I’m going to show you how understanding, finding and engaging your target audience online sent me 6,643 unique visitors and $5,826.80 in less than 2 months…
Without spending a penny.
If you can live where your audience lives and see what they see, you can leverage that to drive insane traffic to your site.
Check out all the income reports to see how things have grown since I wrote this post.
If you rely on SEO and rankings to drive traffic and earn money online from affiliate clicks your leaving a lot of money on the table.
Not only that but purely relying on SEO to provide an income and pay the bills carries its own risks as many webmasters have learnt the hard way in recent times.
I find that a lot of people are so focused and obsessed with SEO and link building!
They forget about all of the other ways you can generate traffic online at no cost with less stress.
As you can see in the graph on the right, search engines sent just 10% of the total traffic to my site and that was with no effort on my part.
What Will I Learn?
It really is quite easy to do regardless of your target market or niche.
It can be broken down step by step as-
The first thing you need to do is define who your target audience actually are.
Do you know what makes them tick?
What type of questions might they be asking when they arrive on your site and does it answer them?
For example I recently did some work with an Optician’s website. The design of the site placed white text on a big picture back drop, it was very difficult to read.
As an Optician you would have expected them to realise the site needed to be accessible and easy to read.
But that wasn’t the case and is a great example of someone that didn’t fully understand their target audience.
When I was thinking about setting up this blog I wondered what type of people may benefit from the content I create. Obviously it’s pretty much anyone with a website but you can dig deeper than that-
Each one of those types of audience has different priority’s. The hobbyist SEO has a full time job and a stable income with limited time where as the full time SEO rely’s on the performance of their SEO campaigns to bring home the bacon.
Then you may have affiliate marketers and local businesses who know nothing about SEO but want to integrate it into their strategy.
Understanding your audience and different types of people in your audience is essential.
I realised that my audience needed content that was easy to understand regardless of experience but without compromising on how much meat was on the bone.
If you run a health website you may have people that are just seeking out information or looking for immediate treatment. Defining those different audiences is important.
Once you have defined your target audience you need to understand them. Really find out what makes them tick. Why are they looking for information online in the first place? What questions or concerns might that person have associated with a specific keyword as they look at your site?
Does your site address all of those concerns? If you compare your site against the top 10 results in Google does it really offer the best value, can you honestly say your page is the ultimate page on the subject period?
Continuing with the Optician story – they also hadn’t fully thought about what types of questions a potential customer might have such as-
So when a potential customer landed on the site they didn’t really find the answers they were looking for. Granted they were looking for an Optician, which they found.
But it didn’t address key questions of the target audience and even if it did there was a good chance they couldn’t read it anyway.
As a successful online marketer at a number of levels throughout my career and ultimately working as an affiliate marketer for myself, I have a good understanding of my audience.
All you have to do is browse around relevant blogs & forums for an afternoon and you will see the same things that will help you understand your audience.
I took the time to understand my audience before I created any content. As I went through I made a list of key concerns / problems / worry’s that peoples had with SEO and online marketing.
Over time they became a list of post ideas that directly address the key questions & issues my target audience face – issues that I knew how to solve and did so on a daily basis in my own SEO activity’s.
Every piece of content I produce has to address all of those questions and concerns to ensure I engage the audience correctly.
If it doesn’t – you might lose them forever.
So how do you go about finding your target audience online? Where do they hang out?
Finding out where they live online is pretty easy and there are a number of tools at our disposal for this.
Since I first wrote this post I have started to use BuzzBundle to find and engage my audience online.
It is an amazing piece of software that I’m using exclusively to grow traffic to the blog.
All you do is enter a range of keywords/phrases to monitor and BuzzBundle will find all of the relevant forum posts, blog posts, tweets, yahoo answers and more!
To get involved in the conversation all you have to do is click reply and type your message. BuzzBundle automatically takes care of any account registration if necessary.
It really is a great tool and I highly recommend it!
I also use it to monitor related terms for previously published content and anytime BuzzBundle picks up a relevant match I can direct people to my content directly!
One of the best places to engage your target audience is at popular forums and there are 3 different websites you can use to find them.
Boardreader makes it really easy to find your target audience and help you to understand them at the same time.
