Traffic is the holy grail of online business. It doesn’t matter how amazing your product is, if no one sees it, no one will buy it. Traditional drivers of traffic like search engines and referrals from friends have given way to social platforms. If you’re not spending the majority of your budget on social ads these days, you’re behind the curve. And while it’s worked well for a lot of businesses, they built their empires on the backs of someone else’s platform. The only thing that stands between you and oblivion is an algorithm change (or two or three).
It’s getting harder and harder to build a business on social platforms, though. Organic reach is basically zero. Getting any measurable results from ads requires intensive management. Even businesses with massive ad budgets are getting left behind on platforms now focused on revenue-per-user rather than growth at all costs.
Transitioning Away From Dependence on Social Platforms to Build Sustainable Traffic
It’s time to embrace different forms of traffic generation that will give you more control rather than rely solely on social media ads. Or worse, make social platforms the primary component of your traffic-building strategy.
Let’s take a look at how to do this the right way without sacrificing your traffic sources you’ve come to rely on over the years.
The Problem with Social Platforms
There are a lot of things that can go wrong with building your traffic strategy around social platforms. But the most significant problems have arisen because there are so many different things that can go wrong when your business model depends on someone else’s platform.
And it’s not just about how much it costs to use social platforms as your traffic distribution model. You have no control over a lot of factors that will determine whether or not your business continues to thrive.
Here’s a shortlist of some of the most problematic issues with social media traffic:
- Platforms make arbitrary decisions that affect the reach of your content.
- Ad features like targeting options get changed seemingly at random.
- Minimum spends increase across the board.
- Content types prioritized on feeds are subject to constant change.
All you can do is accept their changes and figure out how to work around them.
This puts your business at risk over time. Dependence on social ads is scary when you think about what will happen to your business if the owner of the algorithm you depend on decides to make changes in the name of increased profitability. They don’t care about you, they have investors to please.
Not even businesses willing to devote massive portions of their budgets to social ads are safe anymore. Competition is fierce. Costs to advertise skyrocket as more businesses enter the foray. Click-through rates are abysmal today compared to what they were a few years ago. Eventually, the return on ad spend that once propelled social ads to popularity for marketing was gradually whittled down until there were almost no benefits.
Building Traffic Independence
Smart businesses understand that in order to stay away from dangerous dependence on channels they can’t control, they need to diversify their traffic-building strategies so no single source plays an outsized role in their total traffic statistics.
There are several different approaches businesses can take that involve establishing new channels for traffic that don’t incorporate social platforms at all or that reduce dependence by improving other channels that are not run by complex algorithms.
Email is probably still one of the most effective channels and one of the few the business gets complete ownership of. You can cultivate an email list and ensure you direct traffic to your site via email campaigns instead of social platforms.
The catch? You have to get people to sign up for your email list first, which takes effort, generally requiring other channels to establish the initial interest needed to gain subscribers. But email campaigns won’t require dependence on platforms that determine whether or not customers see your content based on arbitrary algorithmic changes.
Another channel offers some independence from social platforms—SEO (search engine optimization). Ranking for relevant keywords will get you visitors without ongoing ad spends. Even though it takes time and effort, traffic you receive from SEO is usually far more valuable than paid ads because they sought you out based on keywords they provided through their searches.
Direct Traffic Sources
Direct sources for traffic offer the most independence from external factors because it’s essentially a measure of people coming to your website by directly typing in your web address. It doesn’t take a genius to know that if you build a loyal and devoted consumer base, direct traffic is the most reliable source because it doesn’t fluctuate or change based on anyone else’s decisions.
While there are numerous new ways to gather alternative sources for your traffic statistics, understanding how push ads traffic distribution models work helps understand not only notification-based advertising but also how interesting advertising formats can gather traffic without dependence on social platforms at all.
Consider Everything a Business Needs
Not every channel provides everything your business needs, and companies have adopted an unnatural dependence on social platforms for their corporate traffic strategies. The goal should not be finding the perfect channel but understanding multiple sources providing adequate input into your business in terms of traffic.
Instead of putting all your eggs in one basket, build a multi-channel approach where several different sources provide traffic instead of only relying on social platforms (which are struggling to provide adequate traffic for most businesses today). If one channel falters and fails, another channel will still provide support as your business considers adjustments in strategies.
Of course, this does mean more work than scanning through an Instagram feed, justification for why you should reduce reliance on social platforms and put in place diverse avenues for traffic distribution. After managing different channels, adjusting a failing strategy won’t feel as painful when you understand you have other alternatives that ensure your success.
Asking questions about sustainability is tough when you measure overall statistics and not evaluate metrics indicative of various sources giving you success. Soaring numbers in visits can be misleading if based only on one channel. When focusing solely on one source, a drop in success will cause significant damage if the channel responsible halts effectiveness.
What Sustainable Traffic Actually Looks Like
Building this sustainable model of traffic distribution won’t occur rapidly like it did when businesses relied solely on social media for their inflating growth statistics. But unlike fluctuating numbers and stormy weather patterns, building stability requires time, and with each passing day, your company will grow in its reputation instead of its reliance on one or two effective lanes for traffic distribution.
Building this stability requires accepting that it won't happen as quickly as social media growth did during the golden years. But that slower growth comes with security that platform-dependent traffic never provides. The businesses investing in traffic independence now will be the ones still thriving when the next algorithm change decimates their competitors who put all their eggs in the social media basket.
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