This blog post was inspired by an email I received from a reader of the blog who was in the direct sales industry.

Her question to me was:

One thing I’m stumped on as well is what value to give others … I’m feeling like I can’t yet position myself that way as I’m still trying to figure it all out.

I realised that a lot of people knew they had to get leads into their business but did not really know the process for getting those leads.

So I decided to create this piece of content in the hope that it will give you some insight into what you should be paying attention to, on your online journey.

What You Will Learn:

• What are leads and why you need them in your business
• How to attract leads with a lead magnet
• What’s the best format for your lead magnet
• How to create your first lead magnet
• How to promote your lead magnet
• 3 Major reasons why you may not be getting leads in your business

What Are Leads and Why You Need Them In Your Business

Leads are people who may be interested in what you have to offer. They are prospects who have seen or engaged with your business before and have asked for more information from you, to help them consider whether they want your offer.

So let’s say for example, you have a blog and on that blog you have created a content upgrade for A Blogging Blueprint Guide.

The person who provides their name and email address to receive that content upgrade, becomes a lead or subscriber that you can re-market to via email.

Consider the example of a brick and mortar store. When someone walks into a store, they become a lead to the store owner as someone who may purchase their item.

You can therefore see and understand why having leads in your business is necessary.

If every lead you generate to your business has the potential to purchase your product or service, then that lead is profitable and helps your business make money.

So if your business, whatever it may be, is not getting leads on a daily basis, then that is a major problem.

If no one knows that you are open for business and they are not seeing your content or you are not talking to them about your content, then there is no way for them to be inspired or encouraged to purchase your product or service and you should aim to fix that.

That is what this blog post is for and I hope that by the end, you will work on generating your first lead or subscriber for your business.

Once you know how to generate a lead, you will know how to get more of them as it’s simply a matter of repeating the process.

How To Attract Leads With A Lead Magnet

First of all, let’s address the topic of what exactly is a lead magnet.

A magnet attracts things to it right? Well a lead magnet is something that attracts leads to it.

So it is any piece of content that will attract your visitor to become a lead. They become a lead by exchanging their contact details, whether their name and email address, for that piece of content.

Therefore if you’d like to generate leads for your business, consider creating a lead magnet.

Your lead magnet should be something that is of a high perceived value by the visitor. Think for a moment, about your niche and what do you perceive as valuable information, that you know, that you can teach to others?

This should stir your ideas for your own lead magnet.

My subscriber said that

I’m feeling like I can’t yet position myself that way as I’m still trying to figure it all out.

Don’t think that you cannot create a valuable piece of content because you’re new to all of this. I like to think that everyone has something that they can teach to others. If you’re struggling for ideas here are a few places you can go to for help:

• Ask people who represent your ideal client or customer what their biggest problem is?
• Go to niche-related forums and see what people are asking. Don’t know any forums? Ask Google.
• Do you belong to any Facebook groups? Get suggestions from the members by asking a question about their biggest problems.
• Look at what your competitors are doing. Model after their lead magnets. You can even opt into their email sequence to see what they’re saying to their leads.

And if you’re still unsure what valuable content you can create, there are websites that can help you with this by offering their own products for sale which you can then give away.

These products are known as Private Label Rights products. In internet marketing, private label rights is where the author of the product sells the intellectual property rights to the purchaser, giving the purchaser the right to use their work and mark it as their own.

So if seller A creates an article or eBook and sells it to person B, person B can now claim to be the author of the article or eBook when they buy the private label rights to the product.

Some great PLR websites are:

• IDplr.com
• The PLR store
• Resellers Superstore

If you are concerned about creating your own valuable content to be used as a lead magnet, then you can purchase products from the above websites and use it as your own lead magnet.

What’s The Best Format For Your Lead Magnet

A lead magnet can come in the form of a PDF report, an eBook, a video, a short email course, a podcast, a checklist, a workbook. The list is endless.

You can decide what form suits you and your audience and if you don’t know, then split test it.

The form may also depend on what you want to teach. Do you need to be visual in conveying your information? Maybe a video is the best way to deliver the message.

Can the information be documented and will be easy to understand? Then text may be the better option.

