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SHOW NOTES

What if your warm traffic converts but cold traffic does not? Should you forget launching a cold traffic funnel?

NO! Definitely not. I’m here to tell you, #1. This is completely normal. Your warm traffic will always convert better, because they Know-Like-Trust you for longer.

So, #2. It’s likely a problem with nurturing. Consider this, what did you do to nurture your warm audience that you haven’t done to nurture your cold audience?

Start there! And then tune into this episode for even more about…

  • How to build “nurturing” into your cold traffic funnel
  • How to STOP limiting yourself to warm traffic only
  • How to use warm traffic numbers to make cold traffic projections

Here’s the KEY: Warm + Cold traffic convert differently. That doesn’t mean your cold traffic funnel doesn’t work – it means you need to think about it differently!

Tune into this episode, and then share your ‘a-ha’ moments with me over on Instagram (@emilyhirsh)!

Key Points:
[2:59] Don’t blame this on the ads.
[4:52] How do you build “nurturing” into your cold traffic funnel?
[5:52] Well, don’t get stuck here.
[7:11] Cold + warm traffic NEVER convert the same.
[8:38] Or… maybe this is what’s holding you back?
[12:15] How to use your warm traffic numbers to make cold traffic projections

CTA:
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Episode Transcripts:  

Emily H: I’m Emily Hirsh, and this is the Hirsh Marketing Underground Podcast. Attention innovators, influencers, creators, and game-changing entrepreneurs: your internet domination begins right here. We are the powerhouse marketers that you’ve been looking for. You’re already making waves in your industry, and we’re here to help amplify those waves of change by creating a connection that cuts through the noise. We take everything you’ve built inside your zone of genius and find its audience. With killer strategy and laser eye for impact, we launch multimillion dollar campaigns and skyrocket your reach online. And now, we are doing the unheard of. We’re unveiling everything we’ve learned, taking you behind-the-scenes with the Hirsh Marketing Team, and giving away the secrets to our clients’ success. Stay tuned for top-converting strategy, ROI reports, and insider knowledge that you won’t find anywhere else. You’re changing the world, and we’re the team to help.

Hello, hello there everybody. Gosh, I gotta come up with some new ideas on how to start the podcast. I feel like I say that every time. That’s my natural… I’ve actually noticed that with podcast creators, like the few podcasters I talk to… they start all the same. I guess it doesn’t matter when you’re listening like, every week, a few times a week. Hopefully you guys don’t notice. Well, hello there everybody. Today, in this episode, we’re going to be talking about the difference between warm traffic and cold traffic conversions and kind of what I mean by that. And this was inspired by getting a comment in the past and hearing people say, “Well, I know my funnel converts, because my warm audience bought it.” And so, I want to clear this up and just kind of tell you what it means if warm traffic is converting for you and cold traffic is not converting for you, and what that difference is.

So to prove a funnel, you need people to buy your stuff. You need people to buy your product, go through your funnel, and [for] it to convert. And then that’s when we really know, “Okay, we can amplify this with ads.” And a lot of times people do that with their warm traffic. They do that with their audience, their organic audience, their audience that’s already following them. And they obviously promote it to them, because that’s the audience they have, and they’re going to do that before they run ads. And that is a good strategy. But then, I’ve actually seen this happen a lot of times, where they then take that same exact funnel, and they take it to cold traffic… which they should do, because they proved it with warm traffic, now it’s time to take it to cold traffic. And that’s totally fine to do that.

…but then it doesn’t convert the way, either the same amount that they wanted or it just totally drops off in conversion. And this is, I would say… 40% of the time this might happen, and it’s especially [true] with higher ticket [products and services]. And so what it just means is, cold traffic is not feeling as nurtured as your warm traffic. And so they’re coming into the funnel and they’re not converting, because they don’t have enough nurturing with you. And so what… the answer to this is not to say, “Well, I’m going to blame the medium and Facebook ads, or my marketing team, or whatever, because it’s not converting, and I know it does, because it converted to my warm traffic.” The answer to this is for you to look at it and say, “What did I do with my warm traffic that worked so well that I’m not doing for cold traffic when they come in my funnel?”

And so in my opinion, some of the best ways to do this is to actually talk to your buyers and ask them like, “How long have you been following me? What first attracted you to my brand? What do you feel like this core… Like, why did you buy this product? What do you feel like it’s going to do for you?” And just have those conversations with people about like where they were before, how long they’ve been following you, what they like about your content, what resonates with them, what’s attracting them, what’s building that trust with them, and then why they ultimately decided to buy your product. Because a lot of times you’ll be surprised: what you think is the reason people are buying your product is not actually the reason people are buying your product. And this is really common. We think people need this one thing, and then they actually want to hear this first, and then we can give them the thing they need.

