List Building is Great but There’s Another Thing you Can do to Bring in Leads…

We hear it all the time don’t we?

You must always be building your e-mail list.

Who hasn’t heard this time and time again?

If you’ve in the online marketing space for any length of time, you have heard that you’ve got to always be working on building a strong list.

This is in fact really smart advice.

We’ve had those times where Facebook’s gone down.

It was like apocalypse.

And that’s a clear cut example of times where we need to have people off our social media platforms and on our list so we can be in control of still having an opportunity to communicate with them when we want, on our terms.

Yet, with Facebook marketing these days, it is a game changer when you shift your thinking from “List building, list building, list building, I want people on my list,” to actually focus on audience building.

My name’s Jody, I’m from Social Charlie and we love that we get to help train and recruit ad managers for high ticket coaches to be their in-house ad strategist and crush it with their marketing campaigns every single week.

Now list building is indeed something that’s imperative to our business. We absolutely do need it, but when we get our mind beyond, “I need to build my list, I need to run my conversion campaigns,” you are in a much better (and smarter) place.

When you actually invest into some audience building, you have more people that you’re going to engage and foster. And also keep in mind that when you are just running your conversion campaigns, you are wanting to just capture that person at that right moment in the right space of time when they’re in that right frame of mind to opt-in.

Be Patient as You Build

Mobile-use is Up for Social Media, but people may not opt-in until they are ‘home’ or on a more convenient device.

They might be on the bus where it’s a bit bumpy. I know myself, I hate putting in my email address on the phone. It’s so annoying. I always hit the wrong button by mistake. There’s so many reasons why someone would be interested in your offer. They may even get to your landing page, but they just don’t opt in at the right time. So if we only focus on that audience to then be, “Okay. They’ve opted in, they’re red hot, we’re going to hit them hard and get them to buy everything we want to sell or book a call straight away,” we’re missing out on so much.

When we bring in our wide top of funnel strategy to engage, bring in like people who’ve engaged with our page and bring in people who have watched our videos, been to our website and nurture that relationship, you are opening up your marketing potential so much further because keep in mind who your ideal avatar is. If it is a solicitor and you’re wanting them, you’ve got an offer for them, they’re probably not so likely to opt in for what you have.

Or even watch a webinar. Okay? If there a busy person working 80 hours a week, they’re probably not going to watch a webinar from some of they’ve never met before. Sorry, but that is the truth. There might be that 1% or half a percent that will, but for most of them that’s probably not the right approach.

You want to get in front of them day after day with relevant content pieces that may progress along the journey is imperative to be able to build up your pipeline, to go not just be list building, but to be audience building and casting that net so much wider. Yes, there will be a point we will offer them, at times, to come over and opt-in. That’s something that we’ve developed in our trinity funnel, we call it, where there’s three streams over three months where we get people to progress along the customer journey. So there’s strategic times where we will actually be nurturing them and then where we go, “Okay, you’re ready to take the next step,” instead of just going, “Here, take the next step. Come on, sign up already.”

We’re very strategic with, nurturing them. We’re giving them some more information and then seeing if they are ready at this next point? Yes? No?” And if the answer is no, we’re ready to continue nurturing the audience. This is a very powerful strategy and it will nurture the relationships with your ideal client and bring in booked calls of people who are more likely to take action. And the reason this works is because they have been watching you and seeing your consistency.

Not Everyone Wants to Watch a Webinar

They haven’t had to go and watch a webinar, they haven’t had to go check the emails. The number of people that are opening emails these days, while it’s great to have them on your list, isn’t as much as people would like to hope. You can build lookalike audiences of your email list. Even better build lookalike audiences of people who have actually opened your email or build a lookalike audience of people who have clicked a link in your email.

That’s a good audience.

PRO AUDIENCE BUILDING TIP: When you’re creating your lookalike audiences, make sure your original audience, or as some refer to as your seed audience is close to a thousand as possible. So if you’re going for link clicks in your emails, it could take a little while to get there.

