Buying Traffic?

[imageworks-261290]

Hi Everyone,

Has anybody ever bought traffic using a site like visitorboost.com?

What are your thoughts? What other services are there?

We are trying to supplement our "like/follower" campaigns, while we wait on our organic methods to build followers. Think of a HVAC company just starting out in social....they dont have time to build and nurture a list, (although we will for the future) they need sales now...so they trun to radio, print ads, etc.

If we could buy thousands of followers in a demographic that made sense and it was affordable, is it worth a try to get the word out?

Thanks in advance guys!

[EGOL]

I think that buying traffic is not going to bring good results.

Maybe you should subcontract this job out to someone else?

[dignan99]

Buying traffic sounds like a bad short term solution for a longer term issue.

While I believe there may be some positive results from getting a bunch of fake traffic to a site, blog, facebook, or twitter campaign, what do you think your client would prefer?

1. Purchased traffic that fakes out Google temporarily, with the possibility of punishment and other repercussions?

2. A legitimate campaign that reaches out to their current customer base, and allows for an organic following of their site, blog, twitter, facebook?

I know as a small business owner, I would realize that the second answer might take a lot longer, but would be superior to number one if the correct strategy is put into place.

As many of the recent SEOmoz blog posts point out, building a friendship and loyalty between a business/site and their customers is absolutely key.  It should be approached as a fledgling friendship, and the rewards will be real when one if finally developed.

As far as a specific Facebook "like" campaign goes, start with the basics.  Have all of the owners and employees follow the business in question, and "like" and/share all the likeable shares and posts.

Before this happens it would be advisable to have these same people ask them to follow the business as well.

Hope my suggestions help.

[imageworks-261290]

Let me clarify. We are all set with growing organic visitors for likes....but like direct mail sent to a large demographic, it is hard to discount that buying 5,000 or more from any type of reputable service is a bad thing, unless the list is bogus or comes of misleading and causes brand damage.

I mean if i could buy a 50k list of SMO CEOs and execs and 80% of them left, i would still have a good target to nurture. So, i guess we are wondering if anyone else had tried the mass market approach to build their "opt in" likes/list/followers

[imageworks-261290]

ty Dignan99. We concur on the campaign ideas you mention...we are looking at this as supplemental.

[dignan99]

An example that I saw that worked recently was for a pasta company, and they literally sent out free pasta for every person that signed up.  You ended up having to like and follow their company to sign up as well, so they killed 3 birds with one stone.

I found out about it from a "frugal blog" site.

It was seriously popular, and it built a following that was specific to the brand and product.  Excellent idea, but probably not the cheapest thing ever done.