Episode #025: The Importance of CONSISTENT List Growth & How To Do it
The Importance of CONSISTENT List Growth & How To Do it
If you've been thinking about growing your list this episode is for you.
We're talking about the importance of consistent listbuildling - and it's not just WHY listbuilding is so important, but how to do it!
When you tune in you'll hear...
-> The Importance of list growth for CONSISTENT business growth, not just instant sales
-> The relevance of LCV (and what it is)
-> How we grow our list consistently and the strategies you can implement too.
I can't wait to hear what you think of this weeks show!
Links Mentioned on the Show From Zach:
Full Transcript:
This is Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast, episode number 25. And in this episode, we're talking about the importance of consistent lead generation in your business, not just why it's important, but also what we do to grow consistently. So if you're looking to grow your list and actually generate revenue on the backend, this episode is for you, so stay tuned.
Hey, hey, hey, not so average marketer, I am so excited for today's episode because I wanted to talk to you about the importance of lead generation in your business.
Now, we've all heard before that the money is in your list and you should always be growing your list and you always want to be getting people to opt in and send regular content and keep people warm, and yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, but how do we do that and why is it so important?
So I wanted to talk to you about something that we've done over the past four months to give you context for this conversation, and that is that we've spent over five figures on advertising since November 30th. So from December, January, February, through March 24th when you're hearing this, we've actually spent over $10,000 on our ads, a little closer to $12,000. And I tell you that because so many people when it comes to advertising think, "Oh, I'm going to spend X on ads and I'm going to make X number of dollars back right away, and that's the magic of advertising," but for us, all of that advertising spend that I just talked about was specifically just to get emails, names and emails for our list.
Now, yes, we had a sequence when people joined the email list, but even in our sequence, we promoted a product which would sell from time to time, but what we really did and what we really focused on was getting people to consume our content. So our email sequence that goes out after people join our email list was, "Hey, check out this automated webinar we've got for our membership," and if they didn't take that, then we just went right into a series of emails promoting some of our best blog posts, some of our best podcasts. And that was really, really powerful and it continued to help us grow our podcast. Our podcast has grown month over month since December.
And I tell you this not just because I want you to be like, "Oh wow, Zach, you spent so much on ads, but I couldn't do that," I'm sharing this with you because I want you to understand that in our business, what we've started doing in the last six to 12 months is prioritizing lead generation. Because what we've learned about launches, about promotion, about even automated webinars and automated funnels is that they're not converting quite the way they did years ago. And we're seeing this with some of our clients, we're seeing this with some of our students, and we want to talk about the conversation of it's not just about trying to get people to opt in and buy right away. There's also the bigger picture.
And the bigger picture is that for us, we sold out a coaching program, we had a really successful launch in January, we attracted a joint venture partner for a February launch, and like I said earlier, our podcast continues to grow month over month and we find that a lot of people that buy our products are podcast listeners.
So what I want you to understand is that there's so much benefit to growing your list. You have to be willing to say, "Look, I'm investing into my list because I want to generate revenue down the road," which also opens up the conversation for, when it comes to your lead generation, sometimes it's not about just getting that name and email, it's about also looking at the bigger picture of how that name and email is going to turn into a customer down the road.
Now, I will link up to another episode of the podcast, episode number 15, Developing Your Customer Journey, because I want you to understand that you have to get people off of social media, off of the internet, into your email system, but then you have to have a plan to actually move them through your business. And whether that is multiple low ticket products or one higher ticket product doesn't matter. It's about understanding that if you don't move people from free lead to paid opportunity, you can't increase what we call lifetime customer value. Okay?
Lifetime customer value is basically how much somebody is willing, not willing I should say, how much somebody spends on average with your business over the lifetime of being a customer, because the higher you can get the lifetime customer value, the more you can spend on advertising.
So I just want you to start to conceptually understand that growing your email list isn't about that quick profit that we've kind of been sold in the online marketing space. It's more about creating a slow burn of growth for your business.
So the question now becomes how do you consistently grow your email list? And I want to talk to you about a couple things that we've done in our business that have been helping us grow our email list pretty consistently. And the first one is that we are always running a lead generation ad. So 24/7, we have a lead generation ad running and that lead generation ad promotes a freebie.
And we've done a couple of different freebies this year. And just to give you context so that you kind of know what we've been promoting, in January, we promoted a 2022 business planner, and from February through March, we've been promoting a freebie on how to create a great lead magnet.
Now, like I said, we have spent over five figures on this and we've actually brought in nearly 3,500 leads as a byproduct to this. Our leads average between a $1.50 and $2.50. We've brought in over 3,500 leads just from running this ad all the time.
Now, a lot of people are going to ask, "Zach, how do I actually run this ad?" Well, if you head over to heartsoulhustle.com/leadgen, again, it's heartsoulhustle.com/leadgen, we have an on-demand video training that teaches you how to run this actual ad, like what to click, we actually take you inside the ads manager, show you how everything works. So you can absolutely check that out.
Now, what I also want to note about Facebook advertising is that we don't just kind of run one ad, right? We're not just running one ad that intentionally moves people onto our name and email list. We're also doing a couple other things. We're running add that retargets all the people who join our email list with Instagram content.
Now, why do we do that? Because here's the cool thing. We find that just because somebody joined our email list, it doesn't make them warm. It just means that they're maybe qualified or the right person, or they might be interested in working with us, but you have to understand that you also need to do work to warm people up.
What that means is that people who join our list also have the potential to follow us on social media. And while this isn't necessarily a conversation about growing your social media, I want you to understand that for us, we think that the two play together really well. Because the growth of our podcast, the sales of our lower ticket products, the promotion of our coaching program all happens on social media as well. And so we don't want to just move people into, "Oh, I'm so excited to get on your email list," to, "Oh, I'm just going to unsubscribe." We don't want that to happen.
