How To Build A Large Email List And Audience From Scratch
One of the most important things when itcomes to running an online business isbuilding a list and building an audience. Without a list and without an audience,you have no one to sell to. Now whenyou’re starting out, you might bewondering how to build a large emaillist and the audience from scratch. Andso I’m going to walk you through seventhings that you can do to go from zerolist and zero audience to thousandsand beyond. So stay tuned till the end as I walkyou through how to build a large emaillist and an audience from scratch. Heyguys welcome back to my channel, the bestplace for online entrepreneurs. My nameis Chrystabelle, I am a marketing coachfor online business owners. And on thischannel we do a lot of videos on onlinemarketing and online business, so ifyou’re interested in either onlinemarketing or online business, thendefinitely hit the subscribe button, andalso go check out all my other pastvideos. So when you’re starting out witha brand new business or maybe you’restarting out with building a list and anaudience, you might be wondering, okayawesome let’s get started. Now where do Istart?And so let’s break down those seven steps. Step number one, before youeven start thinking about building alist and building an audience, the firstthing you want to know is you got toknow who you are trying to get on yourlist and who you want as part of youraudience. One of the biggest mistakesthat I see online entrepreneurs makewhen you’re thinking about list buildingand audience building is they don’tconsider who they want to have on theirlist, who they want to have as part oftheir audience. And that is a huge mistake. When it comes to list building, when itcomes to creating an audience, size doesn’tmatter, alright? The quality of who’s on your list andthe quality of who’s in your audience isway, way more important than how big yourlist is or how many people are followingyou on Instagram or Facebook or you knowyoutube for example. So you want to startoff by first knowing who is your idealpaying customer. So your ideal payingcustomer is basically someone who isvery likely to be interested in buyingyour services or your products. And youwant to have as many ideal payingcustomers on your list and in youraudience, because at the end of the day,the content you’re creating, the socialmedia that you’re doing, it’s not just forvanity sake right? You’re not just goingin for vanity metrics. What you reallywant to achieve by the end of the day isto get customers out of your contenttheir customers, out of your social media,get customers out of your YouTube videosand your podcast. And that is why youdon’t just want anyone on your list. Soin my case when I think aboutwho do I want to have on my list, who doI want to have as part of my audience,I’m always thinking about that onlineentrepreneur who is looking to eitherstart, grow or scale their onlinebusinesses. I know exactly who they are, Iknow exactly what troubles they face,the problems that they face in theirbusinesses, the solutions they’re lookingfor. So I have a very clear idea ofwho they are. Now this brings me to stepnumber two. Know exactly where yourtarget customers are hanging out. And soonce you know who your ideal payingcustomers are and who you want to haveon your email list and as part of youraudience, now you need to know where tofind them. How do you actually findthese people. And so you want to thinkabout where do they hang out online? Whatwebsites do they visit? What FaceBookgroups are they part of? Who dothey follow online? What celebrities do they follow? What type of content do theyconsume? What social media platforms dothey use? If there are on Instagram, whattype of Instagram hashtags are theysearching for? So those are thingsyou kind of want to factor in as you’rethinking about where do I find my idealpaying customers. And this is importantbecause a lot of times people go intomarketing thinking that as long as theymarket everywhere – newspaper, radio,banner ads, paid ads, Facebook Ads,Instagram ads, YouTube ads, creatingcontent, creating blog articles, creatingYouTube videos, creating podcasts. Aslong as they are everywhere, somehow the ideal paying customer is gonna findthem. And that is not the way that youwant to do it, especially when you’restarting out. When you’re starting out,when you’re trying to build a large email listand an audience from scratch, you reallywant to focus down on one or twochannels where you know exactly that iswhere your ideal paying customers arespending a lot of time there. So forinstance, if you identify a Facebookgroup that you know that’s where a lotof ideal paying customers can be found,then you want to commit most of yourtime in that Facebook group. And then ifyou know as well that they love spendingtime on Instagram and they are searchingfor a particular hashtag, you also wantto create some kind of content onInstagram that uses that hashtag, becausethen that way you get found when yourideal paying customers are searching for thathashtag. If you know that they’re onFacebook very often, then maybe evenconsider paid ads. So paidFacebook ads, now