Many people are intimidated at the thought of building a subscriber list. Having your prospective customers’ names and email addresses allows you to not only earn sales and commissions, but also serve their needs, too.
This is a mutually beneficial arrangement if you can honestly say that you will be taking care of the people who hand over their contact information. You may have tried to build a list before but failed to see anyone subscribe.
If this has happened to you, there are a few simple and effective things you can do to increase the odds that people will trust you enough to get on your list. These are not complicated or extremely time-consuming tasks to do, yet they will yield the best results.
You can take the following five ideas and implement them exactly as described or put your own spin on them and try it out to see if your list begins to swell. Over time, you may see your brand grow and notice that different methods will be more effective than others.Be Known as Someone Who Helps
One of the greatest strategies that gets the ball rolling with your list building efforts is word of mouth. As a newbie, this may feel overwhelming to you. But it surely works like magic once you become known as someone who offer help and value.
When someone new comes into a niche marketplace, the eyes and ears of consumers perk up and take notice. They are always looking for fresh voices and different insight that they may want to consider.
It works the same way in corporate offices. A team of coworkers will be contributing the same old stale advice, and when a new person is brought onboard, it injects some life into the conversation and a new perspective for everyone to make note of.
It’s no different for your niche consumers, who are already familiar with all of the leading experts in your field. The best way you can become known as a leader who truly cares about their audience is to look for opportunities to share your guidance.
You can do this in online niche forums where people are asking questions and discussing their problems. You can also do it on social networking sites in groups or on posts where people are engaging with the original author.
You can create your own content and make sure that you are publicly engaging with those who comment or interact with your posts, such as on YouTube, Facebook or another site.
Even on your own blog, you want to make sure that you keep track of new comments with notifications coming to your email inbox so that you can respond in a timely and appropriate manner.
When you step up to serve your audience and help them with their needs, they will be sure to offer you as a recommendation in the future when someone asks who can help them with something.
And if you have a lead magnet that is a solution to a common problem in the niche, they can send them directly to your opt in page.
When you’re giving out free advice to some degree, it builds a rapport and good will with prospective customers and subscribers.
Showcase Your Insight as an Example of Your Expertise
Becoming known as someone who helps your audience is one thing. You will be instantly alleviating their concerns and giving them some peace of mind, often when they have struggled to find the right advice.
We’ve talked a little about where you can do this, including social networking sites, your own blog, as well as online forums. But how do you showcase your insight without having to rely on someone asking questions for you to answer?
Sometimes, a niche audience doesn’t know what they need to ask. You can help guide them on these platforms by sharing good information for them to absorb. First of all, make sure that your lead magnet page is up and running and that it is linked from all of your profiles.
When you share that information with people, they will often click on your profile to find out more about you. They want to see if you have a website they can visit, books they can read, etc.
Start by looking for common themes in your niche that people continually struggle with. You want to put a unique slant on a solution that they may have already tried and failed with or not yet considered.
Talk about the struggles so that it shows empathy and then present a solution. Follow up with the results of what you have advised and how it impacted your life or the life of someone else.
Don’t be blatant about pushing people to get on your list. Sharing that information on these websites will be enough to have people looking for ways they can learn more from you.
If you have the ability to add a signature file on a forum, then you may hyperlink some text and then instruct them to download a free guide on your site. If you are posting on your blog to help others and showcase your expertise, make sure your opt in form is both in the side bar as well as below each post.
Some people even include a pop-up experience so that people will remember to sign up to their list. When posting on social media, you want to make sure whenever possible that your content is shareable or has the ability to go viral.
If you are using a social media site like YouTube, make sure that you brand yourself and your lead magnet page in the video at the beginning and end and allow the video to be embedded on other people’s blogs.
If you are using Tik Tok to brand yourself and your blog, make sure you allow people to download and save the video so that they can share it elsewhere and also allow people to stitch or duet your video so that it gets shared with their followers, too.
Have Multiple Lead Magnet Offers
One thing you have to keep in mind is that enticing people onto your list is not like having a prix-fixe menu. Not everyone will want to absorb the same information. Even with Internet marketing, you may be looking for more insight about list building, but another person may fully understand this concept, yet need more help with info product creation.
