Wow, this is really tough…

Categorizing different traffic methods is no joke.

The hardest thing is that many of the methods above fall under other categories.

Content publishing and link building could fall under SEO.

Podcasting could be a category of its own, yet falls under content distribution ,too.

Web directories could fall under link building or SEO, yet listings like Yahoo.com or Business.com could fall under their own category.

The only thing I could see adding is Software as a category. I’ve used it and it works really well.

Matt,

It’s great to see this discussion happening with some great traction.

As you know I went mostly toward Offline Marketing in 2007, and was basically told by my peers that I was insane to spend money marketing offline when using online techniques is “free or cheap”.

They stopped laughing when a simple 2-step direct mail campaign to 2419 people pulled in well over $100k of in less than a month. Then my peers started asking me how to do what I was doing. Of course.

To me it comes down to this:
Online Marketing = efficient
Offline Marketing = effective

As an example, 2 days ago I received an actual real live FAX order from a promotion I did for a $2000 product in November 2007. Yes, I got an order 3 YEARS and 2 MONTHS later from that very first OFFLINE promotion.

Try that with email. It won’t happen.

My recommendation – to have a truly effective REAL business you honestly have to do both online and offline marketing. It’s the basis of Hybrid Marketing™ and it’s the most effective and efficient way to market ANY product or service.

Great discussion and I’m happy to see it happening!

Rock on,
Lee Collins

Great list matt – Always good to have more lists!

I was going to add Outsourcing but it has been said in the comments!

Keep up the good work

Simon

Great job Matt – and everyone else for adding!

For unique tactics I’d suggest this one:

Interviews – but instead of doing just a straight one-on-one, have a co-host also get involved. Basically gets another person to promote the interview because they’ve got a stake in the game.

And of course, not unique – but outsource everything possible – including the interview tactic I just mentioned!

Great list Matt, wish I’d been here sooner to add my 2 cents. Most of the remarks have covered what came to mind. There are so many ways to get traffic to a site.
I personally like to use contests with more offline promotion than online. Thanks for the great list and love to read everyone’s input.
Nancy

I’d say to add tablet traffic. ipad and other tablet devices have a different browsing mode than computer and mobile for sure, and it’s only going to grow moving forward. There are offers that might work online that would also work on an ipad, but not on a phone.

Hey Matt:

I think you have done a good job of outlining most of the top level categories. Others have already posted some good comments and feedback.

More and more I have been focusing on taking online marketing to the offline world. I particularly like the JV model where we do what we do best, i.e. online marketing, and they provide what they know best…the products, the market, and their list.

All of the traffic sources you mention can play a part in any given JV partnership. Here is the one (besides the obvious email marketing, etc.)that I personally have been using to get maximum traction:

Webinars: While webinars are fairly common knowledge to many of us in the online world, they are fairly novel to bricks-n-mortar businesses. It is easy to take any type of business that uses live events to sell their products and convert those into webinars. Also, there are many businesses that we can help by building a classic product funnel and then use webinars to get people into those funnels.

So, I guess I sort of tied together the Offline Category, JVs, and webinars more into a particular strategy. Not sure if that is what you were looking for exactly but that is what came to my mind.

Hope that was useful.

viral: this can be broken down into subcategories – viral software, viral scripts (contest/reward/action scripts), viral pdf’s – I say this as they all generate traffic differently.

late…have to think some more and swing back tomorrow

Killer stuff man. I don’t know where you’d put Webinars, but it’s been great for us for building an email list that’s for sure.

You da Home Run King brother!

Harris, thanks for recommending a new traffic category of: Integration Marketing

Can you describe/define “Integration Marketing” and make a case for it being it’s own category?

Does anybody else have a recommendation for this one?

Or a case against it?

My initial quick research looks like this is actually a trademarked term? Is that right?

If so, is there a generic name for this proposed category like the rest of the categories?