All you have to do is enter a keyword and click search, it will return a list of forum threads discussing your keyword. In the example below I did a search for link building-
This is just a snippet of the results but straight away I can see a few opportunity’s to understand and engage my target audience.
I can jump in to understands peoples views on using RSS for link building and then join in the conversation – perhaps I might engage everyone in that thread with a follow up post or tutorial on the subject?
There is also a challenge thread for really useful link building tips. The post states how they are fed up of seeing the same tips over and over (understanding) and want to see something new (engagement opportunity).
I’m pretty sure I can engage that with any one of my tutorials.
So in just 2 threads I have learnt a lot about my target audience, what problems they face, what they want to see and can engage them directly on the subject at hand.
Its win, win, win, win from where I’m standing.
Omgili is like BoardReader but offers up a different set of results.
It also returns a list of related message boards & forums giving you even more opportunity’s to find, understand and engage your target audience.
Again you can see there are lots of opportunity’s for me to find out what makes my audience tick.
As well as forums you can look at other corners of the web to locate your audience.
Twitter is also a great way to find your audience online. Carrying on with the link building theme search-
Although no one is really asking a question there are lots of links to related articles where I can engage my audience. Perhaps leave a comment on the blog and put my side of the argument across.
I have shown you how to set up Google Alerts before, so I wont bore you with the particulars.
But you can setup a number of alerts for your target audience and build up an inbox of alerts jam packed with places your target audience hang out online.
It takes about 10 seconds to setup an alert so you really have no excuse!
Engaging your target audience is easy and I’ve already mentioned a few ways to do it throughout this article but in summary you can-
It might sound like the same old advice but many people don’t realise how powerful this is and fail to put in the work to directly engage their audience online.
If you are going to get involved with the conversion ensure that anything you post offers genuine value not only to the people reading it but the wider community as a whole.
Quick 2 sentence answers rarely offer any value to anyone and I’ve already learnt my target audience are fed up of seeing the same tips over and over.
It is the engagement in these communitys that will truly reflect on you and your brand – so take time to write posts that help.
Engaging your audience like this has a huge number of benefits. First of all you break away from the mentality of getting people on and off your site via an affiliate link as quickly as possible.
Your site and brand starts to become something that offers key value to your target audience. This has a snowball effect overtime as people begin to relate and build trust with you.
It is important to build that level of trust with your target audience above anything else.
If you focus on creating something that is genuinely helpful and useful you won’t even have to try and sell anything to generate profit.
This blog is living proof of that and has over a 50% audience retention rate and 1 in 5 visitors shares an article via social media.
All I have done is identify & understand my target audience and given them what they want.
First of all you must take the time to identify and understand your target audience. Take time to think about that properly before doing anything else.
Once you have done that (no cheating) you should compile a list of places they hang out.
For example I went and built a list of website & SEO related forums along with how many members, threads and post they each had.
Once you have that list you can go out and start directly engaging with your audience constantly refining your understanding of them.
The benefit of understanding your audience will shine through the next time you create a piece of content to address key problems your audience face. It really is a circle of bliss.
Remember to engage them in the right way and provide genuine help and advice to solve their problems.
It certainly beats leaving all of your eggs in Google’s basket!
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thank you matt, i am your regular reader and follower. another your great post.
Thanks Yogesh 🙂
Another fantastic little guide Matt! I just checked out http://omgili.com/. It’s a cool little search engine, I think it can even help to filter out which forums I should be joining based on what keywords I am typing in. Like I saw “Digital Point” popup a lot.
Yeah you can find some awesome communitys with it!
Hey great post!Quick question, if you’ve seen a bunch of people asking the same questions in say..Warrior Forum or BHW etc and you then write a post answering the question, how would you go about directing them to it? Places like WF are usually pretty quick to give you a moderator warning for linking to your own site.Or would you just answer their question and after a time they’ll check out your blog via the signature?
It depends on the forum and your status within the community some allow you to do that, others not. But the signature link is always a good shout and failing that an old school PM won’t hurt!
I’m amazed how much content from your website is still relevant to this day! I’m starting my own blog, and don’t imagine when I will tryout all of your advices! Thanks for doing this, Matt!
