Jul 8, 2019
First, you need to know how to create something that people will want. The idea is that whatever you’re going to give away it must be a killer and it must have a long enough shelf life so that it can be used multiple times by your subscribers.
Useful Links
petergianoli.com/list-building-services
Episode Transcript
If I had to start my business all over again from the beginning but there were rules, rules like I have no product no joint-venture partners nobody knows who I am and I have limited resources to start with and just for fun I have rent due in 30 days – What would I do. Where would I start?
The question is given the option to do anything create anything build anything but within this set of rules what would I do?
If you have heard me speak at business seminars been following me on my blogs, on my social media channel or you frequent my website – you probably already know my answer – I’d start cracking on building a list.
A list will be so important short term and long term to your business as I have seen with my own business.
I’d choose to focus on list building because I know how essential its been for any business turn around I have ever been involved in it has been at the forefront of dramatic improvements for the many business I have worked with and in my own business it keeps on working right up until even this morning where my analytics told me that I’ve earnt 3 new customers overnight whilst I was sleeping.
On top of that my List has helped me launch every new product marketing service or sales training product that I have ever launched - And you too can be on your way to making your own list by the time you’re done listening to this podcast. I believe list building has been the key to my own and my client’s success Specifically I am referring to a list of email subscribers in both my case and the case of my clients – If I had to start again developing a list of email subscribers as quickly as possible is the one thing I would do.
Now you might already know this but let me describe it for you plainly so that it’s completely clear
“your email list is one of the most important assets your company will ever create.”
A prospect list is like a skeleton key to success because it will make major contributions to the most important other parts of your business as well as get customers. A list is like having sales on demand and that’s one of the things I’m going to tell you about and how to achieve this in this podcast.
I am going to tell you how to turn subscribers even brand-new ones into a steady stream of income.
Your List is your ultimate soapbox, it’s your ultimate platform for sharing ideas. If you share your ideas, knowledge, data and advice willingly and effectively to your tens, hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people regularly enough – the result is you’ll earn a place of trust and authority in their lives making everything else you do in terms of sales that much easier.
A list is freedom. No matter what the search engines are doing with your rankings or how Facebook or Google are acting at any time - your list enables you to carry your offers, your ideas and your opportunities word by word out to the world.
Comparing anything else that I can do to the eternal value of my email list and it’s just on a completely different level.
With my list I can literally press a button and in minutes I can track new customers and sales as a result.
Now that doesn’t happen when you’re working on your SEO or creating a video or whatever it might be, nothing works like having an email list.
Every first sale I have ever made for any of my new initiatives has always come from my list. My list makes sales for me every day and has been doing so since the year 2000 when I had my list building epiphany.
I still get people opening my email that joined my list almost 2 decades ago.
Another thing I want you to know which is very important is that I don’t have 1 million person prospect list not even close.
I don’t even have 100,000 people on my prospect list in fact most of the time when I’m sending an email out to my entire list I’m really only sending out in the thousands of messages.
So why is this worth mentioning?
Because creating a quality list is the first secret in email list building.
You need to swear by this. A quality new list always starts small. Quality is always more important than size when it comes to your list.
Your list doesn’t need to be massive to be powerful and effective it simply needs to be of quality and of course responsive.
Yes, your list is and will always be the game changer and that’s why I want to give you the go to strategy for building lists or increasing the size and quality of the list you already have.
Now one thing to keep in mind “speed is key”. There’s no reason to do this slowly.
It’s not like wine it certainly doesn’t need time to develop.
Most people think that list building starts with a little form on your website that says join our newsletter. Who ever told you to do that whoever told you that that was a good idea don’t like you because that’s terrible advice because building a list should be worthy of dedicated effort not just a little throwaway half baked implementation. I mean honestly who really needs another newsletter in their life.
List building deserves dedicated effort. Yes, I’ve tried literally dozens of different strategies and there are plenty of good ones but the best ones are the ones that you can get started with straightaway. In fact in my preferred strategy – the one I am going to reveal in this podcast - you can get most of it done in a day and then the fancy stuff done in about two more days but you spend most of those two days just kind of waiting around.
But first let’s put List Building into a reality check.
There’s a couple of things you need to know if you want to be successful with it.
First of all you need to know how to create something that people will want. The idea is that whatever you’re going to give away it has to be a killer and it has to have a long enough shelf life so that it can be used multiple times by your subscribers.
The other thing you need to get used to is the technology to drive this thing but don’t worry I’ve got some great tools you can use when it comes to technology.
Okay so how do we go about building our list. Like I have intimated the best way is to give something away in exchange for prospects email addresses and the permission to send them an email.
