Marketers in the health and wellness space online are no strangers to different types of traffic. Many of the real big players in the space are masters of dealing and connecting with complementary traffic sources for their health offers, usually in the form of joint venture partnerships and traffic swaps.
Now don’t get me wrong, there is still a place for direct email buys, network banner ads, retargeting ads and Facebook advertising. And to really grow an online health business you need a variety of different optimization strategies, different traffic sources and different traffic temperatures.
Yes that’s right I said temperatures…
What is the temperature of your traffic?
Well, there are three types.
Hot, Warm and Cold.
For simplicity sake and to give you a real solid grasp of this concept let’s just look at two of them, warm and cold.
Cold traffic is any unqualified visitors to your offer or landing page.
Warm traffic is any visit to your offer or landing page that is qualified in some way.
Let me explain what I mean by qualified.
A qualified visit is someone who is either looking to buy what you sell or has been recommended to you by someone they trust even though they may not have a need to buy what you sell at this exact moment.
For example at the highest qualified level, a visitor has a burning desire to buy right now. Such a visit usually comes from a keyword search and is very specific. An example of what such a search might look like is this: “Where do I buy nexonin blood pressure supplements online”
Qualified warm traffic also comes from your own in-house email list, the hottest of which is your buyers who have bought from you in the past. (segmenting your email list for example by buyers and leads is key to maximizing value) These in-house email list visitors are already warmed up because they already know you, and thus are more likely to buy from you than cold traffic, who does not know you at all.
What qualifies them as warm is that the recipient of your marketing message has a pre-established relationship with you. They may have opted in to receive emails from you or they may have even bought from you before.
Another source of warm traffic could however also come from someone else email list, such as a joint venture partner or an affiliate. In which someone else has a relationship with a group of people, an email list, and mails on your behalf. In this case there is still an existing relationship, just not with you directly. However in this case the email acts as a second degree referral to you. Like if you needed a good plumber and a friend you trusted recommended someone to you. The only difference is when you need a plumber, you usually ask around for a good one but in this case of a joint venture email, they are providing a reference without the need being initiated.
The degree of temperature from cold to warm in this case is compleatly dependent on two things.
- The degree of relationship the 3rd party has with that particular email list segment.
- The way the email is positioned.
The Degree of Relationship
The joint venture (or 3rd party) relationship with his email list could be really strong, or really weak. Signs to look for in a strong relationship include high open and delivery rates along with how often the list is communicated with on a regular basis. The more often and the stronger the opens and delivery rates, the stronger the relationship is with the joint venture and his list and warmer the traffic will be for you.
That is provided the second factor is done right.
And that factor is…
The Positioning
Think of the email the joint venture is sending as an introduction, just like in the plumber recommendation example. If the email just talks about your product or the prospects problem and then provides a link to your sales page, it’s likely colder traffic than you think.
You have to warm up the introduction a bit by positioning the message directly from the joint venture as a recommendation along with a reason why that’s partially endorsed by the joint venture partner, i.e. sender of the email.
Both the positioning and the degree of relationship go hand in hand together. The temperature of traffic needs both to be considered warm traffic.
But What About Cold Traffic?
On the opposite end of the spectrum is cold traffic, which is unqualified. By unqualified I mean there is less of a desire or need that is pressing to buy right now and or there is no relationship at all.
Cold traffic comes from sources like, banner ads, Facebook ads, YouTube ads, etc. Any advertising that act as more of an interrupt push medium. They are there but you didn’t ask for them and your level of need may or amy not be there. You were likely doing something else and were served a banner advertisement as an interrupt to buy at a moment when you were not looking for that specific solution to buy. You may still be interested but it caught you at a point when you were likely doing something else.
This type of traffic is harder to convert into a sale, compared to warm traffic. But cold traffic is scaleable and that is key to growing a health business. If you can get cold traffic to convert at a rate that is a self-liquidating offer, meaning the buyers are paying for the traffic and you’re breaking even on the deal, you can literally print money at that point.
Maximizing Cold And Warm Traffic Comes Down To This
In order to really maximize revenue, the expert health marketer not only keeps a close eye on the traffic mix but also measures revenue per visitor by traffic temperature. The reason why is because when you combine all traffic temperatures together you get a blended temperature and the details of what’s working get’s hidden in the averages. You really need to know what’s working down to a traffic source level to really scale your business. A lot of times you can get an immediate improvement by cutting out what’s not working and reinvesting those funds back into what is, but you wouldn’t know or be able to do that if you weren’t measuring by each traffic source.
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