Episode #058: The Daily Listbuilding Method
The Daily Listbuilding Method
Are you ready to grow your list consistently and daily? In this week's episode of the podcast Zach breaks down his daily listbuilding method that he's used to grow and engage his audience for his promotions, launches, and evergreen sales.
In this episode you're going to learn:
What it takes to create a high quality & in demand freebie
The EXACT method that we use to grow our list each and every day
What to do with your list as it starts to grow
So tune in, listen up, and get ready to grow your list!
LINKS MENTIONED:
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
This is Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast, episode number 58, and in this episode we're talking about my daily list building method. So if you've been trying to grow your list, want more leads, or just don't know how to get more people to pay attention to your emails, this episode is for you so stay tuned.
Hey, hey, hey, not so average marketer, welcome to another episode of the podcast. I am, as always, excited for this week's episode because I want to talk to you a little bit about growing your email list on a daily basis. Now, I think when I say that, people get overwhelmed because they feel like, "I'm going to have to be on social media 24/7," or, "I've got to have a process or a system." And while that is partially true, I want to talk to you about how I grow my email list every day and how I think about list building a little bit differently.
So I think the best place to start is by understanding the way that I think about list building as a slightly different method for growing your audience. So in the old school marketing, and I'm talking like 2015, so not that old school, what you used to do is you would do a webinar or a challenge or a video series, and you would basically say, "I'm going to grow my email list and sell something at the same time. I'm going to use my launch to grow my list." And the reality is that doesn't work as well as it used to because the market is getting more and more saturated. More people are selling courses, memberships, digital products, and people are starting to be more discerning about what they invest in. They're starting to be more discerning about where they make purchases. And so it's harder to get someone to opt into your email list on a Monday and purchase from you on a Friday.
And so when we think about list building, the way that I like to think about it is, I'm actually not just growing my list for the sake of getting people to buy from me. I'm growing my email list for the sake of nurturing an audience. Now, I know that you might be like, "Yeah, of course, that makes perfect sense. I'm growing my audience, I'm nurturing my audience. That's the whole point of growing my list." But I want to take one step back and really cement the fact that it's not about getting instantaneous sales. And a lot of times we hear in the online marketing space things like, "You need to have your email funnel," or, "Set up your automated webinar." And yes, yes, and, you don't necessarily, with list building, need to generate revenue right away.
Now you might be like, "Yeah, I do. I want to get people to buy from me and immediately turn around and generate revenue." But I want to tell you how we look at list building a little bit differently in our business. We, on a month to month basis, operate at a slight loss on our advertising, and you might be like, "That doesn't make any sense. Why would you do that?" Well, because overall, we're operating at a profit in the business. How does that make sense? Well, number one, we have regular promotions. So we just came out of a promotion that we did that brought in several thousand dollars, which basically covers all of our advertising costs for the month. We also grew our email list over the last month by about a thousand people. So what that means is that our email audience grew, we generated revenue, and now everything else that we do supports our audience. And what I want you to understand is that growing your email list is not just about this instant gratification, this instant revenue, it's about growing a true audience.
So when we go into our launches, our challenges, our promotions, we're not trying to convince people cold out of the blue to buy from us. Instead, we're reaching out to people we have an existing relationship with and saying, "Hey, if you're ready to take this to the next level, here's how you can work with us." Now, if you want to go a little deeper on this concept of growing a warm audience, we'll link up in the show notes episode number 52 of the podcast, The Sphere of Influence in Marketing, which goes really deep on this topic of growing your warm audience, understanding the growth of your warm audience, the importance of growing your warm audience. But for now, I want to just suffice it to say that it's better to grow your warm audience all the time than it is to rely on instantaneous growth and gratification when you need money.
One of my friends posted on Facebook the other day, and I don't know the origin of this, they said, "Marketing in good times is in preparation for the rough times." And that really stuck with me because that's how we think about list building. It's like you shouldn't be list building when you need the money, you should be list building 24/7 so that when you need the money, you have the audience to promote to. So with that being said, it's kind of like, "That's all great in theory, Zach, but how do I actually get people onto my email list?" Well, first things first, it starts with a really good freebie, and I've talked about this on the show before, but I always like to just jump back in and review a high level. Your freebie needs to hit four major touchpoints.
First things first, it needs to be relevant. So a lot of times people create freebies because they know what their audience wants, but it's not relevant to their primary offer. So you need to make sure that your freebie is relevant to the offer that you want to sell down the road. The second thing you need to do is make sure that your freebie is digestible. What I mean by that is when people give you their name and email, they're not necessarily overly invested in your business, so you want to make sure that whatever you give them, they can get through in a reasonable amount of time so that they actually use it.
