List Building Tips
The only way to ensure you have a successful online business is to have a mailing list. I know you have heard the saying “the money is in the list”. It has become a cliche but that is because it is a fact.
Capturing leads is a way for you to stay in touch with your website visitors and to grow your customer base. It generally takes more than one contact with a potential customer to close the sale. If a potential customer visits your site and leaves without giving you a means to contact them in the future, chances are, you will never reach that person again.
Getting a visitor to give you their email is not always an easy task. In this mini-course I have compiled 20 ways for you to capture reach your customers and encourage them to give you their emails by building trust or offering enough value in exchange for them submitting their email to your list.
1: Be sure you have a squeeze page
A squeeze page is one of the most versatile tools in Internet marketing today. It can be integrated into your web site, or it can stand alone as a fully functional one-page site. A squeeze page is simply away to capture a visitor’s email address: It typically offers a valuable free product in exchange for the visitor’s e-mail address and permission to follow up.
Your squeeze page must do two things:
1. Capture e-mails, and
2. Automatically send a sign-up confirmation and follow-up e-mails.
In theory, this sounds simple. The truth is you only have one opportunity to get your potential customers to trust you enough or want what you offer enough, to give you their email. Therefore, the content of your squeeze page, the presentation and your offer must all be top notch or you will miss out on the chance to reach your market.
The most effective squeeze pages will address a problem within your niche market and offer a solution in the form of an information product. As an example, let’s say your niche market is home renovations. You might offer a free eBook of shopping tips for purchasing laminate flooring and then offer a mini-course series of video instruction on installing laminate floors. You keyword your squeeze page for the DIY person searching for information. The product you are offering is enticing enough to make them want to give you their email because they really want the information you are offering and they stay subscribed because of the value you added by continuing to give them great info.
Now you have a potential customer within your niche who values what you suggest and is most likely going to take you up on future offers you will send through their email.
How do you capture an email?
The software or service used to capture an email is called an autoresponder. There are many such services available online for a very reasonable price of approximately $20/month. This is a vital tool of your trade if you are selling anything online.
Research show that, on average, you will need to contact a potential customer 7 times before they will actually make a purchase. Without an autoresponder you lose contact with your visitor the moment he leaves your site and, chances are, he will not return.
Aweber is the most commonly used autoresponder service as it is very user friendly and offers exceptional step-by-step tutorials and videos to help you get started.
Setting Up Your Squeeze Page
A squeeze page is not difficult to create. You do not need to have any particular skills to out one together. If you can copy and paste, you can set it all up in a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) html editor.
All you do is type up your information and offer, cut and paste the code you will be gien when you set up your autoresponder and then upload the saved file to your web host. Do not let the technical side of a squeeze page scare you off. It really is easy to do and is such a vital key to your business success.
2. Article Marketing To Capture Leads
Information is a powerful and compelling way to capture leads. Writing content rich articles and submitting them to article directories such as ezinarticles.com and goarticles.com, to name just two, will go a long way to driving traffic to your site, establishing your credibility and enticing your readers to opt-in to your list. Here is a list of the Top 10 Article Directories. The higher the quality of your articles the more magnetic they will be.
Article directories allow the author to create a resource box or author bio with links to your website. In this author bio, you can give a call to action for readers to follow through to your website to sign up to receive more articles such as this to be delivered to their email.
Article directories also offer you that all important one-way link from a high PR website so not only will you get the benefit of added traffic to your site, it will help to push your website up the search engine placement.
3. Hold a Contest
A great way to create a buzz is to run a contest or competition. Get involved with a community within your niche. That could be in a forum or social site. Place the contest in your signature or resource box and make an announcement (if allowed) that you are running a contest that is free to enter.
If you can’t think of a prize to offer you could team up with a joint venture partner and get them to allow you to offer one of their products to the winner. This would create a win/win situation for your marketing partner as they would also be adding a new customer to their list and getting exposure to their products.
You can, in return, offer one of your products to your JV partner that they could also offer as a contest prize to their customers.