that’s a route that alot of people go down the first timewhen they start an online business and Idon’t recommend it at all. The paidroute – running paid ads, is the fastestway to growing your email list andhaving an audience when you start fromscratch. However it isthe most expensive way. So if you’restarting out, I highly recommend all theother ways that you can do to grow youremail list to build your audiencewithout going down the paid route first. You can always go down paidadvertising much later on once you havemade sure that your product and servicesare indeed wanted by your ideal payingcustomers, that is something that theywant and need before you jump intopaying more money and jumpinginto paying money for paid advertising,that at the end day might not bringyou the results that you’re looking for. Now if you want to learn more about howto find your target audience, I’veactually already created a video where Ibreak down the three main ways to findyour target audience. Go check out thisvideo once you’re done watching thisvideo. Now the third step is to know whatwould get their attention. Now you knowwho they are, you know where they arehanging out, now the third step is to getthat attention. So how do youactually attract them? As you know theonline world is a very, very noisy world,so if you want to actually attract theirattention and get them to pay attentionto your brand, to your services and yourproducts, then you need to find out moreabout them so you want to know what aresome of the problems that they face. Whatare they searching for, what are theycommonly searching for, what are someof the keywords that they’re searching for. Whatare some of the key phrases that they’researching for. What kind of questions arethey commonly posting in facebook groups?What type of content are they typicallyconsuming online, or what type of content arethey posting online, on Instagram, on Facebook? The more you knowabout them, the more you can understandwhat exactly makes your ideal payingcustomer tick. Now step number four is tocreate a freebie that would then attracttheir attention. So like I mentionedearlier, now that you already know theproblems that they face, the emotions thatthey have, the things that make them tick,now you can create something thataddresses that attention. So for instance,if you know that they have an issue withproductivity, could you create a freebiethat addresses that problem withproductivity? Because they’re facing apersonal problem about becoming moreproductive, when they see that there’s asolution out there that’s free, they getattracted to it. Now there are different typesof freebies that you can create,everything that ranges from PDFs to freeebooks to free guides to free videoseries to free videos to free challenges. There is a range of freebies that youcan create to meet that attention. Nowwhen you’re starting out, I recommendthat you start off with a simple freebie. So don’t go right for the video series. Don’t go right in forthe challenges. What I recommend is tocreate something simple, something simpleto consume for them and something simplefor you to create. So something simplewould be like a PDF, like a checklist. Those are easy to create, it would takeyou maybe a day at most depending on howskilled you are with designing and allthat, but it’s easy to create, it’s alsoeasy for them to consume. At the end of theday, people don’t really want to downloadfreebies that would take up a lot oftheir time especially if they don’t knowwho you are yet. So for example, if I amnot well known and I start to createthese really complicated andcomprehensive freebies that requires alot of time to consume that freebie, thenthey’re not gonna do it, they’re not goingto complete it. So what you want to doespecially when you’re new to this is tocreate something so simple that is easyfor them to consume. And then as you getmore experienced creating freebies and asyour audience and your list starts togrow, then it will be a better time tostart to move into things like five-daychallenges and three-part videoseries. Now step number five is to createa landing page or a squeeze page tocollect those email addresses inexchange for that freebie. Once you’vecreated your freebie, now you’ve got tocreate a place where you can actuallycapture those emails in exchange todownload that freebie. So for examplehere I have a freebie on the top tensales generating activities that you cango download on my website. Squeeze pagesare usually kept simple in terms ofdesign. All you really wanted to have isan image of the item that you’re givingaway for free and a brief description,and then asking for their name and theiremail addresses. You don’t want to gettoo complicated when it comes to squeezepages, you want to keep it as simple aspossible. Here’s a little tip. Try toremove your masthead if possible, andthat is the top of your website. Youdon’t really want to have a lot of linksat the top because then you get themdistracted. In a squeeze page, I’m reallytrying to keep them on the page, I’mtrying to get them to do one thing andit is to give me your name and youremail addresses. I don’t really want themto go