How to Get More Leads with Free Organic Traffic – In Just 7 Minutes with Paul Counts

Resources/Links:

• Get your Free email marketing tips here: https://www.marketingcounts.com/

Summary

Are rising ad costs eating up your marketing budget without delivering profitable results? Many businesses face this challenge, struggling to achieve effective results.

Paul Counts who has over 26 years of marketing experience, a Co-Founder of Marketing Counts, Fractional CMO, Advisor to Influencers With Curriculum In 140 High Schools have mastered the art of more leads with less ad spend.

In this episode, Paul shares a three-phase process (Foundation, Traffic, Engagement) to generate more leads with free organic traffic. He emphasizes the importance of understanding your customer avatar and leveraging keyword research. He also highlights the significance of building and nurturing an email list for sustainable marketing success.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 01:42 – Paul’s ideal client: A brand that is struggling with getting conversions that actually are profitable for their business.
• 02:51 – The problem he helps solve: They’re spending money on ads, but they’re not getting the conversions they want.
• 03:30 – Paul’s three-step process to generate leads without spending more: It’s three letters, FTE [foundation, traffic, and engagement]
• 05:40 – Paul’s Valuable Free Action [VFA]: Everything that you do online is keyword-driven. So you need to be present with keyword phrases that people want to know about.
• 06:46 – His Valuable Free Resource [VFR]: Get your Free PDF of 26 email marketing strategies. Click here: https://www.marketingcounts.com/
• 07:37 – Q: What is my favorite ad platform that I use? A: The place that I’m getting the lowest cost per click right now is Google Ads because of their targeted keyword phrases.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“Understand that when you have a social media following that's not your following, that belongs to the social media platform; so, build your list.” -Paul Counts Share on X

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland 00:10
Welcome everyone to another edition of Marketing the Invisible. I’m Tom Poland, beaming out to you, as usual from the Sunshine Coast here in Australia. Joined today by Paul Counts. Paul, warm, good day from down under. Where are you hanging out?

Paul Counts 00:21
I am hanging out in Seattle, Washington here in the United States. Great to be here.

Tom Poland 00:25
Seattle, Washington. So that’s up the north there?

Paul Counts 00:29
It is.

Tom Poland 00:30
A Little cooler than the rest of the country? What’s the weather right now?

Paul Counts 00:33
Cooler.

Tom Poland 00:34
Spring? What temperature did you get?

Paul Counts 00:37
60 degrees and sunny.

Tom Poland 00:39
Okay, well, that’s quite nice. 60 degrees in the sun. That’s warming up, right?

Paul Counts 00:44
Right. Absolutely.

Tom Poland 00:45
Folks, Paul has over 26 years of marketing experience. He’s the co-founder of Marketing Counts. He’s a fractional chief marketing officer, which means if you need someone to come in and kind of do your marketing, but not actually be resident in the building, he’s probably the go-to guy for that. In fact, his marketing smarts is so widely recognized that his stuff is in the curriculum of over 140 high schools. So that’s really impressive stuff that we’re teaching young people. Something about marketing is, I think, when it’s done, it’s got to make the world a better place. He’s also, really, and this is what I wanted to unpack today, Paul, is he’s really drilled down on the out of more leads with less ads spend. We know if you throw enough money at something, you can get some leads coming in, but often that’s not profitable. So the title today is How to Get More Leads with Free Organic Traffic. Music To my ears. Paul, seven minute starts now. Sir, let’s kick off with who your ideal client is, please?

Paul Counts 01:42
Yeah, so our ideal client is a brand that is struggling with getting conversions that actually are profitable for their business. And also it would be our client that has a small team of people that they can train and that they can educate. The team does not have to be educated on marketing, but we really love to come in and serve organizations and people that have a small team in place that maybe isn’t maximizing their abilities. So we can go in, teach them, train them, help them excel in the art of driving traffic and art of driving organic traffic through strategic methods. And so that’s really our ideal client. Somebody that’s constantly butting their head against the wall trying to figure this out.

Tom Poland 02:21
Folks, even if it’s your team that consists of freelancers, the thing here is that you’re going to insert Paul’s smarts in your team. And the benefit of doing that is that once Paul’s trained your team and they’ve got the systems in place and it’s working well, then you’re going to know how to fish instead of just getting handed a fish every now and then; you’re going to have to catch the fish. Let’s unpack that a little more. What’s the problem you solve with this brand that’s not getting traction?

Paul Counts 02:51
Yeah, the problem that we really solve is they’re spending money on ads, but they’re not getting the conversions they want. And also ad costs are rising right now, so Facebook ads are going crazy. Online ads can be very expensive for businesses. And so we really come in and help solve this problem by helping. We put it into three different phases for businesses and we’ll cover that here in a little bit, but we actually have a three-phase process that is proven to work to help you generate more leads without spending more money.