4. Co-Registration JV
A co-registration is another way of leveraging your relationships with other marketers as a joint campaign. This can be through a giveaway, product launch or basic squeeze page. Basically, your JV partner delivers your squeeze page offer to their customers when they opt-in to his list. Somewhere during the confirmation process, whether it be on his confirmation page or thank you page.
Usually the visitor has submitted their email to your partner and then they are asked if they would also like to take advantage of your offer. Your offer and opt-in box would be displayed on the thank you page, download page or confirmation page for them to take advantage of two offers at the same time.
Why would another marketer choose to do this?
1. You have agreed to reciprocate with a similar offer to your customers, OR
2. You offer him a percentage of the sale off your product (if you are selling a product from the squeeze page)
This is a great way for your partner to offer an up-sell without having to do any of the work other than adding your link or HTML code to his page. It is also a great way for him to increase his subscribers if you are also doing a co-registration of his product on your thank you page.
Most marketers do not take full advantage of their thank you page as a way to increase their revenue.
5. Cross Promoting, Joint Ventures, Ad Swaps
The best, and easiest way to grow your list is by teaming up with other marketers who sell to the same target market as you do. Establish a working relationship with these people. They do not have to be competitors, and most definitely sell a different product than you do. Their client base is the same demographics, though.
This tactic has been used for years and is used both online and offline by some of the largest companies in the world. How often does your favorite fast food chain promote a movie? That is the same concept.
Cross promoting online, simply means you offer to send your marketing partner’s email to your list if he sends your email to his. It is very easy to do and easy to set up. You will write the copy for him to send out to his email list and he will do the same for you. You write your email copy as if you were him, recommending the product of a trusted coleague to his customers. Be sure to add that call to action and a request to “tell a friend”. This not only gives you exposure to a new group of customers, the recommendation also gives you instant credibility.
Now, because you are marketing to someone else’s customers, you better make sure your offer is of top notch quality. He will not want to risk his own credibility with his customers by offering them poor quality products. You want to establish a great working relationship with this marketer for future joint ventures.
6. eBay
Most people do not even realize you can put your opt-in box right in your eBay listings. This is a great way to reach your target market. eBay gets a great deal of daily traffic and spend a ton of money on promoting their website. You can take advantage of all of their advertising dollars by placing niche products for sale on eBay and including your opt-in box with a call to action to get on your list for more information on the product or to receive your newsletter. You will be surprised at just how many people will actually sign up.
eBay no longer allows digital products to be sold in their auction. You can, however, offer a digital product for sale in a CD format that you can burn yourself and ship to the successful bidder. After the auction closes, you can email the buyer and offer to save them the shipping fees if they choose to do a direct download of the product. More often than not, the buyer will opt for this method of delivery. If not, you must be prepared to ship the product.
Many PLR and MRR products make great eBay products just for the exposure you will get from the listings. Select downloadable products that are in a “hot market”. Create your listing with your opt-in box in the HTML code and off you go!
7. Writing an Information Report or e-Book
Many people are truly terrified of product creation yet it is one of the easiest things to do and one of the most powerful ways of getting your website to go viral. An eBook does not have to be a huge complex undertaking. It is not the same as writing a hard-copy book. A short 20-25 page report likely works best because people do not generally read much more than that on a computer.
The key is to make sure your links are embedded in the ebook and that you have given Master Reseller Rights to anyone who gets a hold of it. Do not offer PLR rights as that will give the person the right to remove your links.
Some PDF software even allows you to embed your opt-in form right into the ebook, but most often you will be directing the readers to your website for more information. Be sure to give a specific call to action at the beginning and end of the ebook as well as somewhere in the middle but make that one subtle. You may even just make a comment like “you are on my list so you will automatically receive this information. If you aren’t on it yet you will find the info on my site to get added” This puts the idea in your reader’s mind that they really should be on your list.
