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List Building Part 1: Why Build a List and How Do I Do It?
Rick Henkin
List building is an essential tool for online marketing. Without a list of customers and/or prospects who are interested in your product or service, who will you sell to? And who will you sell to again and again? It's an accepted maxim that your biggest source of new business is your current customers. It can take a lot of money and effort to acquire a customer the first time, but once you have him or her, it doesn't cost you much at all to sell to them over and over again. Why you have to build a listBecause of the incredible amount of choices people have online today, it's not enough to just drive visitors to your sales page or website and expect them to buy, join, subscribe, register or whatever it is you want them to do. Remember, they don't know you at this point, you don't have credibility with them yet and it's highly unlikely that they're going to give you their credit card information. So, what do you do? You have to build a relationship with people, you have to earn their trust. You do that by offering them valuable content such as tips, advice, how-to's, samples, a list of resources, an ebook, a white paper or whatever will show them that you are an expert on the subject in which they're interested. In exchange for this valuable information, ask them to give you just their first name and email address via an opt-in page (the more you ask for at this point, the less likely that they'll give you any information). Read our article, How to Build an Opt-In Page for more information. Your opt-in page sign-up form will be linked to an autoresponder, a computer program that answers emails sent to it with a sequence of pre-written automatically delivered responses. Autoresponders eliminate the need for you to manually send emails to each and every person on your list. Read our article, How to Create a Sign-up Box Using AWeber's Web Form for more information. The relationship is built over a period of time as you periodically send new content (not sales material) to your list. Tell them about yourself, your background, etc. Let them get to know you. Then, you can begin to slowly include sales information in your emails. How to build a listThere are many methods you can use to build your list. Shown below is a mind map illustrating several of the most common. This mindmap was created using the online mind mapping tool found at MindMeister.com.
Don't be concerned that you need to use every method shown to be successful. Just use whichever are comfortable for you. The two most important things are 1) offer something of value in exchange for their email address and 2) build a relationship with your list. This is the first in a 7 part series. |
