"The Tao Of List Building"

Why build a list?

You’ve heard it time & time again. List building is essential. The fortune is in the follow up.

The ultimate goal of marketing is selling. A list can support this goal either directly, indirectly, or both.

Yet still, I talk to plenty of people about marketing their businesses, & it amazes me to see how frequently they either miss the importance of list building altogether, or take a very stale one-size fits all approach.

Here’s my three-point checklist for building a vibrant list.

"Begin With The End In Mind!"

1 – The above quote from Steven Covey sounds like horse sense but when I ask people why they are list building, they give me a strange look & say things like, "I want to recycle traffic” or "I want more chances to make the sale" or “I want my customer to remember me”. These are invariably the same people that blindly jump on every list building system bandwagon that comes along, & then complain about the lack of results. I think it boils down to laziness, & a lack of focus & creativity.

Your subconscious success mechanism is a goal-seeking device. It doesn’t function properly on vague generalities. It needs specifics if you want it to work for you.

What exactly do you want to achieve?

Are you looking for a vehicle to sell more of your products? How much more? Which products? Are you looking to focus on people that have already bought from you, or is your list targeted toward warming up cold leads? Are you looking to educate your customers to reduce support costs? By how much? Are you looking to build your credibility as an expert, so you can sell services? Are you looking for a way to attract partnerships with big names in your field, because of the size & quality of your list?

Key point. Don’t limit your thinking by worrying about how you are going to achieve your list building goals, until after you’ve clearly defined them. Make them big, hairy, & audacious!

“Leverage The Law Of Reciprocity!”

2 – Once you have clearly thought out what it is you want to achieve, think about how you can achieve it & what resources you’ll need to do it. Do you need additional products? Do you need help finding potential subscribers? Do you need endorsements? Do you need help creating your content?

Who has what you need? Your customers, your prospects, your partners, your competitors, the press, your suppliers, institutions, other related businesses?

What can you offer them that they REALLY want in exchange for it? Was it Joe Girard who said, "you can get what ever you want, if you will just help enough other people to get what they want"? Now think creatively & do some research. You can help others to reach their goals with your money, your time, your relationships, your knowledge, with your ability to acquire new knowledge, with your experience, with your skills, the list is endless if you will just open yourself up to this principle.

“Slice & Dice!”

3 – When you understand the importance of having clearly defined objectives, & the principle of reciprocity, it’s time to focus on your market. Your master list should be comprised of tightly targeted sub lists. Each one closely matched to a specific need or goal.

If you publish a newsletter for example, don’t confuse a subscriber with a lead for a particular product that you are trying to sell. Before you go too far into selling mode, find a way to segment those that have an interest in what you are offering. You can do this based on your subscribers past responses, how they got on your list, or by asking them to take some action that signals their interest. I subscribe to plenty of lists, & loosely targeted, self-serving sales pitches are a very common blunder, particularly early on in the subscription.

You need to warm things up first. This is even more important if you decide to buy subscribers. It takes time to make a purchased list, YOUR list.

You can see I’m in a philosophical mood. When it comes to list building specifics, I’ve learned a lot from Joel Christopher. Joel lives eats & breaths list building. He’s got some great list building tools & tutorials for growing your roll of raving fanatics fast & strong.

Here's a secret for you. List building is all about quality first & quantity second. Let me give you an example of how not to begin with the end in mind. I see all kinds of people building lists by listing in an ezine directory. You can get a lot of subscribers to a list this way. But what are people who cruise ezine directories looking for?

They’re looking for competitive information. They’re looking for partners. They’re looking for places to submit articles. Nothing wrong with that, but these are hardly the kind of people that are going to buy something. They tend to delete most of the emails without even reading them. This is an example of quantity versus quality thinking.

Here’s an example of a good idea. It’s from the Dan Kennedy school of borrow, twist, & profit. Find a debate within your industry, the more controversial the better. Make a post on a discussion board, (every interest group has them) inviting the members to post their opinion in a poll on the subject. On the thank you page, tell the respondents about the benefits of subscribing to your newsletter, & that the final poll results will be published in it. Now that’s a targeted subscriber that you can warm & segment!

Yes, real list building is a little work, but it's worth it. Like any other marketing endeavor, think principles first, techniques second.

Go on over to Joel’s site & see what he’s got to say.

Get his programs, they are excellent, but apply them with your eyes wide open to your own specific business objectives.

"The Latest Trend In Delivery" (Blog + RSS)

And by the way, don’t confuse list building with the delivery method. List building is not synonymous to email. Think of lists as identified communities of interest. Keep your mind open to the most effective ways to stay in touch with them.

The latest trend in newsletter distribution & list building is to publish the content to a blog & use RSS feeds to notify subscribers.

There are some clear advantages. Not only do you bypass the whole SPAM problem, but there is growing evidence that you can drive a lot of additional traffic to your website this way too.

More on list building, and RSS feeds next week.

Until next time, Good Selling!

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