Question: “Hi Ali… What were the key ingredients that allowed you to grow your ezine list to thousands eventually? Can anyone model your method and achieve similar results?”
—Laura Rodriguez, Awaken the Wisdom Communications, Silver Spring, Md.
Ali’s Answer: Hi Laura, this is a great question and shows you understand the value of building a list. The larger your well-targeted mailing list, the more successful your company will be. By continually adding new prospects to your mailing list, week after week, you’ve got many new opportunities to promote your services or products, and make new sales. And as you see your mailing list grow, you’ll also see your sales soar!
But you don’t want to fill up your mailing list with everybody and anybody. To get the biggest bang for your buck, it’s important to attract qualified leads who are actually interested in your products or services and most likely to buy them. After learning from some of the best online marketing gurus, as well as experimenting on my own over the years, I’ve distilled the secrets to identifying and successfully mining new opportunities to win thousands of new, qualified prospects.
First, you need to be clear on WHO your target market is… once you get clear on this, you’ll know where you should be looking for them.
Then, understand you need to build your list in two manners: steady streams along with fast gushes.
STEADY STREAMS include sources like:
* Organic search listings – make sure your site comes up for relevant keyword searches by your target market
* PPC (pay-per-click) ads – same idea, but you can pay to appear right on top of these lists right away
* Video marketing – for example, post informative videos on YouTube that come up for relevant keyword searches by your target market
* Social networking – build a fan base on Facebook and Twitter of your target market
* Article marketing — post helpful articles on sites where your target market visits often, and also sites where other publishers can pick up your article to repost (like ezinearticles.com)
* Blogs — you should have a blog where you post the same articles and helpful content that attracts relevant traffic
* Forums — participate in online forums where your target market is in large numbers
IMPORTANT: Your goal for all these types of outreach is to drive these folks to join your list! Make sure you have a strong opt-in page with a compelling and relevant offer that makes people want to join your list. (For example, you can see my FREE CD offer at www.AliBrown.com.) It’s good to even create a special landing page for this purpose too, where people only have one choice—to join your list.
FAST GUSHES are caused by creating events:
* Find other people who already have large lists of people in your target market and do joint ventures with them such as teleseminars or webinars. This takes a lot of setup and planning, but this is by far one of the best ways to quickly grow a list.
* Offline events such as tradeshows, conferences, speaking engagements, where you get in front of hundreds or thousands of people at once. (Do a drawing and collect business cards, making it clear they get a free subscription to your ezine, etc. My FREE CD is a great giveaway at conferences because it’s a tangible gift they get on the spot, they listen to it on the way home and learn more about all I offer, and I build my ezine list at the same time.)
* Media appearances on TV, radio, etc. can drive a lot of traffic to your site as well.
Well Laura, those ideas should get you started! For a step-by-step plan to help you grow your list—in both gushes and streams—check out my List Building System. It’s one of my top sellers and many entrepreneurs use it along with their team to lay out their list-building plan, A to Z!”
Love and success,
Have a question for Ali?
Send her your question about business and success now via this form.
Site Design & Development
Alchemy + Aim