Okay, So what are you thinking right now?
I bet you’re thinking how do I know what to give away. Good, that’s the right question.
There are two challenges to the answer to this question.
#1 - what is the topic or main theme of the giveaway.
#2 - what is the form of the giveaway.
But first let’s make something clear, I no longer want you to call it a giveaway.
A giveaway is technically the limited opportunity to have or do something that is used to promote interest in another thing. For example, come and buy a pool and we will give you an umbrella.
Instead let’s call the thing that we are going to give away a lead magnet, because we want to magnetically draw leads to us. And when you’re creating this lead magnet if you ever have a hesitation or a bit of confusion about what to put into it just remember the name lead magnet - you want your magnet to be so good and so compelling that it will magnetically draw prospects onto your list, so that means you put your best stuff in your lead magnet
Once a client gets your lead magnet, I want you to receive comments like I’ve paid money for products that gave me less information than this free download you just gave me - great job!!! That’s your goal.
The other thing to remember is that you do not need to create a massively sized lead magnet in order to create a great list. In fact you need to discover the lead magnet to get you the highest subscriber activity first, then you can go back and fatten up the product if you must, but let me tell you right now there’s actually a better way to get even better results instead of making your lead magnet larger But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, the point is the lead magnet should contain information that will make a profound difference in the life of the person who reads it and that does not mean a gigantic 100 page book or report.
This kind of outcome can be achieved with a couple of pages of content and I’ve done it plenty of times.
Here is some advice that you should stop and write down…
“the best lead magnets have the most profound effect when they solve an immediate problem that your visitor has”
What’s more –
“the longer your visitor has had this problem, the higher their level of engagement they will have with your lead magnet”
This will translate into a higher conversion rate on your lead magnet landing page, the place where you offer to give them something in exchange for their email address.
So, let’s talk about that killer lead magnet. The idea isn’t always that obvious, it often won’t be apparent until you start to unpack what that particular market is worried about.
To help you determine this, you need to really get to know your market.
Number 1, what is the person grappling with?
What is keeping them stuck and making no progress, what is the right information they need and is difficult to get.
Number 2, what is the person stressed out about because they don’t have the answer.
Number 3, and once this question is answered it will reveal more questions and you need to try to anticipate them as well.
You see whilst your lead magnet might not answer all the questions if you can handle number 1 and 2 with your lead magnet your product or service you offer should be there to handle Number 3. Do you see, this is how list building leads to product or service sales, it’s really up to your insight into your market and your imagination.
You lead magnet needs to answer enough to get our new subscribers headed forward quickly in the direction of progress and activity, where they will inevitably run into their next set of questions and by that time you will have established yourself as a key and trusted source of guidance maybe even a service provider that they might then choose to use or purchase from.
So we need to use these three situations as a guide, like a little qualification test to see if you’re on the right track. When you’re brainstorming a topic ask yourself are they stuck are they stressed because they’re stuck and is getting stuck just the tip of the iceberg.
Lets look at an example PUPPY
Inevitably I have found that this all leads to two kinds of GO TO Lead Magnets – they are (drum roll please…) Buyers Guides and User Guides.
I recommend these to all of my clients.
The buyers guide is a collection of information that provides you with professional advice on what products or services are best used to achieve a desired outcome or in many cases just to be able to do something. People love buyers guides because they answer specific questions, they have a decent shelf life, they are share worthy and they demonstrate the quality of information that you the author are capable of giving plus they are quick to consume which means if your guide removes some roadblocks for your prospect they will be ready to move to the next part of their adventure and that might be an excellent time for you to make them an offer.
Let me repeat that again, after your new subscriber has consumed your buyers guide, it might be an excellent time for you to make them an offer. More on than that in a little bit.
Here are some examples of buyers guides titles:
The five essential tools for every podcaster
The top five email marketing tools for every business
5 tools every social media influencer must have
Now these are nice and broad but depending on what your particular market is you might want to do the same, but the best thing about a guide like this is you can easily drill deeper and more narrowly into a topic if you want to attract very specific kinds of people.
Here’s some examples of more specific buyers guide titles:
Five must have apps that make remote employees the best employees ever
7 ways to toilet train a puppy living in an apartment.
3 city permit requirements that could double the cost of your addition and how to avoid them.
Now let’s not forget our friends in the service industry You too can still use the buyer’s guide as a lead magnet for your service-based business, but in your case we may like to call it a user’s guide.
And there’s just one thing we’re going to do a little bit differently, along with making product recommendations in our buyers guide we may also want to offer activity recommendations in our users guide.