Be engaging in your reports. Tell a story. People like to be able to relate to you or be entertained by you. Let your personality come through. Do not make the report too cut and dry. You are selling yourself as much as you are selling the information. Just have fun with it. You don’t have to be so stressed because people do not expect perfection. They expect a human to be behind the info given so mistakes are generally accepted because they can relate to that.
So relax…but get creating ebooks and getting them out there for circulation.
8. Capturing a Lead When Your Visitor Leaves Your Site
Using an “exit pop-up” is a way to give a final call to action to visitors who may not have signed up while browsing your website. This should be a “gentle” reminder and not a hard sell. Do not make the mistake of adding pop-up after pop-up on your website. You want the experience to be a positive one for your web visitor.
Floating ads that cannot be turned off and invasive methods of advertising may turn them off and cause a quick exit from your site and they will never willingly return to your site. You might want to include a picture of yourself and maybe a brief audio message aimed at gaining their trust. Include just enough text to let them know they are important to you and that you have their best interests at heart.
You might even ask for their feedback. Ask why they are leaving without signing up. Then use this info to improve the experience for your visitors.
9. Offer Your Articles to eZine Publishers in Your Market
Almost all successful businesses publish their own newsletter or eZine to their mailing list. It is possible to get your article published to their subscribers.
Search out successful websites that market to your demographics. Write a killer article full of great information. (especially good for answering questions or solving reader’s problems) Most newsletter publishers are always looking for great, original content to supply to their readers.
Write 10 top notch quality articles (hire someone to do it if you don’t feel confident, it will be worth the investment). They must be original articles. Approach the top 10 publishers in your niche and offer them the exclusive rights to that article as long as they leave your resource box (author bio) intact. Your resource box will have have a link to your website or squeeze page.
Tell them they may also post that article on their blog, with your author bio and link. Give them full publishing rights to it. Just make sure you stress that they need to give you credit for it with a link.
This will not only drive traffic to your squeeze page, the links will also give you off-page SEO one-way links that the search engines love.
10. The power of forums
If you are not utilizing forums you are missing an opportunity to not only connect with your customers, but also to find out just what your customers want. Forums are very targeted sites. People with similar interests flock together to share their enthusiasm for one particular subject. Forum visitors within your niche are your target market. The more contact you have with them, the easier it will be to sell to them.
Use your forum signature to your best advantage. If the forum allows you to place a link in your signature do not miss the chance to bring visitors to your squeeze page. Participate in the forum without giving sales pitches. Be helpful and share your knowledge freely without any strings attached. Sooner or later, if you bring value to that forum every member will at some point check out the link in your signature to find out more about you and what you are selling.
Be mindful of the types of questions the forum users are asking and what problems they are facing and you will have a very easy time selling to them.
11. Free Software and Tools
People are always scouring the internet for free software and tools that will make their life easier. A great way to grab a potential customer’s email is to find software that offers free trials. Most software companies will give their customers the opportunity to “try before you buy”.
Write a review of the software and put your opt-in box at the bottom and let your readers know that you have been given the okay to allow them to take a test drive of the product. Fill in your name and email and you will send them the link to try it out free of charge to see if they think it is good for their business.
You would be surprised at how effective this method is. If you can’t find a free trial of a hot product, try emailing the creator. They may very well give you a coupon or discount code that you can pass along to your readers.
12. Put Your Products in JV Giveaways
If you have never heard of a JV Giveaway before, let me explain what they are. Many marketers come together to offer their products for free. The goal of a JV Giveaway is to capture leads from people who are searching for products to help grow their businesses.
Typically, these events are within the IM niche but they can virtually cover any niche imaginable. Every marketer submits a free product for download. These products can be in the form of e-books, software, scripts, video series, audio series, website templates and themes, graphics packages and just about any other downloadable product imaginable.
The big advantage of participating in a giveaway is that every marketer involved will be promoting the event to their lists. If you have a hot product that is in big demand, you can literally sign up thousands of new leads from one single giveaway. On average, though, you can expect to sign up 100-200 new leads each time. The more you promote the JV Giveaway, the more successful it will be.