But also, you might be missing a key nurturing piece or a key thing that you were doing for that warm traffic in your cold traffic funnel, and you’re not able to really see it because you’re so close to it that you’re like, “It has to work because it’s sold!” And so, it’s okay if this happens to you. And don’t blame the medium or just be like, “Oh well I know the funnel works, so I don’t know. It must be a different problem than the funnel.” It’s just that the nurturing is off. It’s just that you need to optimize the funnel for cold traffic. And a lot of people have to go through this. So you have to figure out, “Where do I need to build in some more nurturing? What would that look like?” It might look like doing some more visibility content that you then re-target people to your webinar.

It might look like shifting your webinar, so you say specific things that you didn’t realize were convincing people to buy from you and breaking down beliefs and barriers for them, but now you realize it because you talked to your buyers. It might look like building in a 90-day nurture sequence after the webinar, to promote your product more times, to get buyers who have been sitting on the fence for awhile. It might look like including a 15-minute phone call with people who are on the fence and they want to talk to you, if you were selling high ticket and you were pitching direct on the webinar… things like that. It might look like email nurturing, it might look like visibility ads to your podcast or whatever, and then sending people to your webinar. So you have to play with those things and test those things, and you have to go through that to get to the point where you want to convert cold traffic.

Where I don’t want any of you to stay stuck is only with warm traffic converting. And this frustrates me so much when people promote, like, “I don’t run ads.” It’s like, you have to get ads to work for you, and cold traffic to convert, to scale your business, because your organic and warm traffic is always going to be only so big, and so you’re limiting yourself so much if you just give up on cold traffic converting and focus on only warm traffic. So you have to get that cold traffic converting. Now here’s the other thing that people do. So one case, it’s like, “Cold traffic isn’t converting at all, and I know this funnel works because it converted to warm traffic.” And it does, the funnel does work, it’s just nurturing. The funnel worked to warm traffic, because the warm traffic had way more trust in you than this cold traffic does.

And so you’re not doing a good enough job building the trust in the funnel as you are with your warm traffic. Now in some cases it could be quality of the leads. That also is true, so you could definitely look at targeting. But a lot of times it’s honestly more the messaging and the nurturing, like that’s usually the problem, and then it’s the targeting. So that is an option, I want to make sure I say that. The other thing people do, though, is they think it should convert the same. So they think like, “Oh my warm traffic, 5% of my warm traffic bought my… they signed up for my webinar, and then they bought through the webinar,” which is a pretty high conversion. Five percent of total registrants, so not just live attendees. And then they’re like, “Okay, well now let me make my projections, and 5% of cold traffic is going to buy.” And [that’s] probably not going to happen.

Because warm traffic is always going to be more nurtured. I mean, you may have people who’ve been following you for years. You can’t really replicate that with a funnel where you’re going to want to instantly make some return on your investment. That’s where the snowball effect comes into place, and that’s where staying consistent with your marketing and your visibility and your brand and building all of that comes into place. But we also need to get it to convert so that people have a shorter sales cycle than two years, in most cases. And so, when that happens, when you have warm traffic that you’re like, “Well, 5%… and I know this is way above average, but my webinar must just rock… converted warm traffic.” I would just lower that to like, 2% or 3% for cold traffic. That way if you excel it, great, then you hit the expectations and knocked it out of the park, and you should be super excited.

But that way you’re not setting yourself up saying, “Oh man, my webinar’s failing,” or blaming the targeting or thinking that Facebook ads are wrong, because it’s not going to convert the same. Now I also want to point out here, I had this conversation with somebody, and it was holding her back from going all in with a cold traffic launch, because she kept saying, “I don’t have the data, I only have data from my warm traffic, and I know it’s skewed.” She had amazing numbers. It was like almost 100% of the applications she got bought her certification, and she just had incredible numbers. And so she was like, “But I don’t know, I’m still in the buying data, I’m still in the testing phase,” and I could tell she was kind of holding herself back in her last couple of launches, because she felt like, “Well, I haven’t that made it yet. I haven’t gotten enough data.”

And I was like, “No, you have data! The point of getting the data with either your warm traffic or a little bit of ads is proving that you can sell what you have and that it’s good and that people want it and that your messaging is on point with it and that you know who you’re targeting. Then you can take that and get more data and refine what you have and refine your projections, but you’re ready to go.” And so I had to kind of like encourage her there, because it was almost holding her back. She was thinking like, “I don’t have enough data, so I can’t really do a huge cold traffic launch.” And I said, “You can, we’re just not going to say 100% of applications in a cold traffic conversion is going to convert, because we know that’s not the case.