Haha no worrys, this tutorial specifically is a great start though!
Very Nice, Thanks for your Tipps! I follow your Newsletter, big Greetz from Germany!
Thanks Pasqual!
yes..I liked it.!.. targeted traffic is the blood!!..I´d like to learn Black Hat; I think BH is the GREAT SECRET to Make Money Online..nobody is gonna tell U..is secret..anyway Matt Thxs Good info.. 🙂
There isn’t any secrets really, just send targeted traffic to a targeted offer 🙂
Hey Matthew, i got impressed by your work. I want to start but i don’t know if i have made the right choice in the Matt Lloyd 21 steps as the very first thing, i am one of your affiliates on that. Actually my question is: How did you get the link to advertise since you are in step 8 -9? Don’t you have to finish the whole course to get the personal link?? I am now in step 5. What is your advice? Thanks
Then you will get your links soon 🙂
Since you got banned from a few forums I wonder if this still is a good strategy.Isn’t there a risk that ones reputation gets shattered?
I only got banned from digital point and that was temporary! If you blatantly spam your link everywhere at every oppertunity and don’t offer any value you are going to get banned,If you treat the community like its part of your community your good 🙂
Hi MattDarn you…. I’m busy today and need to do lots of stuff but I have spent most of the day reading stuff on your site!!! Really interesting….. but I’m behind on my workload!!!!I’m looking at launching an ecommerce clothes site for oversized men. Help…. what do you suggest we do to engage? Obviously it’s not a single interest niche… large people have one would assume the same varied interests as ‘regular’ sized people. So they won’t be on a tight group of forums like your example of black hatters.
Hahah sorry about that :PI would perhaps looking at facebook https://searchlogistics.com/blogging/social-media/how-to-advertise-on-facebook/
Matthew, thank you for the tips- we’ll use Buzzbundle for our work at our travel guide startup 🙂
Awesome have passed that onto someone that might be able to create you some content 🙂
Hi Matt,What a truly inspirational website you have here! I’ve had a bit of experience with SEO and some tools. Gonna be setting up a website next year after I finish my degree, hoping to do some great things with it. Your advice on engaging the target audience and the tools you have reviewed are excellent. To be truthful this is what I’ve been neglecting in my past en devours hence my hit and miss meager revenues. I intend to purchase some new seo tools, ultimate demon etc I will be sure to do it through your site and via your affiliate links, after all your tutorials and posts have been very helpful to me.Cheers and good luck mate.
That’s very kind of you thanks Mark!
I bumped on your site when researching for Buzz bundle and then navigated to this post. This is quite an insightful post. I just recently launched a site that covers topics around life issues with an inspirational/motivational slant. It’s good content out there waiting to be read. I did try a viral campaign by sending out a new year message (which received lots of hits) but eventually tapered off. you can see that here http://www.heartpepper.com/yourbalancesheet/ and if you like it, appreciate if you wish to leave a comment. For my blog, I am working around keyword strategy, SEO and the usual route that everyone takes but will probably try your approach. But how do you get people to comment on your post? I notice that when there are comments already there, then more people are willing to add comments, but how do you get comments when you are starting out? no one wants to be the first person to post a comment. How do you break into that psyche?
Hi,Well the comments come naturally as its just an extension of the conversation your having when your reaching out to engage people directly.I tend to find the more comments a post has, the less people comment =/
Hi Matt,Firstly thank you for building an awesome website.Secondly I have a question, how would you promote a blog that’s very niche and doesn’t have an audience. For instance, if you we’re writing a blog about “the best suitcases”, obviously you could post on travel forums, but it’s not a direct audience and will be difficult to find threads to post in.Cheers,David
Hi,I wouldn’t build a site about the best suitcases, I would go upstream with the niche thinking – perhaps cover all types of bags, break them down into cateogires like hiking, suitcases, waterproof etc
Engaging with the audience is a pretty important lesson. When first starting your blog there is the temptation to try and generate more quantity than quality, by just regurgitating content that other similar sites have already produced, and hoping the keywords will make Google happy and send traffic your way.This is exactly the approach I was using with my (quite new) site.It’s time for me to take a step back and re-think my approach and find out how my experience in web, design and apps can give others a hand, then create content around that.Back to the drawing board!Great site Matthew. Steve
There is nothing wrong with doing what other people do, Apple have built a huge business by taking existing products and make them better, eg MP3 player > iPod, tabelts > iPad etc etcBut if your just going to take an MP3 player and make it the same as an MP3 player, its going to be rough.