You also want to make sure that it's high value. You want to make sure that your freebie is incredibly valuable so that people download it and go, "Oh my gosh, this is so good. I want to keep learning from this person." Now, high value does not mean you give away your best secrets, it just means it creates a sense of transformation or a sense of growth in the audience that's using it. And finally, you want it to be problem-centric. So many people create freebies that are like 10 tips for this or my best that, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but people are looking to solve problems. So what I say is make sure your freebie speaks to and solves a specific problem.
So if you're listening to this show, there's a good chance you already know, but your freebie is the thing that you give away in exchange for the name and email. But with your freebie, what I recommend is that you create it as a Facebook ad that runs in perpetuity. This is where people start to get nervous or unsure because maybe you've tried Facebook ads in the past and they haven't worked for you, or maybe you're nervous about spending money. But here's the thing, a Facebook ad works for you 24/7. I know it's tempting to be like, "I'll just do it organic. I'll just grow my audience with TikTok or Instagram Reels or Facebook Reels." Whatever's hot right now, there's always going to be something that's like the it social media platform right now. And what I want you to understand is that paid advertising is the only thing that you really have a lot of control over.
You can post on TikTok and cross your fingers and hope you go viral, and I understand there is this element of formulaic understanding of the algorithms and going viral, but the reality is, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, they don't release how their algorithm works. So no matter what you do, no matter where you learn, no matter what you implement, you're just guesstimating what's going to work. You're assuming, "Hey, I hope this works." With advertising, you're saying, "Hey, I know for X amount of dollars I'm going to get in front of my audience. They're going to see my content," and let's not sugarcoat it, there's a chance that they're not interested in the content, but we know they're going to see it. It gives us control over our visibility. And when it comes to list building, visibility is the currency.
In terms of the Facebook ad itself, I think people get really overwhelmed because they're like, "I need a landing page and I need a pixel and I need traffic, and I need this, I need that." But what we recommend in our business is that you use what's called a Facebook lead ad. Now, a Facebook lead ad is basically an ad that exists on the Facebook platform. So let me explain this in detail. When you typically think of a Facebook ad or a freebie, what you think of is, I'm driving traffic to a landing page. I'm going to have people click on my ad, they're going to go to my website, maybe you've built it on Leadpages or FG Funnels, and you send them to a landing page where they enter their name and email and then they go to a thank you page.
A Facebook lead ad doesn't send people to your website. Instead, what it does is it has people enter their name and email on the Facebook platform. Now, the reason I like this is threefold. Number one, Facebook can track 100% of the activity that happens on their platform so your reporting is incredibly accurate. Number two, after iOS 14, it became very challenging to retarget audiences that went to your website because certain devices, specifically iOS devices, aren't as retargetable as they used to be. But if somebody's entering their name and email on Facebook, you can retarget them with additional advertising with pretty much 100% accuracy. The third reason that I love these is that they get really high conversion rates, which means the leads tend to be cheaper.
Now, I'm going to just address the elephant in the room that I hear when I talk about these ads, which is, "But Zach, these ads are lower quality leads." I find that the quality of these leads is still really good. Honestly. We find that with our audience, we find that with our people. And the reason that people say these leads are low quality, in my experience, is that we're, again, what we talked about earlier is that we're looking for that instant gratification. We're looking for, "I want to generate revenue right now, as soon as the lead comes in, on that money, ASAP." And to me, it's like passive income or the perfect funnel is kind of like the holy grail of online marketing. It's there, we're chasing it, but it's hard to find. It's like you're not just going to stumble upon this perfect funnel that grows your audience.
And I'm not saying don't make offers to people when they first join your email list and don't put people into an email sales funnel. What I'm saying is don't become reliant on this instant gratification model because it's not as easy as a lot of people make it out to be. It takes time and energy to get a funnel humming along, to get a funnel converting. We have our agency side of our business where we run ads for people, and we find time and time again that people come in and say, "I'm ready to crush it with my funnel," and the funnel doesn't convert, even with high quality leads, even when we drive leads directly to their website, or try lead ads, you don't see that promise that we hear so much about. So these lead ads, they're cheaper, they have decent quality leads, but they're going to require you to nurture your audience. They're going to require you to be in contact with the people who join your list.
Now, if you're listening to this and you're like, "This sounds great in theory, Zach, I love this idea. However, I'm not really sure how I'm going to get this set up." If you head over to heartsoulhustle.com/bootcamp. Again, that's heartsoulhustle.com/bootcamp. You can check out our Facebook ads for List Building Bootcamp. And this is a training that we hosted live originally, but now is set up on Evergreen so you can watch it anytime that you want. And what it's going to do is teach you how to set up these lead ads in about five days. Now, in reality, you'll actually have ads up and running by about end of day two, beginning of day three, if you follow along. But you're going to have a whole week where we teach you everything you need to know about running Facebook ads for lead gen.