Here’s some examples:
Let’s say that you’re a home appraiser or dentist or a nutritionist what kind of users guide topic could you make?
For home appraiser how about 5 things you must ask any appraiser before you make an offer on that house
For the dentist The 5 ways dental porcelains can go horribly wrong and how to keep trouble from happening in your mouth.
For nutritionist The 5 spices that actually make the most power supplements for weight loss.
So we know when making a buyers guide or users guide as our lead magnet we are going to use the three questions we spoke about earlier to help us validate our choice of material for the guide.
Once that is complete you will now have to create the guide - and the good news is the way to do it, is fast, cheap and will result in an excellent product.
Let’s talk about the structure of your guide… in truth what we’re going to do is quickly create the equivalent of an e-book but without all of the writing.
So step one is to create the structure of our guide
I like to use pen and paper for this bit – but if you are a keyboarder – either will do. You need to create a table - two columns wide and five rows tall.
In the first column row 1 - detail what it is
Row 2 why it’s important enough to be in the guide.
Row 3 highlight your experiences with it
Row 4 alternative choices
and Row 5 how do I get it.
And then repeat the same five questions for every item you’re going to be reviewing so if you’ve got a 5 ways type guide obviously, you’ll have five of these blocks.
So let’s break that down…
Row 1 - what is it? That’s pretty straightforward describe what it is make sure you include every relevant detail about make model year release version etc
For example - if you are recommending an iPhone what model from what year would you be recommending
Row 2 why it’s important enough to be in this guide in other words what key features or capabilities of the product makes it your choice there’s usually more than one and if you feel the need and if the industry is the type that expect third-party validation you could detail this by citing other sources for backup justification. And remember, if it’s a value pick - make sure you add that idea to this section.
Row 3 highlight experiences tell your story or two on how this product saved the day or experiences for you. Outline your reasons for buying it or recommending it in the first place
Row 4 alternative choice - now some people usually argue with me on including this - it’s a valid argument it’s just that my reason for including it is also valid.
The argument against including an alternative is that it could cause confusion or paralysis analysis - throwing the reader right back into the “I’m stuck” loop of non-productivity, and depending on the market that’s not really a bad point, but my reasons for including an alternative choice is also about preventing the user from getting stuck but this time they’re stuck because they don’t actually have the same choices that you do.
Here’s what I mean, there may be reasons why your guide’s reader can’t use the specific product you’re recommending.
For example if they are in a different country or a specific version may not be available yet or the version you have is country specific and also let’s be honest having a low-cost alternative can be very useful too- maybe it’s easier to use that version and this also prevents them from getting stuck because they can’t swing the cost of your more expensive recommendation.
Row 5 - how do I get it? If you can find some coupons or product deals the outline to them exactly how to get the best product deal available.
Let’s look at an example:
5 low-cost yet high-performance tools to capture and manage your list building activities.
Well the 5 I’d outline and review would be
- A Weber
- Mail chimp
- Drip
- Kartra
- Active Campaign
So, in Row 1 - I’d list Aweber in one block, Mailchimp in the other and so on…
In Row 2 I’d list the reasons that each of them should be in this guide. For example, with A Weber I’d say
Its user friendly
Its very affordable around $20 a month for a beginner
It’s scalable
Whilst aweber themselves continually adds features to let you communicate with your database better and better – there is also an add on called AW Pro Tools for an extra $100 - that gives you a lot of added power.
It has an app that lets you check progress on the go.
It is API driven with a lot of other products. And so on.
In Row 3 – I’d tell my story.
I have been using aWeber since 2000. In that time I have scaled up my lists to around 20,000 subscribers – but thanks to aWeber and aWeber Pro Tools I am able to categorize my subscribers into sub lists based around what they are interested in and in doing so have increased my open rates, conversion rates and ROI by communicating to the right people, with the right message and at the right time.
In Row 4 – I would provide the story as to why I have moved most of my lists from aWeber to Kartra and the reasons why. Whilst this isn’t a straight out alternative – this move has suited me and likely to suit my readers who like me, wish to use their websites to generate leads and make sales of products or services. If this is your desire then Kartra eliminates the need for expensive and at times clunky add ons such as shopping carts, membership platforms and video serving platforms. As Kartra is one of the items I will be describing in this guide anyway – I do not need to go too far in this section.
In Row 5 – I would tell clients to go to aweber.com – I’d also provide my affiliate link because if clients use that, I have lots of information I can share with them to get started and make the most out of the service.
So, what I have just given you is a cheat sheet and from this cheat sheet I want you to create some 3 x 5 palm cards where you place the key points for your User Guide that you’d like to describe.