Hey! Awesome stuff. As an advocate of correct spelling and grammar, I am compelled to point out that your spelling and grammar do need improving. For example: ‘opportunity’s’ and ‘priority’s’ make no sense, unless Priority and Opportunity were people and you were referring to something they owned. You should say: ‘opportunities’ and ‘priorities’. Also, you made the total schoolboy error of writing ‘your’ when you should have written ‘you’re’, meaning ‘you are’. So many people read your posts, you wouldn’t want them thinking this was the correct way to write, would you? Also, you may lose credibility. Don’t be annoyed or disheartened – your writing is overall very good. I hope you don’t mind me pointing this out. I see it as doing you a favour but some people may see it as interfering, which is not the intention. Cheers.
Yeah I suck at things like that, been & being is another one. In my new course you have to make a list of things you suck at, this is one of them :)But at the same time, I don’t really care 🙂
Great stuff. This is the stage where I always let myself down. I find setting up the website and writing the content fairly straight forward, and then tend to just fizzle out when it comes to promotion.I’ve just done a few recent vids/posts so I’m taking your advice here and I’m going to knuckle down instead of hoping things just get found by people magically.Cheers, Neil.
Good luck – no point making awesome content if no one reads it 🙂
This a really fresh and welcome change from just chasing links and keywords and makes complete sense because you’re appealing directly to the source instead of waiting for them to click through to your site. Awesome stuff! =)
Thanks Maxx!
Id love to see the new graph (1st image) because I guarantee the organic is much bigger now.That’s how I found this blog, and I keep seeing it popping up #1 even though I didn’t follow you on G+ for ages
Just look at any of the income reports listed here https://searchlogistics.com/blogging/income-reports/
Hi Matt,I love this post, thank you for writing it. Before coming to this blog I was always very Google-focused and figured they were the best traffic source online. It’s definitely nice to see that you don’t have to even think about Google all that much when making a website (this site is a testament to that).I have a question for you about this method of getting traffic to your site. When you were using boardreader and omgili to drive traffic, did you join and post to forums that weren’t about your niche, but had a thread about your niche in let’s say a “random” section of the forum?For example, say my website is about cars, and I search boardreader and omgili for car-related keywords. I find some great questions being asked, but they’re all on forums about anime, gardening and internet marketing. In this scenario, would you join all of those forums and answer those questions or would you stay away from them since they’re not related to your website?Thanks again,Peter
Hi,I understand your example – and really if I feel I can add value to the conversation, thats enough. Forget keywords/relevancy – can you add value/help the people in that conversation? If the answer is yes, do it.
Mathew what is the plugin to add that share and get a free report button? Also when we subscribe on your blog it asks us to sign up, share – how does one set that up?Lastly where can I get this theme?
Hi,https://searchlogistics.com/get/sociallocker/https://searchlogistics.com/get/convergence/
Haha that sounds like good fun – got a link?
Thanks for the reply, will give some ideas a try and see how far I get with them. I recently made a “my reaction when” type of post for dieting and used some gifs to show various reactions to common dieting conundrums. I posted it to reddit and facebook with boost enabled. It did get some shares and resulted in a little extra traffic so will definitely keep trying this tactic.
Hi,Well all you have to do is create content that people would be happy to share by putting a fun and interesting twist to it with some actionable advice. You will get a lot of spam with these methods, its not niche specific you just have to dig through 🙂 I rarely find intelligent debate about SEO for example lol
Hi Matt,great content as always, easy to read, no hype, no bs! :)As an affiliate marketer, do you use same strategies, BuzzBundle, Boardreader etc. to find your audience? Would love to see case study on one of your niches as affiliate. Do you write content for your affiliate niche sites or do you hire somebody to write it for you?
Hi,Take a look at https://searchlogistics.com/seo/link-building/zero-links/I always write all of my front facing content.
