Last week I provided 8 tips to grow your email list. Each one of these tips needed a bit more elaboration to add value and help with figuring out the logistics to do it. This post gives you more information about the first tip, to offer something. It also elaborates more on what to offer to get new email list subscribers.
You’re in the business of helping people solve a problem, or make their life easier in some way. You’re equipped with a lot of knowledge and a lot of tools that help you do a great job. Your potential customers don’t have that same knowledge and probably run across you because they’re looking for a solution.
You have that solution, but you also have a lot of pieces that let you solve their problem. You don’t have to give away your whole service to give customer’s something that will help them. By giving away something that’s of value to you, and helps you, it helps build trust with your customer’s, therefore making them more likely to trust you. If your customer trusts you, they’re going to come to your business when they are in the market for what you offer.
Research Your Target Audience
It may seem simple to know what to give away. It’s not always so simple, though. Our brains are wired to think first about giving away something that we would be interested in getting. The problem with this is that our level of interest and knowledge in our business is well beyond the skill of your target audience.
Bridging the gap of where your target market is and where you are is not an easy task, and not usually one you’re in the business of doing.
I’ll use a service that I offer as an example and what I see on many of my competitor’s websites (though it’s admittedly getting better).
Online business branding relies heavily on a business website, so I build websites. My platform of choice for building these websites is WordPress because it’s good for me and for my client. Most if not all of my clients aren’t really interested in WordPress or even so much web design. It’s all about solving a business problem.
Many people in the web design field focus their content and sharing their knowledge in web design and WordPress, that’s it. This is great for attracting other web designers, but it’s not good if you’re trying to attract your target audience.
My target audience doesn’t care about WordPress in particular, so I’m not going to choose to give away something about WordPress. I’m going to choose to give away something more helpful to where my target audience may be in their business when they run across my website.
I help my clients build their online business brand to increase their business online.
Sell your solution (online business growth in my case), not your features (WordPress in my case). It takes research to figure out the solution you could offer AND that your target audience would find valuable.
Don’t you think a consultation on how to increase their business online would be more useful to a small business than a whitepaper on how to get started blogging in WordPress?
Now that you have an idea of what to focus on when determining what content going to offer to new subscribers, it’s time to get some ideas on the types of formats to offer them in.
Things You Can Offer
You’ve figured out your target audience and what’s useful to them, now it’s time to figure out the format. This list is not exhaustive, it should serve as a starting point for ideas. Each business is unique so it’s a matter of finding what works in your unique situation, I always recommend testing for your business.
- Whitepaper
- Deck
- Templates
- Product Sample
- Webinar
- Course
- Email course
- Consultation
Give Instant Access
Your goal in a business is to build trust, provide solutions, and give a great customer experience. A great customer experience doesn’t come from making visitors wait. If there’s no other option but to make them wait, at the least set expectations before a commitment is made so they know what to expect.
If possible, make it immediate, and make it valuable. Not many visitors want to wait until tomorrow and if they do, their first experience with your brand will be disappointing. If you are going to make someone wait, your offer better be a great one.
As far as making it available instantly, though, in most cases this won’t be a problem. Most major email marketing platforms offer a way for automation or on the subscription confirmation email, provide a link! I’ve used the latter method for some time on MailChimp and it works well.
Find Your One Thing
Before you start working away creating an awesome white paper, there’s some planning that needs to go into getting your offer right. There’s nothing worse than wasting your time which is what will happen if you don’t follow these steps.
- Do some research to find out what’s useful to your target audience, not you.
- Solve a problem.
- Make the offer.
- Give access instantly, don’t make them wait.
If you follow these steps and come up with a compelling offer, you’re going to capture attention from visitors to your website. Once you have their attention, it’s not a hard sell if it’s valuable and free. This is one method you can use to get new email list subscribers.
If you haven’t checked out the list of 8 other things you can do to grow your email list subscribers, check out the list. Also, subscribe to the online brand newsletter and blog to get each tip from the following infographic and more great information.