Tom Poland 03:20
So I think we’ve done a good job of describing the ideal client, the problems are, let’s unpack those three things. Those three help us understand what the process looks like.

Paul Counts 03:30
Yeah, so it’s really, it’s three letters, FTE. So the first letter is foundation. So that’s where it’s a very basic part. A lot of agencies try to sell you sizzle and they try to get you excited by, oh, I’m going to teach you how to get traffic on TikTok or whatever the new platform is. And our philosophy is really focused on the foundation of your business. So that means go back to the basics, revisit your customer avatar, which for those not aware of what that means, it means who is your ideal client? Who is the person that you want to sell to that your business solves a problem for? And it’s an exercise you should revisit at least every, I would say quarterly or at least twice a month or twice a year, try to dive into who your ideal client is and ask questions like where do they hang out? What is the problem they’re trying to solve? And then you put that messaging onto your website so that it correlates with what they want. The term welcome to our website doesn’t work.

Tom Poland 04:22
So that’s foundational stuff. What phase two?

Paul Counts 04:25
Yeah, phase two is traffic. Once you know your avatar, you’re going to know where they hang out and that’s where you should be driving traffic. So right now, even the social media platforms are becoming very search-friendly. So you should be hitting them with keywords that they’re actually looking for on platforms like Instagram, on platforms like TikTok. TikTok just expanded the amount of characters businesses can use by tenfold. So TikTok is even wanting businesses to use it for organic traffic purposes.

Tom Poland 04:53
And step three?

Paul Counts 04:55
Step three is engagement. So that’s following up. We all hear it all the time. Money is in the follow up and unfortunately there’s a lot of brands we work with of far too many of them that actually have an email list. They have assets like a social media following, but they don’t engage with them, they don’t follow up. They’re always out chasing the new leads instead of working the leads you already have.

Tom Poland 05:14
Yeah, a good way of putting it. So it’s a money dip in the follow up. So here’s how often it’s become a cliche and yet it’s still true. Let’s flip this then and have a look at question five is give people a top tip. You talked about sitting down and figuring out your avatar. Who is your ideal client? What is the problem you’re going to be solving for them? How are they feeling about that problem? What are their aspirations? Can you give us something else that’s going to give people a step in the right direction?

Paul Counts 05:40
Yeah, everything that you do online is keyword driven. That means people go to Google, they go to Bing, they go to YouTube, they go to the social media site, search for a topic. So you need to be present with keyword phrases that people want to know about, right? And so once you know your avatar and what you really dial in, what your audience is trying to solve, you find the keyword and the easiest way to find keywords for free, go out to Google, type in, how to decrease back pain, let’s just say. And you type that in and Google’s going to have a section as you scroll down that says, people also searched for these phrases. And once you drill that down, you’re going to come across with a whole bunch of different keyword phrases that people are using that you can put into your marketing title, your videos that way, title your posts on social media.

Tom Poland 06:27
Right. Perfect. Wow. So that, and again, it’s one of those things, keyword research and yet we forget about it and we just jump straight into the tactics. Thank you for that. Let’s give people some more value. Question six is, what’s one valuable free resource we can direct people to? Where can people find out more about marketing Counts?

Paul Counts 06:46
Yeah, if you go to marketingcounts.com, we actually have a free PDF, which is going to give you 26 email marketing strategies. We call it our A to Z on email marketing and getting more from your list. And we are very big proponents of building your list. And so yeah, we really want to help people understand that when you have a social media following that’s not your following, that belongs to the social media platform. So build your list and then use these strategies and you have that at https://www.marketingcounts.com/.

Tom Poland 07:12
So folks, www dot marketing counts as in calculate, counts dot com and go grab the email list. I’ve been there, it looks great and it’s so true. You’ve got to grow your email list. So having got an email list, you need to nurture it. Paul’s going to unpack that for you when you opt in for that free series. Last question, question seven, what’s the one question I should have asked you but didn’t and the answer please?

Paul Counts 07:37
Yes, the one question is, what is my favorite ad platform that I use? I talked a lot about free traffic, right? And the place that I’m getting the lowest cost per click right now is Google Ads because of their targeted keyword phrases. A lot of people want to do Facebook. That involves heavy targeting and being very strategic. And so I very much am a big fan of targeting people with the keywords they want to know about.

Tom Poland 07:58
Beautiful. Alright, Paul Counts, thanks so much for your insight and sharing your experience with us. Cheers!

Paul Counts 08:02
Thank you very much.

Tom Poland 08:05
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.