I feel the content I’m producing now is as good as its ever been, the problem I have is getting it in front of people. In my industry nobody likes to share this sort of content due to most people feeling embarassed about their weight.Using some of the search methods you mentioned reveals very little value, as most of the forum posts and tweets are just spam. Its not like people are having intelligent debate as with SEO. Maybe a challange here for you or tutorial?
Some really good tips there Matt, however these are hard to apply in some other niches such as weight loss supplements. I would love to hear your thoughts on the best way to go about getting good traffic from sources other than Google. I’m sure it can be done, but no idea where to start.
Hi,Well this technique is all born from having fantastic engaging content – the niche doesn’t really matter. It is still humans with problems that need solutions.What makes you think its hard to apply in some niches?
Hey Matt, I just started looking at your website and found it very informative. I was wondering how you were able to to get the numbers for the forum total members, threads, and posts. Thanks.
Hi,Thats just on the wordpress admin dashboard when you login towards the bottom
The proof is in the pudding https://searchlogistics.com/blogging/how-to-start-blog-and-make-money/
You are so damn right! Even if you are #1 in google for your keywords, engaging your target audience will worth more.
This is indeed a very good tutorial. Lot of people in the internet marketing world want instant gratification. They use tools to build links, generate content, create accounts etc etc…since your tutorial advises people to work manually, do some research and manually engage rather than comment spam, it is one of your least favourite tutorials. If anyone is not an agency, then following this tutorial will help drive insance amount of traffic to their site with a little hardwork. Using Buzz Bundle eases the task to a great extent. But in the end manual work with Buzz Bundle is a great way to drive quality traffic. I sincerely thank you for this tutorial and I do hope you don’t get discouraged with the response to this tutorial and keep on producing good quality tutorials…all the best from India.
Thanks =D Yeah this is the best/most valuable tutorial on the entire blog
Thanks for the helpful information Matthew. I have decided to try and communicate and learn about my audience through Digital Point, moneymakerdiscussion and warrior forums. My website is about learning to make money online and offline. It is also about achieving things in general. I am still new to making money online and I like how posting on forums and interacting with my audience will help me learn about them, but I think it will also help me learn skills etc. I am also going to interact by posting comments on blogs.I must say it is pretty dang awesome that interacting and learning together with others will bring my site traffic.Thanks for the awesome post!!!
Sounds like a good plan – keep up the hard work and you’ll see success!
Great writeup! Sounds like quite simply what you’re talking about in your article is social marketing. Simply taking the time to truly understand, connect and engage with your audience. Yes, this is a slower more hand-on marketing strategy that most marketers are not used to doing. BUT, although it is slower upfront, it can actually bring you larger and more accelerated returns down the road. Like you said “It really is a circle of bliss”.
Hi,Well taking time to understand your audience/what they want is marketing/business 101. This is taking that and applying it to the modern world :)This is the only thing I’ve done to drive traffic to my blog – this is the least popular post on the blog ^^
HI Steve,Heres your other comment hidden away :)I always make comparisons between the online world and real world business – for example when someone launches a site with a few bits of content, no real user experience, no conversion funnel etcWhy do people do that? You wouldn’t open a retail store with half the shelves fitted…
Hmmm… somehow my last comment got lost…in the deep dark hole that is the Internet today, LOLHowdy, Matt?All cool, mate?
Hi Steve,Not seen a comment come in from you but got a few to work through yet so stand by 😛
That is correct – I’m in total agreement, Matt!Rather than commenting on forums in search of opportunities to drop a link, it is much better to just join the conversation there and bring some valuable insights or feedback, etc…One can always return later, after they have proven as a valuable member of the community, and add a signature (it would reflect on all past posts, too)Meanwhile, simply talking/texting people there would help with personal branding and ease any future attempt at selling anything.Too bad that, nowadays, almost no one has the patience to build a solid foundation online, like they would HAVE to, otherwise, if their business was offline anyway…Cheers, Steve ✉ Master eMailSmith ✉ LorenzoChief Editor, eMail Tips Daily Newsletter
Great article.Would you even do this on forums where they don’t allow signatures?This is the case in my niche which makes me doubt using this method.
