Solo ad traffic has a bad rep.

But it is fast, and if you pick the vendor carefully the visitors are real people.

I’ve had conversions from this traffic source so I know it can work…

For me this is a great way to test ‘ideas’ quickly.

Anyway here’s the process I go through…

1. Remember my business is built around a process of LEARN, DO, SHOW, SHARE  …meaning showing and sharing information I’ve learned and implemented. The bits that are working has real value for people interested in doing similar.

2. Spend some time THINKING. Researching… Thinking.

Thinking about what I can offer people that will help them the most. I’ll write down my ‘ideas’ at this point.  The company product or service you’re promoting behind your messaging will offer many features and many benefits.

List them; what most attracted you, what goal are you wanting to achieve, what are you wanting to move away from. STUDY the sales page and take notes, if there are testimonials list what results people are claiming, what do they like best?

You previously identified your WHY, your values, beliefs and principals… which of these fit with what your looking to promote? (don’t promote things you don’t believe in)

Is there anything unique about this company, product or service?

The general idea is you’ve listed out all these delicious ingredients, now mix them to create a compelling cocktail of an incentive to offer in return for people’s email address…

In my example the biggest, sexiest, and  most unique element is ‘Multiple Streams of Income’, this was huge. This was going to be the cornerstone of my messaging.

There were lots of other ideas I wrote down…

I loved the ‘sell without selling’ tagline that this system promotes by training how to HELP people before marketing.

I loved the ‘success is 20% strategy & action 80% mindset’….

The ‘build you before promoting any company product or service.’

The list goes on…

But for me the big one was Multiple Streams of Income, I felt that even I couldn’t fail to promote something so good…

And for an audience that demands fast profits this would attract attention.

Multiple Streams of Income is currently a unique offering from a legit (no MLM of Biz Op shenanigans) company, so in this instance all I have to offer is to ‘connect’ people to this company. Right?

In return for their email. 

In the follow up sequence I’ll share other stuff that’s helping me do things BETTER, FASTER or, for LESS COST.

Following up with our subscribers is another conversation, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

My ‘flow’ of content is going to be an email that grabs attention >  A landing page that continues the conversation and builds interest and curiosity and makes a unique offer  (the identity of the Ultimate Affiliate Program) in return for an email address >  An email subscription element > A thank you page that delivers instant value and the ‘thing’ I’ve promised.

That’s it.

In my case study example it looks like this…

Many solo ad vendors offer to write the email that attracts the people to your page. DON’T DO THIS!

You don’t want just a click, you want to control the entire conversation. So write your own email so that you can be certain your email, & landing page messaging is consistent.

I like a headline / hook template I got from expert copywriter Todd Brown…

– Be very specific about the SITUATION 

– Identify your ideal PROSPECT

– Share a NEW TO THE PROSPECT IDEA which will build CURIOSITY

– Make a BIG Promise (that can be delivered!)

I used these ingredients in the Solo Ad email I created to spike peoples interest about a program that offered its affiliates an ‘edge’ they hadn’t seen before…

The landing page delivered more details and asked if they’d like to find out more…

By subscribing to the Ultimate Affiliate Program…

Which leads to a Thank You Page that offers more details and three ways they can see this program and the company behind it.

This allows people to immediately evaluate how it can help their business.

3. Build it out and remember to test everything. 

I like to work with pencil & paper so will have written out my key messages before I start to build out my landing  / squeeze page

My process to building the page is as follows

a – Login to WordPress

b – Create a New page and save it as a draft (I use Thrive Architect to do this because it’s $67 one-time cost effective and fast)

 – Make sure this page is Noindex as I don’t want this page getting any any visitors from search engines. Solo Ad only.

 c – Open the page in Thrive Architect – this opens an editing tab.

d – Load a template page from the many choices and start editing or add a content element to the page and start creating if your building from scratch.

e – Upload a suitable background image – (watch the Thrive tutorial for using images properly)

f – Add my copy text and edit until your happy with the look. It’s really easy with a true what you see is what you get editor.

g – Add your CALL TO ACTION. For me this is a Button that opens up a popup screen with the email subscription form. Thrive lets you test from the many ways you can get people to optin. Thrive provide tons of free training in their university …check it out here…

h – Depending on what method you pick to show visitors your optin form the next step is to make sure it’s connected to your email service and you’ve picked the list you want to add subscribers into.

i- After people subscribe link them to a Thank You page where I suggest you offer immediate value.

j – Test everything is working as it should … specifically that your link from the solo ad is set up correctly and when you optin yourself to test you’re added to the right list and immediately directed to the Thank You Page.