How To Create Your First Lead Magnet

Make sure that your lead magnet looks professional and attractive. Even if you do have a good piece of content to give away, sometimes the way our lead magnet is designed can turn a would-be prospect off.

It can also lead to unsubscribes if there is no motivation to finish going through the content because of a lack of proper attention in compiling the lead magnet.

For designing eBooks, PDF reports or any text document, I would recommend Canva or PicMonkey. These design tools are awesome for crafting the perfect report.

For creating videos you can use Screencast-O-Matic to record your video and upload it to YouTube or Wistia.

If you’d like to incorporate images into your lead magnets you can use Unsplash which has some beautiful, royalty free images or Shutterstock which provides millions of royalty-free stock images.

Aside from the design, make sure that your headlines for your lead magnets are interesting.

No one is going to opt in for your lead magnet if the hook is boring. Here are a few things to consider when writing your headline:

• Does it solve a problem? Example, 21-day challenge to lose belly fat
• Make it specific. Example, 10 ways to work from anywhere in the world
• Is it easily digestible? Example, free home-buyers 15 point checklist
• Does it arouse curiosity? Example, learn how I generated $10,000 in under 2 months without a product. This last one I actually did and wrote an eBook about it.

How To Promote Your Lead Magnet

Where exactly does your lead magnet fit into your marketing? Obviously it needs to be the centre of everything that you do for your business because it is going to help you meet new people who you may end up working with one day.

If you have a website or a blog, you can start filtering your visitors by installing your lead magnet there. If you’re using WordPress as your content management software, you can install your lead magnet on the top bar using a plug in like WPFront. Do you see that top bar right on top of this blog post? That’s what it will look like.

If you don’t yet have a blog, learn how to start one here. 

You can also use LeadPages to create your landing pages and publish it on your WordPress website or blog by using the LeadPages plugin.

If you do not have a website or blog but still want to get leads for your business, LeadPages can act as a standalone landing page which you can promote via traffic channels such as Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube or Twitter.

This is how I am able to generate leads from Facebook by simply adding a link to my landing page and asking people to opt in for my lead magnet.

I do the same for Pinterest (you can check out Pinterest Traffic Avalanche for a Pinterest traffic strategy).

3 Major Reasons Why You May Not Be Getting Leads In Your Business

So you may already have implemented some steps to getting leads but you’re finding it difficult to get one person to bite.

Here are a few things to consider:

You do not have enough traffic

Traffic is an absolute necessity for any business. From traffic you get leads. So if your traffic numbers are low, then this could be a good indication as to why you’re not getting any leads into your business.

Consider traffic generation strategies that increase the number of visitors to your website. The more people that see your website, the more people are likely to opt in for your lead magnet if it’s a good one. 

A good opt in rate for any lead magnet is 40-50%. So if you have 95 visitors to your landing page per day, that would mean that you can potentially have 38-48 leads per day.

Increase your traffic and get more leads.

People do not want your lead magnet

As already mentioned, if your lead magnet is boring or not enticing enough, people are not going to opt into it.

A good way to see what type of lead magnet works, is to test it with your audience.

I would recommend having two to three different types of lead magnets (if you are just getting started and don’t yet know your audience, make your lead magnet brief content) and see what is converting.

Once you know what your audience wants you can then create better lead magnets based on their desires.

Your landing page is not attractive

How your landing page/lead magnet looks to a visitor, is a good indication of whether they will trust you enough to provide their contact details in exchange for your lead magnet.

Poorly designed landing pages can cause visitors to abandon the site without even considering what it has to offer. When designing your landing page, I recommend using software that will create professional looking websites.

I use LeadPages because it is inexpensive at $37/month and their templates are beautiful. Do not be tempted to use free landing page software. Some do not allow you to track important elements of your marketing, their functionality is clumsy and frankly they can make your website look spammy.

When you’re starting a business, be prepared to invest in these tools if you want to stand out and be considered an expert by your audience.

Wrapping Up

I have given you the 411 on leads and how to get them for your business. These steps can be applied to any business model.

In fact, if you know how to create a lead magnet and what type of lead magnet to use in your business, then you’re on your way to selling your products and services.