So let’s cut it in half. And then let’s say like, 10% of people live on the webinar apply, and let’s figure out those realistic cold traffic conversions. Then, let’s turn on ads. Let’s run people through the funnel, and let’s actually see what happens and get cold traffic data, and then we’ll be able to make even more decisions.” So basically, I want to summarize here a few things. There is a difference between warm traffic and cold traffic conversions. They almost never will convert the same. Pretty much never. Because your warm traffic, who knows where they came from sometimes? Like, I have people who bought IGNITE who had been following me for four years. I cannot replicate that in my next launch and find more people who have followed me for four years. My diehard followers, they bought, they bought IGNITE. Now, my next launch, I’m counting on cold traffic, building more cold traffic, list building in between the launch.

So your warm traffic is not gonna match your cold traffic conversions. If you run a funnel and warm traffic through it, you prove your offer, you know it sells, you know your messaging is right, you know who you’re trying to attract is right, and now you’re ready to bring it to cold traffic… you just have to adjust your expectations, knowing, one, “It might not work exactly how I am thinking it’s going to work. It might not work at all, I might have to adjust things. [And two] if it doesn’t work, it’s a nurturing problem and it’s a messaging problem to somebody who doesn’t know me. They need more education about my brand, about the problem I solve, or about my product, to be able to buy. But we’re close, don’t give up! We’re close right there, okay? Because we know the product’s good.

We know who we’re trying to attract. Talking to your buyers is a great way to figure it out: Why did they buy? How long were they following you? What type of content did they love? What convinced them? Because you might be missing something key in your webinar or your emails or even your ads, that you don’t realize you’re missing. So if it doesn’t convert at all, you kind of go back to drawing board, “What am I missing when I talk to cold traffic that I’m assuming they already know, because that’s what I did with warm traffic?” If it doesn’t convert as much and you’re thinking it does, adjust your expectations and make sure it’s hitting industry averages, doing at least “okay,” and is profitable… but it’s not going to convert the same, it never will convert the same.

So just adjust your expectations there. And then finally, don’t hold yourself back from launching to cold traffic and actually spending a good amount of money… what you’re comfortable spending, what you can spend… to prove and test out cold traffic, but also get enough people and have a successful launch. And so I felt like this individual I had the conversation with, I was like, “You’re still playing small, you’re doing these launches, and you continue to stick to your warm traffic and just like a little bit of cold… But you don’t know your numbers enough.” And I’m like, “You need to go back, know those numbers. You can set up projections even with warm traffic only conversions. You just water down the projections a little bit and understand cold traffic is going to convert a little bit less than warm traffic, and then you still can go ‘all in,’” (in air quotes).

…because ‘all in’ is whatever you’re capable of doing, whether that’s a $3,000 budget or $5,000 budget, whatever it is you’re capable of doing. And then as soon as you get over that first hump of like, “Okay, I ran a good amount of cold traffic through my funnel or my live launch, and now I have data, and it worked, and now I’m going to make it better and I’m going to improve it.” Things only get easier from there. We did open up our last launch to cold traffic. It was not an only warm traffic launch, and I feel like… actually our buyers were 50% warm traffic for IGNITE and 50% cold traffic. And so, I’m going to be really curious [about] the data from the next launch, which would be a lot more cold traffic, or at least like, “only been on the list for three or four months,” and what that conversion looks like.

So you just have to keep those factors in mind, but there’s always going to be factors. There’s never going to be a clear cut… There’s always going to be some people who are followers for awhile, or you do your first live launch, it has a lot of warm traffic, and then you’ve got to plan for the second launch… There’s always going to be factors like that, and you just kind of do your best to have projections that you feel like are accurate, you feel like you can hit, so that way you’re still defining that number and that success and what you believe it should be, so you have something to track against. But I think it’s important for people to know, warm traffic does not convert the same as cold traffic. You have to keep that in mind when you’re planning your numbers, when you’re looking at your funnel, when you’re looking at your marketing stats…

So that is my lesson for today. If you guys want support from Hirsh Marketing, I announced our new “Performance Package” in the last episode [episode 100], so go back and listen to that if you haven’t. And I am super excited about it, super excited for the applications we have coming in for it, and mostly just excited for the way we get to support people in this new way that nobody else is doing. So you can go to HelpMyStrategy.com and apply to work with our team, and I will see you guys all on the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the Hirsh Marketing Underground Podcast. Go behind-the-scenes of multimillion dollar ad campaigns and strategies, dive deep into The Hirsh Process, and listen to our most popular episodes over at HirshMarketingUnderground.com. If you loved this episode of the podcast, do me a favor and head over to iTunes to subscribe and leave a review, so we can reach more people and change more lives with this content. That’s all for now, and I’ll catch you next time.