NOTE: If you’re using tracking links, conversion and audience building pixels and scripts remember to add them to the appropriate pages.

So here’s the Solo Ad Landing Page I went with…

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So I’ve distributed all of Todd Browns copy ingredients across all the text on the page and created a challenge type of headline…

The prospects I’m targeting are Affiliate Marketers and business opportunity seekers that want to make profits, but are looking for something robust, legit, EVERGREEN.

There is also a lot of curiosity throughout this copy…

What is the Ultimate Affiliate Program?

What are Multiple Streams of Income? curiosity and the introduction of a new idea.

This is the sort of offer that would have pricked my curiosity…

But would it work on other affiliates?

Turns out it did….

You can read a post about this here…

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How I Built This Landing Page
For Solo Traffic

  
I wanted this landing page to be 100% unique to me but look in line with the sort of ‘pro’ landing pages we see created using services like Leadpages and Clickfunnels.

My website is based on WordPress. WordPress allows for 3rd party software add-ons known as ‘plugins’. This is one of the advantages of using a WordPress based website, because there are so many wonderful functions that can be added to your site through plugins.

Many plugins are free, but there are also lots of premium plugins that may add more functionality and better support.

Because my websites all have a marketing purpose I decided a few years back to look for a company that could provide me a flexible lead capture plugin…

There are quite a few that will do what we need, but I decided to go with a company called Thrive Themes who specialise in ‘conversion’ focussed WordPress Themes and Plugins. 

I decided to go with the Thrive membership option which gives me access to everything for a yearly cost that is less than I month with a service like Clickfunnels.

There are less expensive options with Thrive as well.

You can do way more than I’ve done above with Thrive Architect for a one time cost of $67 .  To bring this into perspective Clickfunnels is $97 per MONTH!

My business is about showing & sharing things that make me BETTER, FASTER and SAVE ME MONEY. Thrive Architect does all three by…

– Providing me design tools that enable me to punch way above my creative weight. 

– The Thrive templates and training (Check out Thrive University here…) make my work BETTER and the templates FASTER.

– I stopped looking when I found Thrive but believe there is no better value for affiliates that use WordPress.

Like Leadpages and Clickfunnels Thrives landing page builder (Thrive Architect) has page templates that you can start building from, or you can build the page out from scratch…

The video below shows how you can do this.

Thrive Architect isn’t just for building landing and sales pages. I use it for all content creation, and though there is a bit of a learning curve It’s well worth the effort.

To be clear Thrive Architect is a WordPress plugin which will work with any Theme, you don’t need to buy a Thrive Theme.

It’s basically a front end see what you get editor for WordPress that if you’ve worked with WordPress for even a short while will blow your mind…

Sounds like hype?

Make your own mind up …watch Shane Melaugh (CEO of Thrive Themes)  show you how…

Other Services That Will Help (All Free)

A picture paints a thousand words. You’ll probably want a nice background picture for your landing page. I use Pixabay.com for great royalty free images.

If your really into creating stunning image based content for WordPress that rivals Photoshop check this out…

I switched to a Chromebook from a PC a few years ago, which means I use the Chrome Browser and Google Drive (free) cloud based storage for my documents, images, and videos.

I use Loom free for video screen capture.

Google draw for basic diagrams and  Draw.io which I’ve just discovered and I find a little quicker for flow diagram stuff like my lead capture funnel image above.

The final thing…

Because solo ad traffic has a rep for often being bots rather than human I always use Clickmagick to both track my optin conversions but also the quality of the traffic. Clickmagick validates that your visitors are real people.

This means that the link from the Solo ad email to my landing page is built using Clickmagick.

Any Questions?

Please fire away in the comments below – thank you.