This is an important concept, because it is one of the MAIN reasons why advertisers fail on Facebook, and why many martial arts school owners have dismissed Facebook as an ad platform to generate students. Don’t be one of them, and keep on reading…
When speaking of Traffic Temperatures, we are usually discussing 3 groups of potential customers:
Cold Traffic:
People who have never heard of you. Think of them as strangers. A FB advertising example might be targeting an audience of “Parents in a 10 mile radius of your martial arts school”.
Warm Traffic:
People have been exposed to your brand / martial arts school, either through previous advertisements or engagement. Think of them as acquaintances. Maybe they “Like” your FB business page because they have seen a previous ad, or something you shared that caught their attention. Or possibly they previously looked at your martial arts school as an option for a future decision.
Hot Traffic:
People who are already in buyer mode. These might be people who are signed up for a trial, or just joined your martial arts school. Excitement is high, now is the time to sell them a uniform and throw in one of those hoodies that have been sitting on your shelf for 5 months at a 50% discount. People that just gave you money are the more likely to give you more! Kind of like when you walk in a camera shop to look at a camera, and you walk out with a tripod, a case, and multiple lenses.
What happens is a lot of martial arts advertisers come right out to strangers (cold traffic) with a sale offer. The thing is one of the most obvious marketing angles of Martial Arts (or any product really) is that it is a SOLUTION. Confidence, fitness, etc. etc., you know the drill.
However, you cannot offer solutions to people that are not even aware they might have a problem…
So the concept is actually pretty simple, and one metaphor that I have heard used many times really sums up the idea:
“You cannot ask someone to marry you on the first date”.
Or you can, but they might think you are drunk, or creepy? Almost for sure they will think you are inappropriate. And more than likely, the answer will be a resounding “NO”. I’m sure someone has done this and succeeded, just like you might have some small wins in advertising to cold traffic, but overall it’s a flawed strategy. Inappropriate!
When you advertise on Facebook to strangers yelling at them “£19.99 for 2 Weeks of Classes including Uniform!!!” you are being inappropriate. People are not ready to marry you dude, they don’t even know you!
So why are you are being inappropriate? Well, for starters you neeed to remember that you are on a Social Media platform. People are there to be social, talk with their friends, read news stories and articles of interest, stalk their ex’s, the usual stuff you are familiar with.
You know what they are not there to do? To be sold stuff. Nope. Nobody logs on to Facebook thinking “Hopefully I get solicited something awesome like martial arts classes I’m not looking for”.
You must warm up your audiences. You need to turn Strangers into Acquaintances, and Acquaintances into Friends.
You cannot talk to strangers the way you do to friends, and the same concept applies to marketing.
On Facebook your marketing goals with Cold Traffic (the people who do not know you really exist as a business), are mainly going to be to create Awareness.
We want these “strangers” to:
Some good strategies to accompish these goals are by sharing blog posts on your website and creating “Like” Campaigns to get them to become “fans” of your business page.
Note that I said “Sharing blog posts on your website”… This is very important, because especially if you are going to be paying for clicks on a facebook ad, you need to have a clear goal in mind: by having a visitor click your ad and LEAVE Facebook, once they visit your website you can Pixel them, and continue to re-target them with future ads. A Pixel is a few lines of code that gets input on your website pages and tracks visitors coming from Facebook allowing you to target them with ads again in the future. So we want to drive traffic to our website, and sharing other people’s content is kind of pointless at this stage.
If your website visitor does not submit a lead with their email and contact information, your money is not wasted, because they are added in an “Audience” in your Facebook Ad Account called “people who visited my website” or whatever you decide to name it. You can create new ads specifically for these visitors in the future.
Advertising on Facebook is a system, and the first step of your system needs to be to bring these strangers into your world, by either having them like your page, or taking them out of Facebook altogether to visit your website.
Warm traffic is your potential customers who are still in the “Acquaintances” stage.
They know about you and might even be familiar with your Martial Arts Programmes, but haven’t made the jump to purchasing from you yet.
Maybe they opted in to your website, or possibly they have liked your page.
If you are a bit more advanced or followed my guide, maybe you have a Pixeled audience from your website.
These people are the ones that you will want to continue to engage, and eventually target with your offers. With Facebook it pays to not be constantly pushing offers, but rather to continue the awareness efforts. You began in the Cold Traffic stage, and when you will be ready to make an offer you will have a group of people primed to actually take advantage of it.
In this stage it will be really important that you are regularly posting on your Facebook Page content that will make someone who is not a member get interested in what you have to offer.
You can accomplish this easily by posting:
When it comes time to make an offer, in my experience it is always best to make a low price offer.
You are not really trying to make money on these people yet, the goal of a paid trial at this stage is mainly to get a more committed lead that is actually going to come in to your school.
If you have a check out module like Dojo Cart by Website Dojo, you could for example create an offer of £7 with an upsell of “£19 including 2 weeks and a uniform”. I always like to have a low entry option to overcome any buyers objections. And honestly, many times we do Free Trial offers as well. Experiment and see what works best in your market.
Customers who have previously purchased from you in any manner are what is considered Hot Traffic. They may have purchased a trial offer and are primed to extend it, purchase some additional gear, or become members. Expired members would also be candidates for hot traffic marketing.
Your goal for hot traffic is to monetize by:
· Selling trials & memberships;
· Selling pro shop gear and equipment;
· Upgrade existing students to different programs;· Inviting members to special workshops to increase retention;
· Tournament Signups;
· Private Lessons;
If Cold Traffic is “strangers”, and Warm Traffic is “acquaintances”, then Hot Traffic is “friends”.
Friends get special attention! Don’t lose touch with them. They are what keeps your business going because they are already paying you, so engage them by providing them with interest promotions and keeping them in the loop by email marketing to them often.
An example of a hot traffic promotion you may want to consider is a special referral program, where for every friend a member refers, they get a free month off their membership. This provides value to your members, and brings new students through the doors.
Remember:
Cold traffic requires an introduction to your services and needs convincing that you are providing a valuable and trustworthy service;
Warm traffic is already taking the value you provide in consideration and is in a stage of persuasion;
Hot traffic is existing members or trial members who already trust your services and are ready to spend more money with you.
Cater your martial arts marketing to each temperature segment of your audience, and you’ll increase your chances of growth and success.
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