“I need help building my list!”

This is a universal problem that virtually every business owner has and it’s the number one thing we’re told people need help with.

This is a great thing for two reasons…first off it tells us you understand the value of a list. Recently I was in Chicago and went to a very good restaurant called Carnivale with Darcy and “the jewel” aka Mike.
It’s one of Mike’s favorite places to eat but just about every time he goes there he uses a discount offer from a daily deal site because they advertise on there all the time. Even though he’s been to Carnivale a number of times, not once have they asked him for his information so they could follow up directly with him. Instead they rely on using high-cost daily deal sites to promote get customers instead of simply going to their own list.

So simply by asking this question implies you understand the value of having a list so that’s good news.

Secondly…and really more importantly it’s a great problem because it’s one that can be solved.

Easily, and in a variety of ways!

One of my friends who is an online list-building “guru” recently released a video showing the four steps to creating a list building machine. In one example he shows how they took a virtually “dead” blog and now drive over 10,000 visitors a day to it, and more important capture over 600 new visitors information EVERY day!

You can watch the entire video by clicking here and below I’ll share with you the 30,000 foot view. This particular video is all about using your blog as the center of your lead attraction universe. If you don’t have a blog, he shares resources you can use to start one immediately, for FREE. Now for the four steps.

1. Create a Stand Alone Opt-in Page. Too many people make the mistake of driving traffic to their blog and hoping that a graphic on the right will get people to opt-in or subscribe to their blog. In reality, using text throughout the blog article telling people how to subscribe and making a clickable link will convert 10x-15x as many people into subscribers.

   This is sooooo important because if someone finds your blog through a search engine, chances are they may never find it again when left on their own so you NEED to capture their information the first time they come. Jeff describes various ways to do that here.

2. Sell Visitor On Why They Should Join Your List. Let’s face it. We all get plenty of e-mail so we’re really not looking to subscribe to more lists…UNLESS it’s something I’m very interested in, something entertaining, or something that will be helpful to me.

   For instance if I got to a blog and they say “Sign up to get the latest reviews on the best restaurants in the country, shared with you in a fun and interesting way, and get exclusive notifications of new openings and special promotions in your area!” I might subscribe to that because they really “sold” me on why I should subscribe. Chances are most won’t try and “sell” me on subscribing and simply say “Sign up for our e-newsletter.” No, thanks. Not interesting.

3. Split Test Everything!!! We all know we should test different things in our ads and our marketing but most of us really don’t do this because we’re not sure how or what to test. Jeff goes through a list of 7 things to test and shows you the tools he uses to do this easily and quickly on his video here and the top two you should test even if you test nothing else are your Headlines and your Call’s-To-Action.

   If you do nothing else first test your headline because this is what determines if people will even read or listen to the next thing you have to say. If you send out e-mails your subject line should be viewed as your headline. In a radio, or TV ad it’s the first sentence people hear. You need them to listen, read, watch if you’re going to convert them into a customer, client or patient so start with testing your headlines. Creating a swipe file of great headlines is something you should start doing right now for inspiration.

   Then Jeff says to test your call-to-action because this is where the rubber meets the road and people decide to continue their journey with you, or leave you penniless on the side of the road. You might be surprised at some of the simple tests he ran and their results.

4. Make Your Opt-in Page Easy To Find! You don’t want people to need to search to figure out how to subscribe to your blog, e-mail list, mailing list etc…you need to present it up front and often. You may think it’s easy to find because you created a button or have a link in your header, but why not have it in multiple places. Here Jeff shows you five different places you can advertise your opt-in page and the benefits of the different strategies. Obviously in this blog, I’ve used this simple strategy and made it virtually impossible for you to read this without being presented multiple times with the opportunity to check out Jeff’s full training.

Anyhow, those were my take-a-ways from his free training video. If you have a few minutes (about twenty actually) check it out. Even if you don’t have a blog, or aren’t marketing online you’ll see useful tips you can apply to virtually any media. Leave a comment below after you watch Jeff’s video and let me know what your biggest take-a-ways are.

Source: Dan Kennedy