ahead and start clicking on things. I just want them to give me theirinformation and in exchange for afreebie. Now the tool that I used tocreate my squeeze pages is a combinationof WordPress and the Thrive Architectplug-in. So my entire site is built onWordPress and the reason why I useThrive Architect is because I love thedrag-and-drop function that it has. Itallows me to quicklycreate a squeeze page with no codingknowledge at all. And if you want tolearn more about Thrive Architect, you cango ahead and click the link in thedescription below to know more about it. Now if you don’t use WordPress or youdon’t want to use Thrive Architect plug in,some of the tools out there allows youto create landing pages are Unbounce oreven Clickfunnels. Now once you’vecreated your landing page or squeezepage, it’s time to move on to step 6. Andthat is to promote your freebie. Sowithout regularly promoting yourfreebies, it’s really hard to grow anemail list or an audience. People need toknow that your freebie exists out thereso that they can actually download it. And so if you want to start growing youremail lists or your audience fromscratch, you have to regularly promoteyour freebie. So for example, you mightnotice that I regularly plug my freelead magnets in my videos and also on mypodcast. Now the tip here is to plug thelead magnet that is relevant to thevideo you’re creating or to theconversation that you’re having. So forexample if I’m creating a video on sales,I don’t want to be plugging a leadmagnet on productivity. There is nocorrelation at all. Instead if I’mcreating a video on sales, I want to beplugging a free lead magnet that’s allabout sales. It could be a simple saleschecklist that helps people to get moresales. So the way I plug my free leadmagnets in my videos is just simply say”hey guys if you want to learn more abouthow to generate more sales, I have a freechecklist on the 10 sales generatingactivities that you can go download byclicking on the link below. ” So do you seehow easy it was to plug my free leadmagnet? Now what about all the otherplaces that you can promote your freebie?You can also promote your free leadmagnets on social media. So forexample, in Facebook groups. Many Facebookgroups have weekly threads where you canpromote your service or your product oryour freebies, and that’s where you canpromote it. You can also promote it on Instagram. Create a post about it or changeyour link in your bio to reflect thelink of your landing page or yoursqueeze page. Now step number seven isthe part where you want to connect thedots. Now that you have a freebie, youknow who you’re targeting, you have asqueeze page where people can downloadthe freebie, you want to make surethat you have an email marketingsoftware that you’re using to capturethose email leads, because you need tohave a way to house your audience. Nowthere are many email marketing softwaretools out there that ranges from freeall the way to very expensive. It really depends at the other day whatyou’re looking for and what you’retrying to achieve. Now when you’restarting out, it’s a temptation to gowith the free software first, for exampleMailChimp, and that’s ok when you’re firststarting out, but my recommendation is toalways have a plan on how you plan toscale your email marketing and youraudience building. So that’s knowing ifthe email marketing software tool thatyou decide to go with has the featuresand the capacity to scale as yourbusiness scales, to scalealongside with you. So some of the emailmarketing tools that I recommend thatyou try out is Convertkit. Convertkit isgreat for course creators, contentcreators. Another is MailerLite. I useMailerLite for my email marketing. It issimple, it is effective, there’re nofrills at all but it does the job. Nowif you want something a little bit moreadvanced, an email marketing softwarethat I recommend is Active campaign. Active campaign has been around for along time, they are highly trustworthy,they have a lot of features that are verybeneficial when it comes to building alarge email list and your audience fromscratch. So those are the seven steps onhow to build a large email list and anaudience from scratch. If you’ve beenfeeling confused about how you can buildan email list and how to build anaudience when you’re starting out fromzero, I hope that was useful for you. In the meantime I’ve created a freechecklist on list building you can godownload by clicking on the link in thedescription below. Now this checklist consists of all the things that you needto pay attention to as you’re trying tobuild your list, the things that you cando and should not do during list building. Now if you like this video, don’t forget to hitthe like button. And if you haven’tsubscribed to the channel already, go aheadand hit the subscribe button. Now if youwant to be notified the next time I uploada new video, definitely hit the bellbutton as well. Now if you want to learnmore about getting more traffic to youronline business and how to grow anaudience, go check out this video so that youcan start to learn more strategies andtactics. All right thanks for watching thisvideo, I’ll see you in the next video.