And I'll also link up to an episode of the podcast, episode number four called Always Be Running Ads that walks you through some of our favorite strategies for growing your list and the ads that we're talking about for social media.
So that's the first thing. The second thing is that I'm consistently, and when I say consistently, I don't mean like every single day at 10:00 AM, I just mean on a regular basis, I'm creating social media content. For us, we focus on Instagram. And our Instagram, as a direct byproduct of those ads that we're running, is growing. So every week, it gets a little bit easier to reach people with my Instagram content.
And so I do Instagram Stories several times a week. I do Instagram Reels a couple times a week. I do a post once or twice a week, at least every time that our podcast comes out, and I'll promote that to get people to listen to the podcast and engage with us. And that's worked pretty darn well for us, but what's super important is that every week that I'm doing this, I'm getting more and more people to connect with my brand, to come follow me, to see what it is that I'm up to.
And so just to give you context, looking at the last 30 days of our Instagram, and I'm actually looking at these stats in realtime, we've reached over 75,000 accounts. We've engaged over 1,000 people in the last 30 days, and our followers are up about 1% every 30 days, which, when you have 7,500 followers, it means that we're adding 50 to 100 plus followers every 30 days.
So keep in mind that there is a huge benefit to growing the social media. Now, what I also do with my Instagram, because we get a lot of Instagram bio clicks, is I use Linktree on my. Instagram. And Linktree is a really simple app. We'll also link it up in the show notes, but what Linktree does is it lets you create a really simple landing page for people that click on your bio that rounds up your best resources.
So in our Instagram Linktree bio, we talk about the most recent podcast episode, we link to our automated webinar, we link to some of our low ticket products, we link to our membership, and we're always updating that with some of the most recent links, but there's at least a couple of links in there that actively promote something where someone can submit their name and email.
So I'm not just putting in the work of like, "Oh, let's grow the Instagram, let's grow Instagram," I'm also putting in the work so that when people follow me on Instagram, whether they're watching a reel or a post or an Instagram Story, they may go back to my bio and investigate how they can get on my email list.
Now, those are the first two things that we do for list growth is consistent list building via Facebook ads and then consistent engagement via social media, but the third and final way that I'm always trying to grow my list is regular launches. So at least a couple times a year, I will do a free launch. And it's usually a free challenge and it's an opportunity for me to attract lots of leads. And in our last promotion, we brought in over 800 new leads in a very short period of time, about 10 days to our email list.
Now, launching, you can layer in advertising, you can layer in referral partners, you can layer in organic marketing, which is why it's so important to be doing that regular growth on your Instagram and/or Facebook, because what we do is we actually move people into our ecosystem by saying, "Hey, come work with me," in our case with a five day challenge, "for five days and I'll show you how much value I can bring to the table for you."
And launching can be stressful, that's why we only do it a few times a year to be honest, but it's a really great way to invigorate your current audience, grow your email list, get more people connecting with you, and ultimately get more people on your email list.
Now, one thing that I will say is that for me, the launch is like the pinnacle of all the work that I put in. So I'm launching a few times a year, but in between, I've been running those lead generation ads. So I've got more people that are going to join the challenge organically. I've grown my email list. So I've got more people I can run Facebook ads to to get them into my launch. I've got more people listening to the podcast. So when I do an episode and talk about the launch, more people are going to leave the podcast and sign up.
So what I want you to understand is that growing your email list all the time is about getting to this pinnacle of the launch where you can generate a lot of revenue, right? Whether it's a membership or a higher ticket product, it's the pinnacle of all the work you've been putting in.
So I just want you to start thinking, "How can I be growing my list all the time and be setting myself up for these big pinnacle launches, for engaging and growing my Instagram, for growing my email list and sending out a weekly promotion?" Because the reality is we talk about growing your list, but it's this synergy of moving all these pieces together, launches, list building, social media, to actually grow our audience.
So I just want to recap what we talked about today. Today's a little bit of a shorter episode, but I think it's such an important conversation, and that is that number one, you want to be running, even for a couple hundred dollars a month, list building ads all the stinking time. Two, you want to leverage the growth of your list to leverage the growth of your social media channels.
Now, I told you what we do with Instagram. If Facebook is your primary channel, if TikTok is your primary channel, you can do the same thing, but you absolutely want to get your audience onto social as a secondary source of warming and nurturing.
And then three, we talked about how those two things together can bring you to the pinnacle of your launch, and that launch is where you generate a lot of the revenue.
So if you got mad value from this episode, please don't hesitate to tag me over on Instagram, @heartsoulhustle, either on your feed or in your stories. I love hearing from you guys and hearing what you thought about the episodes. Again, I'm @heartsoulhustle over on Instagram.
And we will have a complete transcript and show notes over at heartsoulhustle.com/NYAP025. Again, that's heartsoulhustle.com/NYAP025 for Not Your Average Podcast episode number 25.
Now, I want to wrap up by saying this, if you even take just one piece of advice from this episode and implement it, you're going to see growth in your list. And I don't want you to get overwhelmed or think, "I have to grow my list the same rate as Zach or as fast as Zach did," or, "I want that 10,000 on my list right now." It's a process. Okay? It took us a while. Even though I've been doing this for years and I've added... With my first iteration of the business, we grew the list to over 20,000 and then slashed it down to about 4,000, and now we've rebuilt it to about 13,500, but it's taken a long time in every iteration of my business to really dial in what works.
And so I just want you to understand that it's not about being perfect, it's not about growing your list faster than anyone else, it's about running your own race. So get out there, do something today to grow your list, and until next time, stay not so average.
