Step One: Focus On The List
You need to start by focusing on your list. In fact, everything you do should have an opt-in whether it’s your ads or your landing pages—nothing should be shown without an opt-in. An assessment should be done of this each week.
Your list is one of the most important assets in any business. You need to continue building assets on a daily basis. Whenever money is spent, you need to be able to show something for it, and your list is what you are showing when spending money on advertising.
The list gives you a way to follow up with people who don’t buy. I do a lot of advertising with Facebook “lead ads.” With these ads, before they go to the page we’re sending them to, they fill in their name and email right on Facebook. We then know it’s a good email address.
Google has now extended their “lead ads” so that they can be used on YouTube and different Google ad campaigns. This means that when you are running ads on Google and people click a button, it will require them to opt-in, on Google before sending them to your webpage. This enables you to build a lead system very quickly that could add up to 100s of leads per day! Adding only 100 leads per day gives you 3,000 per month!
People continually ask me how to launch a product. If you have a good list, you don’t need to ask that question. You don’t need joint ventures. You are in control—just launch to your list. Do you think Apple or Microsoft rely on joint ventures to launch their products? No, they advertise and launch to their own lists. It’s only in the Internet Marketing niche that we seem to think we can depend on others to promote our business.
That is not a sustainable business model. We need to become self-sustainable in our business, and you can do that by focusing on building your list.
Step Two: Focus on the Following
Having a following is just as important as having a list. Actually, a following is just another kind of list. What it boils down to is the number of people following you on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, podcasts etc. My strategy for 2021 is to focus on and build that following.
Let’s look at some numbers.
I saw some research that shows that you need to create 3,873 videos if you want one million followers. I know that’s a boat load of videos, but those are the numbers supported by this particular research. I always want to know the numbers. Once I know the numbers, I can make them work for me:
- 1,000,000+ followers=3,873 videos
- 100,000+ followers = 1,171 videos
- 10,000+ followers = 418 videos
- 1,000+ followers = 152 videos
These numbers are based on that research— now that we know the numbers, we can create a plan.
One thing to keep in mind is that the people who have these numbers didn’t sit down and create all these videos in one set- ting. They created them over time working up to those numbers.
If you want to be aggressive, you could create one video a day which would give you 365 in a year. These can be on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, podcasts, etc. The point is to build your video library, no matter how you do it.
If your business is not where you want it to be it’s because not enough people know about you.
Armand Morin
And if enough people don’t know about you, your sales are going to suffer. The more people who know you and follow you, the easier it is to make sales. Once you have a lot of people in your following, you have a built-in market to sell your products to.
The big difference between a list and a following is that your following have connected with you. The videos, podcasts etc. let people sample you and know who you are. Those that resonate with you will follow you and subsequently purchase from you.
You can talk all day about what you know but if people can’t see you actually do it, they can’t comprehend exactly how much you do know. These “samples” let them know your true expertise.
There are personal risks when you build a following because you are putting yourself out there and on display. There are
people who won’t like you. There are people who will say you’re wrong and say bad things about you. Get over it.
You have to be consistent and put stuff out there no matter how scary it is. I make no secret of the fact that I am scared every time I put something new out there. I worry that people won’t like it. But I push myself because it’s how you build a following, and you need a following in order to grow your business.
Choose the medium you are comfortable with. I choose video. If you’re uncomfortable with video, then do audio. The import thing is to do something and to do it consistently. You have to make the time to do this in order to build your following.
Step Three: Focus on Free Trials
This is something we tested last year and are going to do more of in 2021.
There is no question that the economy has changed and is con- tinuing to change, so you need to test your market with these changes.
People are more concerned than ever about making the right decision when they purchase something. They want to try it out and make sure it’s the correct purchase.
In my experience, about half the people who take the trial offer will quit.
Let’s say 100 people go to your website and 50% of them opt-in. Of those 50, 50% will sign up for the free trial and 50% of those will stay once the free trial is over and half of those will quit. That leaves you with 12.5 people which calculates out to 12.5% conversion rate. So, on average, we end up with 12.5 paying subscribers out of the 100 people who visited our website.
That 12.5% conversion is the number we come up with when- ever we do something like this. So, the objective is to get as many people in as possible. By lowering the cost for them, you get more people in the door. Using a free trial offer is about as low as you can get.
The concept of this free trial is especially powerful if you are promoting a membership site, and it is one of the ways we are continually growing Marketing University.