This means If you get 100 people on your email list, and you’re getting 30% regularly opening, that is awesome. And then when you take into account that you’ve spent $5 to get someone on your email list. And so that’s been five by 100 is $500 to get people, you know, to get 50 people. $100, $5 a lead, 20. 20 people on your list. 30% of them opening.

That is like six. Okay. That’s a bit small.

So that $100 has actually worked out to be about, or what is that divided by? Like you know, maybe $30 to get someone on your email list. $20 or so. So it’s like a $5 lead isn’t necessarily a $5 lead. I’ve probably completely screwed up the maths, but you know what I mean.

Don’t just focus on list building.

Why Focus on Audience Building and Not Just E-mail List Building

Focus on audience building and people are going to watch and connect with you along the way. This allows them to really get to know you more. Some people may not even opt-in for anything of yours. As long as you provide them with some great value information right there in their Facebook newsfeed, they will end up booking a call with you or continuing to see what you have to offer. If you are the right person for them and which you can show them that you are by the content that you put out there in front of them.

Now with that as well, I would strongly recommend that you don’t force people into a webinar, okay? Forcing them to register, otherwise you’re going to be missing out. Perhaps try putting that webinar just somewhere in your funnel or even a 10 minute video. I get asked and I hear people asking all the time, “How long should a video be more?” Facebook have their own statistics. They say that it should be 15 seconds to one minute. Now, that’s pretty low.

If you’re wanting to be increase an audience of people who are interested in what you have to offer, 15 seconds. I know people make a judgment in three seconds on social media, so 15 seconds is probably good, but we like to go for a bit higher. So I would generally be saying, “one minute and we target people with at least 25% which is 15 seconds.”

Always Be Testing

Obviously if you’ve got a three minute video, they’ve got to watch more at 25% and be a better quality audience. So test different video lengths throughout your funnel. I’ve got some 10 minute videos at the top of funnel going to cold traffic, which are doing really well. Most people would say, don’t put a 10 minute top of funnel, ad video at top of funnel. Test it and see what works for your audience. From there, those people continue to watch you and your trust with them builds. They go into your funnel, you’re nurturing them. You may get them over onto your list and build up that list. That’s fantastic.

Focus on Building a Quality List, Not a Quantity List

There’s something that I would really love to emphasize to you. I know I’ve been invited on summits and to join in and all of these things. And one of the requirements is just cause it’s a whole big list building exercise, you know?

You need to have 5000 people on your list. And list shame, I don’t have five some people on my list and honestly I’m okay with that. I’ve been busy building other people’s lists. Okay? But with my own list, I really only want people who want to be there, people who want to hear from me. Okay? So quality on your email list rather than quantity. And you can encourage people on your list to be opening those emails by building that relationship with them on on Facebook. Okay? I’m building up that audience, nurturing them so when they do go, “Yeah. Okay, I will opt in for this. I trust you with my email address,” okay? So many of us get all these spam things. Everyone wants our email address. “I trust you enough and I actually wanna hear more from you and I want to read your emails.”

That is a solid golden list.

That is the one that is going to be a profitable email list for you, rather than chasing 50 cent leads or people who are, you know, quite likely never going to open or buy. You’re just playing a numbers game with them. List building is an imperative part of the process. You do want to get them over on your list. And with that, you want to get broader than Facebook as well. Other platforms where people can connect with you so that you can build a relationship and nurture them. So if this building is fantastic, but look at audience building these days, it’s a such a powerful thing that’s right at your fingertips. Anyone can do it.

I’m Jody from Social Charlie and if you are running a webinar, head over and grab my calculator of the webinar profitability calculator.

I’ve said calculator so many times. It’s at https://jodymilward.com/calculator.

It is so easy to use. Simply punch in your details of how much revenue you’d like to make, how much your product is, and it’ll tell you what you need to spend in your ads, what your cost per lead will be, and a few other metrics that you can change there. And so it works for booked call funnel and application funnel and a lower ticket straight to sales page funnel. So I hope you found that valuable.

And until next time, I’ll see you on Facebook.