How to Drive Traffic to Your Teachers Pay Teachers Store

Welcome back unicorn teachers and creators! If you’ve been wanting to grow your Teachers Pay Teachers store, but don’t know how to do that outside of creating more products, then this post is for you! You’ve probably heard from several sources that you should be promoting your products outside of TPT, which is true, but can be so overwhelming. There are so many moving parts to this business! 

Rest assured, you don’t have to create content for every single platform, or post every day, or work around the clock. You just have to choose a few traffic sources to focus on with strategy and intention. I know that sounds daunting, but stay with me! We’re going to put it all together in the form of a sales funnel and create an easy to plan system for you to stick to! 

What is a sales funnel?

A sales funnel is a concept that helps us visualize the steps it takes for someone to become a customer. The steps start at the top of the funnel, where the customer initially finds out that you exist, and nurtures the potential customer through the steps, where they become more familiar with you and what you offer, to the bottom of the funnel, which is the goal of where you want the customer to end up, where they purchase your product. 

What are the stages of a sales funnel?

There are typically five stages to a sales funnel: awareness (the top of the funnel), interest, consideration, decision, and retention (the bottom of the funnel). Here’s a quick rundown of how they work, and which kinds of content work for each stage. 

Awareness: At the top of the funnel, potential customers become aware of your products and shop. This can happen through social media, search results, ads, or word of mouth! Content marketing is what gets this party started. This is why it’s important to create content that shows your expertise and can be found by your potential buyers! Blog posts, social media posts or videos, and YouTube videos can work for this type of content. 

Interest: Once a potential buyer is aware of your products and content, they will want to learn more and get to know you. They’ll start following you and engaging with your content. This step also happens on your platforms like social media, a blog, or YouTube, which is why you’ll want to create a combination of content that introduces you to new people, and nurtures your current followers. You can share answers to questions, tips for problems your ideal customer has, funny quotes that they can relate to, ideas they can use to make their lives easier, and occasionally throw in a product you have that can solve a problem! 

Consideration: As your potential buyer becomes more interested, they begin to consider whether your products are a good fit for their needs. They will compare different options, read reviews, or request more information. They’ve now moved beyond your content and want to see what you offer! They’ll be looking for more information specifically about the products you have available. This would basically be your product thumbnails, preview, description, and reviews! This is why it’s so important to provide as much information as you can in those areas! 

Decision: At the bottom of the funnel, the prospect makes the decision to purchase your product. Optimally, the product will meet all their needs and solve their problem, leaving them thrilled with it! If they haven’t already joined your email list, now would be a great time to encourage them to do so, since you now have a new raving fan who will be thrilled to know about your future products! You can include a page or PDF file in your product with links to join your email list, visit your website, and a way to contact you! 

Retention: After they make the purchase, your customer enters the retention stage. This involves keeping the customer engaged and satisfied with the product to encourage repeat purchases and referrals. This is why it’s so important to stick to a niche of customers and make products for several problems they most likely have. They will continue to buy from you! You also want to continue to nurture this relationship with free valuable content through email or other exclusive platforms, like a Facebook group or private subscription content. 

How Do You Create Your Sales Funnel?

That was a lot of information and probably a little overwhelming! But don’t worry, like I said in the beginning, you don’t have to stress out and start making content for every single platform. You just need to create content for the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel. The bottom of the funnel is your shop and products, so you’ve already got the bottom of the funnel done! 

Now, all you need is content to bring in new customers, content to nurture those new customers and help them get to know you, your expertise, and your products, and value for your loyal buyers. 

You’ve already got the bottom of your funnel (your products) established. Now you can work your way up and create long form content, most likely a blog or YouTube channel, that will work as your middle funnel content. Long form content like blog posts and YouTube videos are searchable and bingeable content that compound in value over time. I’ve got blog posts from three years ago that people are still finding and reading! As you add to your content over time, this content will keep working for you. It’s like investing versus spending money. 

The way I see top of the funnel content is branching out to other short form content platforms and sharing pieces of your long form content regularly. These platforms are your social media and Pinterest. You don’t have to be on all the social media platforms! Or if you do more than one, you can create content that you can reuse for each one, so you don’t have to make separate content for everything! Consistency is important for this content though, so stick with the platforms that you enjoy and will want to build.

I’ve always loved Instagram and thrive there. I tend to avoid Facebook, so I don’t post anything there. Pinterest brought tons of traffic to my store back around 2015-2017, so I focused on making pins for all my content and products. I stopped for a while because they kept changing their algorithm, but I’m learning how to make it work for me again (maybe that will be another blog post?). So now, I focus on Instagram, Pinterest, and Tiktok, although Tiktok is mostly my Instagram videos reposted, so not much extra work there. 

How Do I Nurture My Repeat Buyers?

I saved this part for last, because people tend to groan at this part. I sure did, and it’s still an awkward task for me. You’ve probably heard several times by now that you need to build an email list, and best case scenario is you want an email list full of your repeat buyers. I know email lists sound daunting, I thought the same thing and didn’t start my email list until almost two years ago (I’ve had my TPT shop for 8 years!). 

Now I see why email lists are so important. This is YOUR list of customers who have chosen to receive these emails and want to hear from you. This is YOUR way of communicating with them, and no algorithm can mess with that, unlike social media or search algorithms. These are YOUR people who have shown that they are truly interested in what you have to offer! This is the most direct way to communicate with your buyers and fans when you throw a sale, or post a new product. 

Email is the best way to serve your audience. Share tips and answers to questions that they probably have. Offer your products as solutions. You can even get feedback from them so you know what you can make to better serve them. It truly is a gold mine and so important to start building! 

Putting the Sales Funnel All Together

I’ve put together a graphic to help you visualize each piece of content and where it goes in the funnel. You can plan your content either from top to bottom, or bottom to top. I tend to plan bottom to top; that just seems to be how my brain works, but you may be different! 

Planning your content bottom to top would be starting with a created product, and then working your way up. What images and information could you put in the thumbnails, description, and preview to show your buyer what problem this product solves? And then you’d make top of the funnel content, like a blog post talking about how you struggled with that problem, and this product you made solved it. You’d then make a social media post to lead people to your blog post. Now all your content leads to your product! 

I do know some sellers didn’t start out as sellers. They started blogging before selling, and then later created products to monetize those blog posts that solved problems. This is more like starting from the top and working your way to the bottom of the funnel. Whichever way works for you is best! 

Let’s Get Creating!

I hope this explanation of how to drive traffic to your TPT store has helped simplify things for you! You can now take this framework and implement it into your creation planning!

If you need some vibrant watercolor clipart to make your new creations and content pop, check out my shop on TPT, Etsy, or here on my website! 

If you found this helpful, join my email list! I send a weekly email with tips, clipart discounts, freebies, and ideas! 

Thanks for being here! Happy creating!