Photo by Lynda Sanchez on Unsplash

2015 September, about two months after deciding to go into digital marketing full-time, I decided to make it official by taking a certification in an area of digital marketing where I had the biggest knowledge gap.

For me, it was paid traffic.

I was transitioning in my online business from being a copywriter to becoming a digital marketing professional. And while as a copywriter, I’d been hired to manage social media and create email campaigns (because they all have content in common), I knew that buying traffic was, and still is, an important part of digital marketing – and it was the most in tune with my direct response background.

Starting my career professionally with paid traffic (and learning from the very best) exposed me to a lot of great concepts, but one of my favorites is traffic temperature (or audience temperature).

I learnt that marketing isn’t a one-way traffic (no pun intended); your marketing and communication have to be suited to different types of people, based on the level of their relationship with you.

Types of audience

Basically, all the traffic or audiences you will deal with in your business are in three categories: cold, warm and hot.

As you probably can already guess, you need an influx of all three types of audience into your business for it to grow profitably.

People need to move through the three stages of a relationship to go from stranger to customer. First, they need to know you (awareness), then they need to like you (consideration) and then they need to trust you, before they can buy from you (conversion).

Your goal as a business person is to get as many people as possible to move through these three phases fast.

How to move people to the next temperature!

You want to accomplish this by first going to your cold audience (strangers) to make them aware of you and the solution you have for their problems. This is where they get to know you.

If you make a good first impression, you catch their attention and they begin to evaluate you…they want to know more about your solution. If you look like someone that can truly solve their problems (and have a likeable personality), this is the stage they get to like you.

If after considering/evaluating your solution, they choose it, or even just decide to try it, out of all the solutions out there, then you must’ve won their trust enough to get their wallets out to purchase your product/service.

Whether it takes three years or just two minutes for someone to finally buy from you, they most likely have gone through these three phases.

Instead of allowing this to happen by chance, a smart business owner, armed with this information, intentionally structures their business and marketing in line with this concept (what’s the sense in fighting against a law of nature?!).

How to structure your business for these phases

  1. You want to structure your business in a way that you’re not asking for too much too soon, but making their journey from stranger to customer very smooth. You do this by having an offer for each of these audience temperatures.
  2. You also want to create separate messaging that suits and communicates on a deeper level with each audience type or temperature.
  3. You want to consciously structure your marketing in a way that goes after/attracts and converts each audience temperature.

How exactly do you accomplish these three for each audience?

Cold Audience

For cold audience, you want to have assets that get you awareness, like videos and blogs. The goal of these assets is to get a lot of people to know you and also create a good first impression.

Of course, when you’re advertising to these people, it’s your informative, entertaining and/or educative content you push to them.

Then your call-to-action (the next step you request from them) will be what would take them to the next level; warm them up. For example, get them to follow you on social media, subscribe to your email list, subscribe to your video channel, etc.

Don’t ask them to buy immediately; you need to offer them something for free. And if you must sell, let it be low priced.

Warm Audience

If you can successfully get cold-audience people on your list, whether it’s email or social media, or even retargeting list, then you would have warmed them up and earned the right to take them to the next level.

But to warm them up, you need to give them something for free in exchange for their contact details or following. There are countless offers you can give at this stage, from videos, to online/offline events to physical products, to downloadable files, etc. Just ensure you’re not asking for too much at this stage.

And these should be the offers you advertise to this audience – anything that’ll get them into your list.

Once they’re warmed up, you can then take them to the next level, where they actually buy from you.

Hot Audience

“A buyer is a buyer is a buyer.”

Sounds weird, but it’s true. Once someone buys from you once, they’re more likely to buy again and again (especially if they’re happy with their purchase), compared to someone who’s never bought from you.

Once your warm audience gives you money and becomes hot, you can give them more offers that are placed higher on your value ladder – more expensive products or services that allow you to serve them even better and at a higher level.

The formula

Spend most of your advert budget diving into the cold audience pool, just to get as many people attracted to you so you can convert them to warm audience. It’s your choice whether you do this with gated content (where they have to enter their details to get access) or ungated content.

And then you don’t want to keep them warm forever; you want them to become hot. You want to turn them into customers, even if this has to cost you some money, knowing that once they become a buyer, they have the potentials of buying more from you in the future.

Other than using email and organic content, you can also use adverts (specifically retargeting ads) to move your audience from warm to hot.

And once they become customers, you want to keep offering them the best of your best products or services, so that they can get even greater satisfaction, and so that you can make even more money. Win-win!

Case Study

This is the same formula I use for my businesses.

Do you remember the post where I analyzed BeauCrest funnels? You’ll remember that I told you that our funnel starts with a blog post, and in the close to three years of our existence, that same blog post is the only thing we advertise – at least 99 percent of the time.

And we’ve gone ahead to generate about 40k email subscribers, sold thousands of products and built almost 15k social following. One single blog post!

But that blog post does the job of warming people up – ends with an offer to download something for free. And then other steps in the funnel, including follow-ups, organically do the selling.

In the age and time of people sending traffic directly to an email opt-in page (which works well for most industries anyways), our type of funnel, which is focused on leading with value, still works perfectly!

Your business?

Now to you: how do you structure your business and marketing to cater to these different audiences? Do you even try to do that?

If not, you should consider catering to the different audience types…so that you’ll stop proposing to people on the first date – yes, that’s the equivalent of asking a total stranger to buy your stuff at first meeting.

And by now, you already know that I’m happy to help you with your funnels, and audiences, and messaging, and offers…and every other thing you need to succeed in your business – they are all well-covered in my coaching program.

Simply send me a message at me@oludami.com to inquire, and then we will have a discussion to see if you’re a good fit for the program.

Cheers to profitable business growth,

Oludami

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