Most giveaway events are free to submit one of your products. There is usually an option for a paid upgrade and you can sell a “one time offer” to make back end sales from the event.
13. Free Consultations and Mini-Courses From Your Squeeze Page
If you have established yourself as an expert in your field, a free consultation may be all that you need to offer to entice your visitors to take action and give you their email. If not, a mini-course is a great way to grab your visitor’s attention. People like packaged learning and often percieve a mini-course to have more value than a single download. When they download a free report, frequently it never gets opened and actually read. This makes it easy for them to forget who you are.
By offering a mini-course, you have the opportunity to stay fresh in their mind as you will be sending them a series of useful information emails over the course of a specific amount of time. You may set your autoresponder up to send out one immediate email and then deliver the rest of your content in daily or weekly installments. This is a very powerful way of establishing a relationship with your potential customers.
The key is to be sure you are delivering value and not just a sales pitch with every email you send to them. Yes, you will make offers to them to purchase but that should not be the main goal of the initial followup series. You are establishing yourself as an expert and a valued friend offering to help them with their problem.
Once the series is completed, you will continue to stay in contact through your autoresponder and offer them more good information with offers to purchase products that are intended to help them reach their goals. In these emails you must give them a very clear call to action. Whether it be to visit your blog for more information or to purchase the great product you have to offer them. Be specific as to what you want from them and they will respond by doing as you ask. The biggest mistake any marketer makes is not letting a customer know what YOU want them to do.
Always be sure to include your resource box at the end of your email and, if you have one, a business logo. This will help with branding your business so they will automatically think of your company when they have a need.
14. Being News-Worthy
Creating a buzz by being the number one source of the latest news in your niche is a great way to create a following and grow your list. To do this, all you have to do is create Google Alerts and subscribe to a number of niche RSS news feeds. Whenever anything topical appears in the news, write an editorial or review on the topic or product.
Submit your articles to your blog and to all of the social news sites. Be sure to include your opt-in box in the sidebar of your blog and a link to your site and a call to action to sign up to your newsletter for all of the latest news on the topic in your resource box when submitting your news articles to the news directories.
15. Using Pay Per Click and Cost Per Action Advertising
If your budget allows, you can opt to pay for some traffic to your squeeze page. There are many Pay per Click advertising services, Google Adwords being the most widely known. The purpose of PPC ads is to display your advertising on relevant pages. Each time someone clicks on your ad and visits your site, you must pay the price that is set for your ad.
PPC ads have advantages over the standard type of advertising because you are only paying for action instead of just renting the ad space from a web site. Thus being said, you must be aware of how much traffic you can expect and be sure to set a limit to your daily budget, otherwise you could end up with a hefty bill that you were not planning on.
If you are using this method of driving traffic to your site for lead generation, you must set aside some time to monitor the results. Effective use of PPC advertising requires you to do some tweaking to optimize the ads until you are getting the best possible results.
If the PPC rate for your chosen keyword is very high, you may want to opt for a CPA (cost per action) type of ad instead. For CPA you pay per the action you require. For example, if you know that Google Adwords is going to cost you $2 per click because you are in a highly competitive niche, and you cannot guarantee that each click will convert to someone adding their email to your list, you may want to look at a CPA where you pay $1.50 for every person added to your list.
This will result in you only paying for the results that you really want and you will be paying far less.There are a number of affiliate and CPA marketers out there who love these types of offers and will promote your site for you for the CPA.
Whether you are choosing PPC or CPA I highly recommend you do your homework first. Be sure the cost fits well within your budget and that you have the time available to do the proper analysis to optimize your ads.
16. Podcasting
Podcasts are one of the easiest forms of media to create. They take very little time, very basic equipment and software and have the potential to reach a wide audience. If English is not your native language, then do your podcast in your native tongue and make it available to your ethnic group. You might even do a JV with someone who speaks a different language to get your message out to a wider audience.