Here’s a useful and very simple formula for you to remember when building any business:

Traffic + Leads = Sales

That’s it! That’s all there is to generating sales. Have a stead flow of traffic from traffic channels like Google, Pinterest, Facebook or YouTube, direct the traffic to a blog or website, offer them a freebie which is your lead magnet and follow up with them in an email sequence to generate the sale.

This was a super long post! Show me some love in the comments and let me know what you thought!

Related Articles:

• The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Starting A Successful Blog
• The Ultimate Email Strategy For Bloggers and Marketers
• The Complete Guide To Automated Sales Funnel For Any Business 

Cheers,

The post How To Get Subscribers And Leads For Any Online Business appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

If you do not have an email list then you better get to it.

The biggest mistake that I see online entrepreneurs make is having a healthy social media account but no email list to back it up.

Why is that a mistake?

Because you do not OWN your social media account.

All you can do is manage it.

The only people that own your social media accounts are the providers.

Your account can be terminated at any time. The social media algorithm can be affected at any time preventing you from reaching your audience whenever you want to.

A great example is the biggest change in the Facebook algorithm, notoriously called Facebook’s Great Organic Reach Decline of 2014.

Facebook has been changing its algorithm so that Facebook fan pages’ organic reach is on the decline.

If you own a Facebook fan page, you would have noticed over a period of time that the number of people who can see your post for free is significantly lower.

According to Facebook’s VP of Advertising Technology, Brian Boland, businesses can still succeed on Facebook even though there has been a decline in organic reach.

He outlines that several businesses have done so by using Facebook ads.

So in a nutshell, you now have to pay for your audience to see your post.

This is counteractive because if you paid for a Like campaign to attract followers to your page, you also have to pay to reach those people with your post.

This is the reason why it is so paramount that you start building an email list.

What Is An Email List?

An email list is a list of people whose email addresses you have, that you can from time to time send an email about a product or service you offer.

You may also commonly hear the term, email subscriber.

Just like you will send your social media followers offers or products on their newsfeed, with an email list the offer is notified via email.

An email list belongs to you.

No one can take it away from you.

You can backup your email list using an Excel spreadsheet and use it across multiple email marketing software.

Companies that have something to sell also refer to their email list as online leads.

Leads are people who can potentially become your customer.

An email list is also a source of income for some people. If an email list is engaged to their owner’s content and regularly opens that content, then the owner can make multiple sales with one email sent.

How To Get Subscribers Fast

If your goal is to build an email list as fast as you can then there are a few key pieces of equipment that you need to start:

• An email autoresponder
• Traffic

What is an email autoresponder?

An email autoresponder is a software that automatically sends emails to your subscribers.

You collect email addresses with an opt-in form or lead page which is then connected to an autoresponder and it does the work for you by sending emails to those addresses.

What is traffic?

No one really cares about you.

Unless you already have an audience, no one is searching for you.

Traffic refers to people.

Therefore you have to go out and find people.

The easiest way to find people is to target those places where people hang out online.

People usually hang out on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram – that is where you want to be and that is where you want to share your content.

To start getting subscribers I would recommend the following email autoresponders:

GetResponse create beautiful opt in forms and you will be provided with a URL that you can share on the internet or code that you can embed in your website or blog.

MailChimp create simple sign up forms that you can customise and share to Facebook, a website or blog using a URL

Aweber create a simple sign up form that you can customise and integrate with several third party applications like Facebook or WordPress. This is useful if you already have a blog or website as you will be able to embed your sign up form. You can also use a URL directly to the sign up form if you prefer not to use a website.

What content should you write? 

Everyone wants people to read their content so when sharing your sign up form and to ensure you can make the most noise you need to start by creating valuable content that people want to read.

Next you want to get your content in front of the most people.

If you do not know what people want to read then you need to find out.

An easy place to start is by doing keyword research using Google.

In whatever niche you are in, go to Google and type in a key word or phrase.

Google then gives you six to nine other key phrases that people are also searching for.

You can then use these key phrases which will form the content of your sign up form.

On your sign up form give people a reason to provide their name and email address to you.

No one will willy nilly give over their deets so you want to be sure that you are offering something that will entice them to hand over their information.

Some examples can be a free e-book, a free mini email course, a free video series or tutorial.

Where to find people?