So as you grow your audience and you start running these Facebook ads for lead generation, I want to also briefly touch on the importance of communicating with your audience. And the big question... Actually, let me back up for a second and say, how much should you be spending on these ads? I recommend starting at five to $10 a day. However, if you're emailing your list frequently, you are going to find that you get unsubscribes. Because people are unsubscribing from your email list, you may have to adjust your budget so that your growth outpaces your unsubscribes, and that's super important to understand. You want your list to be growing faster than you're getting the unsubscribes from the email list.
So once you've got people on your email list, how do you nurture them? Well, I recommend two things. One, I recommend regular email. Just email them at least once a week. Now, for us, that's easy because we have a podcast. Maybe you have a blog, maybe you have a YouTube channel. I like to try and email once a week with a piece of content, and I'm trying to get people to engage with my content and listen to my content. So I'm always trying to get my podcast to have more downloads, more listeners, more engagement. I'm always trying to reach more people with the podcast. If you're like, "I don't have a podcast, I don't have a blog yet, I'm just getting started," the best thing you can do is tell stories.
Now, I have a past client and consultant that I've worked with who has a really good grasp on storytelling. And one of the things that he said to me that really stuck out is that you have to find stories in the mundane. So think about the things that you do in your life. What are the things that you do that can relate back to your business or relate back to your audience? So for example, to give you something really specific, I have this Trixie Mattel custom Barbie doll, and I shouldn't say custom, they produced them, but they were limited run. And the way that you bought this Trixie Mattel doll hoop, by the way, world-famous drag queen, absolutely obsessed with her, but the way that they made this doll was they pre-sold it. And I bought it on pre-sale, I put a deposit down, and then I waited almost a year to make the final payment and get the actual Trixie Mattel fashion doll. And I thought, what a good lesson about validating your idea, what a good lesson about allowing people to buy things before they're totally ready so that you can gauge demand and make sure that people want it. What a great lesson. And so I wrote about it and I sent it to my list.
Now, here's what I think, is that you can weave sales into storytelling. So we're always making offers to our list. We might talk about the Facebook ads for List Building Bootcamp. We might talk about our membership masterclass. We might talk about so many different things and weave them into our stories, because there's this really, really old saying, and I think it's a little played out, but it's true, facts tell, stories sell. And so as you start communicating with your list, as you start telling them stories, what you do is you deepen the connection. And the reason I love story is because you do end up sharing a little bit about yourself. If you're listening to this and you're like, "World-famous drag queen, Trixie Mattel, I'm all about learning more." You're going to listen to more episodes, you're going to respond to my emails, you're going to engage with my content. If you listen to this and you're like, this guy's crazy and not interested, 10 out of 10, do not recommend, you're going to unsubscribe. And that's okay, because what it does is it attracts the right people into my audience and it repels the wrong people out of my audience.
Because, again, we hear these things all the time, but they're so true. People buy from people. They don't buy from the idea of you, they buy from the reality of you. And so I just want to encourage you that as you're growing your list, as you're running these lead generation ads, as you're getting people into your audience, make sure that you're communicating with them, because you don't want your list to get stale, you don't want people to go, "Who is this? Who's this guy talking to me?" You want people to be like, "Ooh, Zach's back in my inbox. I cannot wait to see what he's talking about today."
So as we wrap up, I just want to review a couple of things from today's episode. First and foremost, you want to grow your email list every single day, and that starts with a really good freebie that's relevant, problem-oriented, high value, and digestible. Once you've got that, you can set up a page on your website where people can drop their name and email. But if you want to run ads and you want to keep it simple, consider running Facebook lead ads. Facebook lead ads happen completely on the Facebook platform and allow people to opt into your freebies without going to your website, which means less friction, higher conversion rates, and lower costs on your lead. And we talked about this, yes, that does not mean that your leads are lower quality, it does mean that you need to nurture your leads more consistently. And when it comes to consistently nurturing your leads, the easiest way is to produce a weekly piece of content and send it to them, and also to tell stories, because stories allow us to connect with our audience and build a true deeper connection with who we are, what we believe in, and what we stand for.
Now, I want to let you know that if you want to get the full show notes, transcripts, everything that we talked about today, you can head over to heartsoulhustle.com/nyap058. Again, that's heartsoulhustle.com/nyap058 for Not Your Average Podcast, episode number 58. We'll have all the show notes, links to the bootcamp, links to episode 52 that we talked about earlier, a full transcript, and everything you need to get the most out of this episode. So I hope you got value today, as always. Again, there's just so much importance in growing your list every day. I can't wait to see you out there doing just that. And until next time, stay not so average.