All that is needed to create a podcast is a USB microphone which can be bought for as little as $20-$30. The audio recording and editing software can be found for free or a very low cost. Most people begin with podcasts because they are not as intimidating as creating video.
There are advantages of podcasts over video as well. They are portable and can be listened to on the go. During commutes, while exercising and other places where it may not be possible to watch videos. You can distribute your podcasts on various sites such as iTunes, podbean and talkradio.
With today’s technology you can even record your podcasts over the telephone or mobile phone directly to the web. Be sure to give a clear call to action in your podcast directing your listeners to visit your site and sign up to your list.
17. Press Releases
Writing a press release is an easy and free way to get your business noticed and drive traffic to your site. By simply announcing that you are there to many web publications you can draw attention to your website and let others know what products or services you have to offer.
A good press release will have a story to it. Not just a cut and dry description of what you sell. Rather it should give the reader a bit of insight into who you are and what makes your business different from the rest. The idea is to give information and to entertain. Be dynamic and personable but do not be over-the-top.
Once you have written your press release, you will need to submit it to as many of the press release distribution sites as possible.
Visit our Press Release page for a list of press release sites where you can submit your announcement for free.
18. Buying mailings.
There are marketing services that have large mailing lists of opted in subscribers that have been divided according to their interests and demographics. You can purchase a mailing to 10,000 subscribers for as little as $300. Now this method is not for everyone as it may not fit into your budget yet, but it is something to think about to jump start your subscribers.
For this to be really effective, you must totally understand who your target market is. Are they mainly male or female, what is their age group, what is their income range? If you get the demographics right, this can be a very powerful way to reach a very large audience for a reasonable price.
When you consider how long it would take you to build a list of this size of your own, the amount of hours you would have to spend, etc. The cost becomes very reasonable in comparison. But as I said, this is not for everyone.
You must avoid “renting or buying” an email list. This is not only unethical as it is against most privacy policies, you also cannot guarantee that the list will be active or within your target market. The services I mentioned above are legitimate marketing businesses who have gotten permission from the people on their lists to send them offers. You must always follow the ANTI-SPAM laws in your country.
19. Free Videos
Video is the way of the future in marketing. Actually if you aren’t already using video to promote your site you are missing out on some serious traffic. Videos are likely the single most powerful and successful way to add large amounts of subscribers to your list every day.
Because the web can be an impersonal media, customers are looking to find ways to connect with sellers. They miss that face-to-face contact they would have if shopping in a more traditional way. Creating video, even if your face does not appear in the video, can be the one key piece that is missing for your customer when they are shopping for products. Chances are, if you have a video on your website and your competition doesn’t, you will close the deals and they won’t. It is that powerful.
By simply having a video that asks your visitors to put their name and email in the box your conversions will likely triple or quadruple. Telling your customers about your product or service in a video will relieve much of their anxiety about purchasing online. It also makes a memorable experience for them and they are more likely to return to your site.
You can even create a real following by doing a weekly video blog or a series of videos on a particular topic. Create a video channel in YouTube or other video sharing sites.
Whether you are using screen capture video, video recordings from your digital camera or web cam, or flash videos created on sites like Animoto, you will see much more success than without it. Another benefit of creating videos is the fact that you can submit them to places like YouTube, which is owned by Google. Your videos have a much better chance of showing up on the first page of Google.
Be sure to do a written keyword rich summary of the video on your site so the search engines will be able to pick up with your video is about.
20. Using Your Entire Website to Capture Leads
Your website should give your visitors the opportunity to give you their email address as often as possible. If your site is a large site, make the opt-in box a prominent fixture in every page and be sure to give the call to action on every page.
Your index page should be used to direct your visitors to the areas of your site you would like them to visit. The opt-in box should be your main goal of all pages and all content revolve around capturing their email. Do not clutter your pages with unnecessary images and flashy graphics that will distract them from your main goal.
You might even put your opt-in box as a contact box. Tell them to give you their name and email and you will be in touch to follow up with them to address their concerns and questions. Then on your first followup, provide them with your contact info and ask how you might help them.