Hi,Yes because you can still usually link in a post, as long as you are actually helpful and take time to help with the issue and tie it in with a more detailed tutorial thats cool.Just making a half arsed attempt and dropping your link, not so cool ^^
Hi Matthew,Great article, amazing insights!Can you please tell me what is the purpose of gathering the number of users, posts and threads on related forums?
Hi,So I know how big the community is to engage with 🙂
Quality information as always ! You rock dude !!!
Cheers =D
That is alot of sh info. You spend so much time on gathering intel just to find a hungry topic which you write. Izzit overkill?
Hi,No its not overkill – its providing value/help that no one else can be bothered to create for other people.This is how internet marketing should be done at all times.
It is a great article. I like it because it’s more around business planning & strategy and not so much about features and functions – but it all depends on your target audience 😉
Hi,We all run businesses 🙂
Great article, thanks.First time i have come across boardreader and omgili.This is the first site i have spent an extended amount of time on with out jumping to other sites.Great site. Thanks.
Hehe thank you – means I must be doing something right =DAny tutorials you would like to see in the future? Most are made at readers request
Hey Matt, so then the question becomes – one big ass site or many smaller ones?If you had to pick where you put your time and focus where would it be?
A handful of bigs one and lots of little ones :)Start building out the big ones though!
Hi Matt, I’m impressed with this method of marketing. It’s sure a 100% foolproof. I’m sure would like to try on my site. But my site is an e-store or e-shop.Will this method works ???Or other better method where budget is a concern!!Thanks
Hi Jeff,Of course it will – you might have to create some relevant content which solves problems/helps people and then tie that into the products you sell.
Thanks for that forums list 🙂 What I wonder all the time is.. How in the world do you manage to answer all these questions everywhere online?? How do you manage your time so conveniently. That is the question. That would be a great topic for a blog post 🙂
Hi,Well the first time to managing your time conveniently is making sure you have as much time as possible to manage.So getup at 6am and start working at 7am, break for half an hour lunch and wind up about 7pm-9pm.Do that 6 days a week and you have 70-80 hours to manage.Then ensure every single minute of every single hour is spent doing something that benefits you and your business.I use http://www.thesecretweapon.org/the-answer to manage my time/tasks and ensure I never spend any time thinking ‘what am i doing today’ or ‘what am i doing next’ etc
great post matt, thinking outside of the box its the key 🙂 congrats, let me know if you need somebody to carry your bags so can get some of those $$$$$$$ 🙂
Haha no worrys 🙂 This is the least popular post on the blog, but is the one that delivers the most profit – weird 😛 People have forgotten the internet exists outside of Google ^^
The problem with a less popular niche from the outset is it has a ceiling limit so all of your efforts can only achieve so much before you plateau.
Thanks for the forum search engines. What is the best way to engage forum users? Do you post as the company in the target forum “try out our product” or do you go in “undercover.” What is the right etiquette?
Well personally I post as myself which is part of my approach to branding as well with the idea being that over time people associate my name with helpful.I would perhaps post as the company blogger
Great stuff once more!
Thanks man! Wasn't sure if this kind of post would go down well with the audience
well you certainly engaged with me! Ive been asking that question for a few weeks and you answered it! I would love to see a case study on a less popular niche like 'blue widgets' for instance. Great post though! Thanks!
What do you mean a less popular niche? Name it and I'll tell you how 😛 Will think of some other posts I could do along this method of thinking, was just testing the waters with this one 🙂
less popular niches are actually way easier. Less popularity = more room for you to enter as a dominant force. However, large niches are great too because there's obviously more money to be made.
Thanks… another really great piece of information! You deserve those $5,826.80 and much much more… and I'm quite sure you are already earning the “more” 😛
Thanks for your kind words – next income report is due in just over a week and next months competition prize will be the biggest yet ^^
Great writeup! Sounds like quite simply what you’re talking about in your article is social marketing. Simply taking the time to truly understand, connect and engage with your audience 😀 Thanks for posting 😀
An awesome article that “How To Live Where Your Audience Lives For Insane Traffic”. Excellent tips about Ways to Engage With Target Audience for any business at online. I hope, My company http://easydinneridea.com will be benefited with theses tips. Thank you so much to Niccolò Angeli and https://searchlogistics.com/ for sharing an awesome article.