016: First Steps To List Building

Hi there! Before we dive in today...If you're still in a position where you know you need another offer, you're a coach or course creator, now is the time to join my live workshop. It’s called Creating Offers-Let's Make Money Sooner. It’s literally designed to help inspire you to create an offer that you can put out next week and simply start bringing in more revenue. It’s a way of engaging with your clients, both established clients and new clients in a really simple and effective way that doesn't need to feel overwhelming, doesn't need 12 weeks to create a big course. It could really be a game changer for you over the next few months because we're going to come up with lots of ideas.

If that sounds like it's for you, drop into the show notes, the actual live workshops taking place on March the 15th. But there will be a replay if you can't make that and I really would love to see you there. Please do ping me with a DM. Dive into the show notes to find the link and hopefully I'll see you there! Link: http://www.creatingoffersworkshop.com/

In the meantime, let's dive into today's episode, which is all about email lists:

Welcome to Action Taker Tribe, I'm Jo Ingram. It's great to talk about action, but quite frequently, people say, yeah, great. I'd love to take action, but what actions should I be taking for my business? I'm not really sure what to be doing next. I'm not sure what's priority. I've been giving this a lot of thought because building our businesses has to be intentional. It's not okay to just wake up in the morning and think, Oh, well, what should I do today? Maybe I could putter around on Instagram, or maybe I could just write something. It’s just unintentional and if you really think about how successful businesses operate and how really high achieving CEOs work, they never just wander into a day and think, what should I do now? They really understand what their vision is and understanding that allows them to really get intentional every day about what tasks they do and what goals they're setting.

My Messy Bun Boardroom Program has just launched. It’s a program for solopreneurs, mostly coaches and course creators who want to really level up their business by applying intentionality and being a CEO in the most positive sense. As we were working together, one thing that was cropping up quite a lot that I really wanted to just dive into in detail today. That's the question of bringing people closer to you so they understand your brand. They understand really what you're offering. They want to know more and hopefully will become your clients and customers. That's building a list. Now, everybody talks about building a list. So my question to you is how are you getting on with it? Is it something that you see as important? If it is, have you started yet? How are you doing? Because building a list is something that I've realized creates what I like to call avid avatars.

These are people, your avatars, who will be your ideal customers. They are feeling really, really motivated by what you have to say. And I love all the content that we produce in Instagram and Facebook and all the other media channels there. Having a mailing list is where you're actually able to communicate in much more detail and bring people so much closer that they will buy from you in the future. It's no coincidence that you often hear that the money's in the list, a lot of the really big players in this space talk about this frequently, how they can launch straight into their mailing list and already sell out double digits and more just simply by sending a series of emails. So how do we get to that position? And it is never too soon to start. The simplest way to start is to create your first lead magnet.

Now you're probably really familiar with lead magnets because you've been downloading them already. You'll be saying, “Sure, I really want to get that checklist or see that guide.” And you give people your email address and it's simply producing something that other people will want to hear from you. It could be a PDF or perhaps a video or even a quiz, the simplest place to start. It's where I started with a PDF and created something that people are going to want to see. But here's, what's really important, a lot of people get this bit wrong, when you create a lead magnet think about what your offer is and make sure that the lead magnet takes somebody one step closer to your offer. I’ll say that again because it's so important. Make sure that your lead magnet takes someone a step closer to your offer.

Remember that you're not running a hobby, you're running a business. Ultimately you'd like people to be interested in what you're selling. So if you're selling a program or a course on a particular area, make sure that your PDF is really inline with what that thing goes on to do. So one good example, if you were going to do a program on helping people quit sugar. Your PDF might be on helping someone cut down on sugar while still enjoying foods they love or something like this. The point is that they would find that appealing and they would lean a little bit closer into what your final offer might be. Now, a lot of people I work with haven't even developed programs and courses yet, and that's absolutely cool, but make sure you've also thought about what your offer could be. If it's simply an hour of coaching, which is exactly where I started, then that's fine too.

