Andre Chaperon and Shawn Twing – The Traffic Engine

What you’re about to read was eighteen months (and twenty-one years) in the making. It started as a long conversation between two friends, and evolved day by day, month by month, into a personal and professional calling.

Here are seven simple business and marketing truths I’ve found particularly powerful.

• Simple Truth #1 — High-Quality Traffic is the Lifeblood of Any Business
  At its core, a business is a system that generates revenue and income by combining qualified prospects with an offer that converts those prospects into paying customers. No matter how great the offer, how well-written the copy, how extreme the value, if no one ever sees it there’s no chance it’ll succeed.
  Value, wealth, opportunity, and personal freedom emerge from the ROI-positive combination of traffic + conversion.
• Simple Truth #2 — There’s No Such Thing as ‘free traffic’
  There are lots of ways to acquire traffic. Broadly speaking, there’s organic traffic, affiliate traffic, and paid traffic.
  I don’t like the term ‘paid traffic’ because it implies the other options are free. They’re not. The method of payment is just different. Instead of paying mostly with time, energy, and attention — all of which are finite resources — I prefer to pay for traffic with money which, under the right circumstances, is effectively limitless.
• Simple Truth #3 — Paid Traffic Gives Us What We All Desire Most — Control
  Let’s be very clear about what we all really want. As business owners, creative professionals, and marketers, we need to create awareness, generate leads, make sales, fulfill our obligations to our clients and customers, and make a profit that keeps us in business.
• Simple Truth #4 — The Rules Of The Paid Traffic Game Have Changed
  The old model for paid traffic — still widely used today — was based on cheap traffic and pliable traffic platforms that allowed aggressive tactics, over the top messaging, and shady business models. If an advertising account was shut down, no big deal — just move on and open a new one and you were back in business.
• Simple Truth #5 — The Way To Win Is To Avoid Losing
  Warren Buffett and his partner Charlie Munger are arguably two of the world’s greatest investors and sharpest analytical minds. Decade after decade they’ve been asked about the secrets to their success, and they’ve consistently attributed that success to avoiding dumb mistakes rather than pursuing innovation.
• Simple Truth #6 — Your Prospects Are Far More Valuable Than You Realize
  In October 2019 I had an opportunity to sit across from legendary marketer Dean Jackson at a speakers’ dinner prior to Kevin Rogers’ Copy Chief Live.
  Dean explained to me that he had analyzed many of his clients’ businesses and found that all of them had something in common. When sales were calculated over time, 15% of sales occurred in the first ninety days after acquiring the lead, and the remaining 85% of sales followed over eighteen months.
• Simple Truth #7 — There’s Only One Thing To Do To Improve Your Results
  When we accept that our businesses are systems, we realize that they’re subject to the insights of systems theory. Perhaps the most profound insight is this one, from Eli Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints: the only way to increase the throughput of a system is to improve the performance of its weakest link.

Salepage: Andre Chaperon and Shawn Twing – The Traffic Engine