Once you have created your content it is time to find the people.

Head on over to social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or YouTube.

Search for those same key phrases on these sites and look for posts that have a lot of engagement on it.

Engagement will include people responding to the post with their own views.

Check out major influencers as well.

Here is where you will stick your little sign up form with the URL you are provided by the email autoresponders.

Essentially what you are doing here is marketing yourself. You did not think it was going to blow up by itself did you?

Now put the work into it over and over and have fun.

The key to growing your email list fast is to produce tons of relevant content to your niche and sharing that content online.

It will take work but just one piece of content shared with the right person can cause it to go viral leading you to a huge influx in subscribers.

How To Build Your Email List For Free

GetResponse and Aweber give you a free 30 day trial where you can test out their service.

MailChimp is a free platform which allows you to create an email list up to 2000 contacts. Anything more than 2000 contacts require a paid subscription.

Getting people to your sign up form is a free option however you have to pay for this with time.

There are other ways that you can get people to your sign up form a lot quicker and more effortlessly however these methods will include paid advertising.

How to set up an email list step-by-step using GetResponse

Sign up for GetResponse’s free 30 day trial.

Once you have logged in, your first email list will already be created and you will see this listed in Your Current Campaign.

Click on the Create Form button where you will be taken to the List Builder Wizard

Select the form template that you want to use.

Using the drag and drop features design your sign up form the way you want it.

When you are finished click on the blue Save & Publish button located in the top right hand corner of the page and select Save & Publish from the drop down menu.

When you are asked Who will publish this form to your website select GetResponse will host my form if you want to be provided with a URL to share your content.

If you already have a website and want to embed it there, select I will install the form myself.

Now that your form is complete you want to create the content that your email subscribers will receive once they opt in.

To do that click Messages from the menu on the black bar then Create Autoresponder.

Where it says On Day enter a zero so that when the subscriber opts in they will immediately receive your freebie if you are offering one to them.

Scroll down and click Create New Email

In the Autoresponder Settings complete your Message Name, Subject and From fields.

In order to use mass email software like Getresponse or MailChimp you must use a private email address.

Therefore public email addresses from yahoo.com, hotmail.com or gmail.com are not recommended as this can affect email deliverability.

Sign up for a private email using Namecheap where you must purchase a domain to start.

Once you have a private email, enter this in GetResponse and ensure that it is selected as your From email address.

Click Next Step.

Select a Pre-designed Template or Start From Scratch

Enter your content on the template then select Next Step.

Select Save & Publish on the final page.

You will notice that your first autoresponder message is displayed on a numbered grid.

You can repeat the process to add more autoresponders by selecting Create New so as the days roll by each of your subscribers will receive emails on the allocated days.

How to set up an email list step-by-step using Aweber

Sign up for Aweber’s free 30 day trial.

Once you have logged in, create your first email list by selecting Manage List then Create A List.

Set up your list by entering the required information.

Like GetResponse it is recommended that a private email is used in the Sender Email field.

Click Next Step.

Describe your list and click Next Step.

Customise your Confirmation Message.

This is where you will tell Aweber whether you want your list members to confirm their subscription before they are added to your list.

The benefit of this is that your list has higher quality subscribers who must confirm that their email address exists.

This avoids the potential for any fake email addresses to be provided and can increase open email rates.

Click Approve Message And Create List.

You must now create a sign up form within Aweber so that people can opt in.

Click Sign Up Forms then Create Your First Sign Up Form

Design your form using the form builder.

When you are finished click Save Your Form and then Go To Step 2.

Change your form settings if you wish.

Click Save Your Form and then Go To Step 3.

When you are asked Who will publish this form to your website select Aweber will host my form if you want to be provided with a URL to share your content.

If you already have a website and want to embed it there, select I will install the form myself.

Now that your form is complete you want to create the content that your email subscribers will receive once they opt in.

To do that hover over Messages then select Legacy Follow Up Series.

Select Drag And Drop Email Builder and start adding your content. Click Save & Exit when you are finished.

Your message will be added to the Drafts folder.

Click Send Options then Add To Followup Series.

Confirm that you want your message to be added to the follow up series.

Who Should Create An Email List?