Just think about the things that you coach people on one to one and create a PDF that helps them answer one of the problems that they have when they typically come to you for support in coaching, whatever area you might be, helping them. Then the next problem that often crops up when people think about setting up a mailing list for the first time is tech. Now I hear you because tech is such a massive hurdle for so many of us. There's so much tech that we have to learn. Now there's some really good platforms out there that you can use for your email. I started on MailChimp and it's free and you can get going really easily. There's some really good ones out there too, like Flodesk, which I'm currently using. Send me a note if you want my link, you can get that half price. But also you could use Convertkit, which has a really good reputation and there's others out there too.

But what tech you use specifically, isn't as important as what you do with it. Get some help if you need to, so you can get up and running. Once you do start getting people joining your mailing list, this is something that people too often forget, you must remember to nurture them. That just simply means talk to them. Communicate with them, create engagement, create a relationship, and the best way to do that is to make sure that you're emailing them regularly. Well, what do you mean by regularly? I think once a week, you're short people do email more frequently, but certainly if you're trying to build a relationship, you don't want to be emailing less than once a week.

Then to the next question, well, what do I say? And I think, you know, learning to communicate well by email is a skill and that's why there's so many copywriters out there who are supporting coaches and course creators in the industry. But it isn't rocket science. I think you just have to be really authentic. You have to talk about what really matters to you and what matters to them, where you have that commonality and where they can really learn from you, where you have something to share. This is where having a piece of long form content can be so helpful. What do I mean by long form content? It's just something that you produce potentially on a weekly basis that has a lot of content in it that you can share. Typically it would be a podcast or it could be a video series or it could be a blog.

This is where you tend to communicate in more depth and then you might be inspired to use that long form content to talk in an Instagram post and that's your short form content. So your long form content, whatever you're talking about that week could inspire your email too. A good example is my podcast. Hopefully you tuned in to last week's episode called ‘Let it be easy.’ It was something that I had been inspired to talk about because I had been making things so hard. Having had the revelation that things just didn't have to be that hard, I really wanted to talk about it because I knew that it wasn't just me, that felt that way. I thought by sharing my journey with authenticity, my story could help others on their journey too. So that week, if you're already on my mailing list, you would have seen an email that came from me talking about that a little bit more. Sharing the first step that I made also sharing a link to my podcast. That brings me to the next thing that I want to talk about which is how to use your email to share your call to action.

Now, calls to action are simply where you're asking somebody to take an action. As a result of reading it typically you'll just put a link in there. So for me to say, Hey, you know, I hope you've enjoyed what I've written, but if you want to hear me talk about it on my podcast, just simply click this link and off it takes you to the podcast. It's really great for taking people to your website or taking them to an Instagram post and just allowing them to engage with you a little bit more.

So as a quick recap, having a mailing list is really important for your business. If you haven't got one, start one today by formulating a really simple PDF. Take your time to really think how that ladders into your offer. So you can really add value and bring people closer to your business at the same time. Don't get sidetracked by tech issues. Just pick a platform, make a decision and get support if you need it.

Once people join your mailing list, make sure you nurture them. Think about what you can say to them every single week. If you have got a piece of long form content, use that to inspire your emails. And if you haven't, perhaps now's the time to think about what your long form content might be. Have you been putting off starting a podcast or maybe you really do want to do a blog. It’s really so helpful because you can talk to people about what's important to you and them regularly without the stress. If you're not already on my mailing list, you can go to my website, which is www.Iamjoingram.com and you can join my mailing list there and see what I have to say each week.

If you're listening regularly to my podcast, please do drop into Apple podcasts and leave me a review and subscribe and please also share this with anybody else that might find it useful. Have an action filled week. I'll speak soon. Bye now.

Just a reminder don't miss out on the Offers Workshop that I'm running on March 15th. It’s perfect for you if you're a coach, course creator who needs to be inspired to make another small, but effective offer that you can start increasing your revenue sooner rather than later. Dive into the show notes and join me. Bye now.

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