Then once you’ve done that, I want you to turn on your audio recorder perhaps the one on your iPhone and start talking about each of these information points, expanding on all of it in a very natural way. You should be able to do this easily because hey, this is what you know this is what you do and it’s easy for you to talk about anything related to your product or service. And to be honest, this is likely to produce your best gems and become the most profitable and successful lead magnet you can create.
Take your time with your narration is not going to be used as a finished audio product, so you can take pauses you can take rests you can have background noise you can make mistakes it really doesn’t matter… none of this matters because we’re going to get this audio transcribed
Once finished we are going to have this audio transcribed and professionally edited until it sounds like the most perfectly written product review.
If you do not have somebody that you currently use for transcribing I recommend 2 services Rev.com or Descript.com - both specialise in on demand services like document translation close captioning and of course audio or video to text transcription.(both these services charge around a $1 a minute.)
But let’s just take a step back before we start on narration – I want you to go ahead and finish the rest of the worksheet in other words if it’s going be a five tip guide you need to go ahead and do four more.
Whilst you are getting your transcription done. The next thing you need to do is
to write an open and a close.
You don’t get these transcribed but its best to get them completed at the earliest because your mind will be flowing with ideas whilst your in the zone so don’t put it off.
Now here’s a quick little formula for writing both the open and the close.
For the open restate the challenge of the topic, explain how having the wrong products or wrong processes has caused hardship or undesirable results…
That is before I was using the products here was the nightmare that was happening to me but there’s good news because the things that you’re about to discover have turned the topic into a successful process.
For the Close – recap what they’ve learnt give any final overall tips about the topic encourage them to take action and if they want a little extra help invite them to the entry point in one of your sales processes that is for more information register for this webinar or watch this video or read this web page etc .
Tell them, I’d like to get to know you more and so that I can help you more visit my blog, my website, social media sites and drop a comment or just say hi.
Two more steps and we’ve got ourselves a killer lead magnet - and here’s the good news these next two steps don’t need you to do much, except to coordinate other people working for you.
Your first step is getting your transcript edited so that it reads smoothly and fluently and believe it or not this is easy to do. Simply go to a place called Fiverr.com
At Fiver.com, just follow the steps to find a vendor.
Go to the search box and search for proofreading and editing
Once you see some people you are interested in, I recommend going to the ratings and the reviews - these generally give you the best possible information about each of them. I also suggest reaching out to a few of your top choices and sending then a message and get their replies.
This is the best way to see whether they have command of the English language and understand your mannerisms and your desires.
I like to ask a couple of questions like - When you’re editing a transcription do you feel comfortable making structure changes in order to create better reading content?
and
Do you like to use humour at all when you are editing other people‘s work?
The idea behind these questions is to get a sense of how these folk feel but more importantly how they understand your questions and your instructions and most importantly do they give you a timely and complete response to these questions.
Because if they can’t handle the questions, they probably won’t be able to handle your transcription.
So once you’ve made your deal and you’ve got your transcript of documents, then you simply go and find your designer to make our buyers guide or users guide beautiful and of course professional and in sync with your brand.
Once again go to fiverr.com or another service called upwork and this time search for e book design.
Here too I’d stick with the top sellers and go through my line of questioning again.
For your output I’d suggest a word document because you never know when you may need to change something or update some information or add an incentive for the user. Sometimes you may even choose to put ads in the midst of your content and information.
The point is once you have a PDF the editing process becomes quite a bit trickier so make sure you get a word version or of course pages if you’re a Mac user.
Either way you can then export the document to a PDF file once it’s finished, because this is what you give your new subscriber as a download not a word document or page document but a PDF.
That my friend is how to create a killer lead magnet, give yourself a day to do the worksheet a day to do the narration and write the open and close and then you’ve got a few days for proofing editing and e-book design.
So basically in a week you’ll have a slick professionally rendered professionally written educational free premium specifically designed to solve problems of the people who would make your best customer prospects - and all this only took five days with three of them having you just waiting around.
Now, I normally say it’s “time to party” -
So come on start creating your lead magnet now.
Thanks to this podcast you know exactly how to do it - and that my folks is a user guide, it works and this lead magnet normally marks the first step in a series of steps that will change your business in a way that couldn’t happen or at least imagined.
Please scroll down to the show notes and I have listed all of the website resources that I have mentioned in this episode and I tell you how to get your hands on the logical next step for you which is my lead magnet “5 low-cost yet high-performance tools to capture and manage your list building activities.”
Or if you want to take action right away go to petergianoli.com/list-building-services