I think that all online entrepreneurs, business owners and bloggers should start building an email list.

However if you never intend to sell anything, then you do not need to build an email list.

Cheers

P.S Do you have any questions about building an email list? Do you have your own? Tell me in the comments. What do you like or don’t like about this process?

P.P.S You can also subscribe to my email list below for more internet marketing tidbits to help you in your online marketing and network marketing journey.

The post How To Build Your First Email List From Scratch appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

Three years ago, at the time of writing, I knew nothing about why a business needs an email list. I did not even know what the term “email list” meant.

If you are now, like I was then, and you are looking for the answer as to why your business needs an email list and you are yet to get started with your own email list, then I strongly recommend that you check out my blog post How To Start An Email List From Scratch.

I knew about the power of a large network on social media. I saw many network marketers building their businesses quickly because they had the support of their “tribe” that followed them.

I knew that in order to be successful, it was important that I build my own fan base, but I did not know that having an email list was as important as having a social media following.

You Have Control

I had few friends although at the time, I was building my audience. My engagement was low because of the algorithm changes from those social sites. They prevented the people that mattered the most, to see my content.

That now takes me to an important quote that I saw from an entrepreneur that goes like this “… you can’t build your content on rented land. So many brands and companies build their audiences on Facebook and Google+, which is fine, but we don’t own those names – Facebook and Google do.” – Joe Pulizzi, Content Marketing Institute.

It is important to understand that social media sites are not ours. We have no control over them and they can be taken away from us at any time.

A particular case in point is Facebook’s sudden change of their algorithm. This meant that companies who had over one million engaged fans suddenly had their engagement reduced to a pea size and were forced to pay Facebook to show their posts to their followers.

Now should we be mad at that? Not really. We do not own Facebook.

Now whilst building an audience on these sites is just another way to drive traffic to an offer that you have, you do not want to rely solely on this source.

You want to build an asset that will belong solely to you and that is in the form of an email list. This is the reason why you need an email list as a business.

An email list serves the same purpose as any audience that you create on social media. A place where we can build a relationship with the readers and share valuable information with them that is likely to lead to a sale.

It also serves as the best traffic you can get at no cost to you. People on that email list already know you and subscribe to you. It is an important business asset for any brand to own and it is important that you focus on email list building very early on in your business.

Monetise Your List

Subscribers are one of the most passionate people for your brand. The more passionate they are, the more likely they are to become your customers. This is why you read stories about marketers “sending one email and making over $100,000” in revenue.

These stories seem to be hyped up stories but when you have built an email list and you take care of it, nurture it and give your subscribers value, it can be profitable for you and your business. Ever heard that “the money is in the list”?

To reach these type of figures you must always be adding to your email list and providing real value that resonates with the people on that list.

Email Is Still Alive

Finally more people are using emails to keep in touch with brands than social media. According to Optin Monster, over 90% of people still use emails compared to just over 70% of people using social media sites.

Email activity is still alive and it is not just the older crowd who are opting for emails. 74% of teenagers use emails despite the availability of social messenger sites.

In conclusion, a lot more people are reading emails and that number is set to grow every year. This is why you want to start building your brand and asset by investing in something that will be your own and which you have sole rights to.

Remember no one can take away your email list. You have the right to store your audience’s emails and back them up in the event your email marketing provider closes your account.

The good thing is that you can always take your email list with you wherever you go. You, however cannot take your Twitter, Instagram or Facebook followers.

How To Build An Email List?

To build my email list I use a tool called Aweber. It is an email subscription service that allows you to collect people’s email addresses and send them relevant emails when they opt into your capture page.

So if your business is in the weight loss niche, you can create a lead capture page related to weight loss, collect prospect’s email addresses and send to them relevant content on losing weight.

If you are ready to build your own email list the following resources will be helpful to you:

• How To Build An Email List From Scratch
• How To Build A Profitable Email List Step-By-Step
• The Ultimate Email Strategy Guide For Marketers

Now go ahead and create your first email list!

To your success,

P.S If you enjoyed this article on Why You Need An Email List In Your Business, please leave me a comment or any questions below.

P.P.S  Wait a minute! Have you subscribed to my You Tube Channel where I give more free training? I am growing so be part of the community.

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