard of you pay attention. Generally, the hooks are more polarising, they stand out, they are quick attention grabbers.
   
   Example: How I Got 10,000 Followers in 6 Days.
   
   In contrast, middle of funnel content will nurture but won’t necessarily be the initial piece of content that pulls people in.
   
   Example: ‘Are Funnels Dead?’ 20 Slide Carousel with a unique perspective.
   

3. Understand the unique nuances of the platform: This is where it can be help to learn from a platform expert, because every platform has nuances essential to understand for growth.
   

4. Publish consistently: Choose a growth-focused publishing cadence and consistently publish. Track your growth, and assess based on the results.

Borrow:

Borrowing traffic is about connecting and partnering with OTHER people, places or publications who have your audience. Look for opportunities to partner in a win/win way to share your platform. Here are the steps:

1. Dream 100: Make a list of 100 of the people, places and publications that have the same target market as you.
   

2. Develop relationships: Strategically develop relationships with them. For example, follow them on social media, complement their work, be visible.
   

3. Create win/win pitches: Build partnership pitches that create win/win opportunities for both parties.

Buy:

Buying traffic requires you to put your free offer in front of the right people. Here are the steps:

1. Choose an ad platform: Meta ads is the most popular, but it’s not the only one. There is also Google ads, Pinterest ads, Youtube ads, sponsorships and more.
   

2. Promote lead magnet: Promote the lead magnet you created when building out your middle of funnel to grow your email list.
   

Offset your ad costs with a low cost offer: On the thank you page of your offer, have a low cost offer funnel (I call this a Paid to Grow funnel) to offer people who download it. Combine it with an order bump and upsell. Together, the funnel can more than offset your ad spend, allowing you to scale your ads for free (or even get paid for it!)

Here’s the secret – ALL OF THESE STRATEGIES WORK.

Like gangbusters, if you get good at them.

The secret is to start with one, and NAIL it.

Track the action you need to consistently take to bring it to life (eg for this Substack account, my goal is one in depth article a week). That way, you will be able to tell QUICKLY if the strategy isn’t working due to your lack of action.

Also track two key success metrics – one to measure the success of the strategy on platform (eg reach) and another to track whether it is successfully filling your email list (eg subscribers).

And repeat, iterating until it works.

Then, you might add another (but most people try to do this way to early, and focus on a million channels and do none of them well).

And THAT is how you do traffic in a 2,000 word nutshell.

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The System

This “build it backwards” approach to marketing — starting with your bottom of funnel, building out a robust middle of funnel and then filling it top of funnel — can be *beautifully* achieved using my Traffic Playbook “four C’s” system:

Campaign: Firstly, knowing what ‘style’ of campaign you intend to run in your business.

Clicks: Secondly, understanding how to calculate how many clicks you need to your campaign to achieve your sales goal, your current click power and how to bridge the gap between the two.

Content: Build out a “hard work once” middle of funnel system where you create a suite of content that goes out AUTOMATICALLY, and makes you a ‘star’ and feel like you’re EVERYWHERE to the people who enter your marketing funnel (without doing ALL OF THE THINGS).

Contacts: Drive contacts into your funnel to grow the volume and quality of contacts required to achieve your click power and reach your goals.

Right now, you can use the code TRAFFIC to get 70% off the full system for achieving this.

It includes:

• Campaign Traffic Recipes: Traffic ‘recipes’ with the exact formula for achieving your marketing goals for different campaign types — eg live launches, promotions, automated ‘evergreen’ funnels.
  

• Click Power Calculators: Calculators to help you determine exactly how many clicks you need to your campaigns to achieve your revenue goals (so you’re never guessing or leaving the whole process up to chance).
  

• Content System: A FULL content system for becoming a legend in your own lunchbox, appearing EVERYWHERE for your prospect and effectively communicating what they need to hear to be ready to buy from you with:

  • Thought Leadership Development: How to refine your niche and develop a message that cuts through and leads the thought in your industry, so you’re considered a leader with SERIOUSLY STAND OUT perspectives;
    

  • Full 10-Day Newsletter Sequence: Includes templates, themes and exactly what to write when and where (plus how to set it all up);
    

  • Full 10-Pack of Social Media Marketing Posts: Including how to set up a $3 a day system to distribute them over and over to JUST the people in your middle of funnel.
    

  • Full Strategic Content System: A full strategic content plan to develop 100+ post and pieces of content for any platform, including a full suite of top of funnel growth content, middle of funnel trust content and bottom of funnel sales content to move prospects from cold to sold.
    

• Contact Growth System: Everything you need to pour fuel on your top of funnel and drive EYEBALLS and attention to your business including:

  • Lead Magnet System: The templates, funnel and process for building out a lead magnet leads the RIGHT people PERFECTLY into your funnels and primes them to buy.
    

  • An Audience Growth System: Get paid to grow your email list with a system for scaling your top of funnel lead-getting with a low cost offer that pays for your marketing spend and primes people for your offers.
    

  • Contact Growth Strategies: Borrow and Buy strategies, calculators and templates to develop a top of funnel system to supercharge your audience building.

To get it, click here.