To combat this issue of having people land on your lead magnet page only to abandon it, you want to have multiple lead magnets that you can present as a buffet of options. For example, if you cater to the weight loss niche in a broad manner, you might want to have a variety of lead magnet topics such as calorie control, keto diet, plant-based diet, exercise, and more.
Not only do you want to have a variety of topics for your visitors to choose from, but you also want to cater to the media preferences of individuals. Not everyone likes to read information.
So instead of only offering a report or a guide to download, you may want to offer additional formats such as video and audio. You want to make sure that you test and tweak your lead magnet offers from time to time.
When you begin thinking of what kind of lead magnet you want to offer, in addition to the topic itself and the media format, you may also want to think of the type of lead magnet they can download.
For example, some people may want to download a buyer’s guide to help them make purchasing decisions. Others may want a seven-day mini course. And still others may want to download templates or checklists.
Create a Product of Your Own
Building a list is not only dependent on the use of a lead magnet offer, where you are presenting a freebie to your audience. It also comes about through the sale of your own products.
Whenever you sell a product to someone, they not only get a notice in their email inbox that their download is ready, but if you have set it up, they will also get a confirmation email from your email autoresponder system.
Creating a product is not only a good way to build your list through sales, but it also lends credibility to you as a niche leader. If you have a product for sale, many people will get on your list first to see what you have to offer before they are convinced to spend money with you.
You want to make sure that visitors to your blog as well as your social networking profiles know that you have a product for sale. Even if you create something very small and inexpensive, such as a seven dollar report, it can be just enough to have people sample your insight.
It doesn’t have to be an entire library of expertise. If you can get affiliates onboard for your product launch, this will allow you to build a list based off the subscribers of your affiliates.
You need to treat your affiliates very well because they will essentially be sharing their list with you. If you do decide to have a low cost, no-brainer product price point as your front end offer, make sure that your affiliates get 100% commission on that as well as 50% of the follow up funnel.
Not having a funnel would be a big mistake because the affiliates are in it to make money, and a simple seven dollar commission usually won’t do. You want to make sure that if you bring affiliates onboard and they promote for you, you treat their subscribers - who are now your subscribers with care.
There’s nothing worse than an affiliate promoting someone and then feeling apologetic because the person they sent their subscribers to lacked the ethics and morals of a good marketer who will protect his or her audience.
If you lose the trust of your affiliates, word can spread about your behavior and they will not only stop promoting you, but also warn people behind the scenes not to buy from you.
Have Viral Freebies for Affiliates and Customers
For the affiliates that you get onboard, or even for your customers who want to share your amazing insight with their friends and relatives, you can create viral freebies in the form of a PDF that are branded with the link to your lead magnet page.
These are considered a taste of what you have to offer, and they should be chock-full of value. Some newbie marketers hold back on the information they provide because it’s a free report.
This is one of the biggest mistakes you can make, because it makes you appear to be less knowledgeable than the competition. If all you can offer them are surface level, regurgitated facts, that won’t be enough to get them on your list.
Think about what kind of information people pass along to others. For example, people often form friendships and bonds with others who are going through the same thing as they are.
Whether it’s a friend they met on the Internet, a sibling, or an offline coworker, if they find good information that can help someone, they will share it with them. You want to make it clear to people that they have your permission to share the PDF.
If these are normal consumers who are part of your target audience, then you can simply brand the eBook with your lead magnet link and have them download it and share it.
However, you can also allow your affiliate to use the viral freebie. Affiliates like to use viral freebies such as PDF reports because being able to give their readers a gift makes them look good, too.
For these people, instead of simply passing along your report, you can allow them to re-brand it as a report that is “presented by” them. That way, they can not only include your link, but theirs is as well.
You can even set up a zero cost front end offer with a free viral report that your affiliates send out that is hyperlinked with their affiliate link to this offer. Then, the customer will be sent to the upgrade offers, where your affiliates can earn a commission for the remainder of the funnel.
