Day 3.4 Grow Your List 2016Planathon.com

Hi, my name is Nathalie Lussier and I am the creator of the free 30 day list building challenge. And my topic for you today is how to plan for list building in the new year. So since we're talking about planning, I wanted to share one of the ways that I like to think about list building, because it'll really help you figure out what your strategy is going to be as you tackle list building in the new year. So there are four different ways or different strategies that you can use when you're building your list. So the first one is the slow and steady approach. So probably by default, if you're not doing a whole lot of list building right now, that's what you're doing. And there's actually nothing wrong with the slow and steady list building approach. That's actually how I built my very first list way back in the beginning. And this is more about setting up different things in your business that will, over time, continuously add people to your list. So maybe those that means blogging every week, maybe that means doing guest posts. Maybe it means doing a couple of things here and there that will add up over time and send people back to your website to opt in and join your list. So slow and steady tends to rely more on organic reach, on search engine optimization. So if you want to learn more about that, I've got trainings and courses, and you can also Google tons of information about how to do more of that SEO type optimization. And when it comes to the slow and steady, it is an effective way to build your list. It is something that will build week over week, you know, month over month. And by the end of the year, you will have added hundreds, if not thousands of new people to your list. However, if you're not being kind of intentional about your list building with the slow and steady, it can be very slow. So that's where you want to start to look at layering some of these other strategies. So number two is the short focused burst approach of list building. So this is when you tell yourself, okay, for the next little while, I'm going to focus on list building. And for you, when you're looking at your 2016 or the next year, think about, you know, when could you actually fit in some of these list building activities? Usually this happens between launches or between big projects. So it could be that you'll, you know, reach out to 10 different places to be interviewed on a podcast, or maybe you'll write five different guest posts and publish them all sort of at the same time, or at least Try to send them and submit them around the same time. So this short focus burst approach is really awesome. It also works really well with ads. So if you want to run Facebook ads or other types of ads, you might not want to run them the entire year just because you'll run into ad fatigue and then you'll have to switch up your ads and it becomes almost a full time job. But if you want to do maybe ads for a whole month, where you're promoting a specific thing, that can be very, very effective and it's also pretty easy to do. So that's number two, short focus bursts. Now number three is the big splash. So this is when you do a big launch and this tends to be something that you'll do maybe once, maybe twice a year. And this is something where you've got all your ducks in a row, you've got tons of resources, and you know, everything has to line up around the same time. So what is the benefit of doing a big splash versus a short focused burst? So when you're doing a big splash, you've got this boom effect where all of a sudden you're everywhere at the same time. So if you've ever seen a launch, which obviously you have, if you're here and you're watching this, then you know that when there's a launch going on, you're getting emails from different people all talking about the same thing. You're seeing it everywhere on social media. You're just, it's just kind of bombarding you everywhere. And the good thing about that is that if people who aren't necessarily in this bubble are seeing this information, they will see this person or they will see this new business that they might not have heard of and decide to check it out. So that to me is huge. It has a ripple effect when you have this much buzz all at the same time. So the difference between the short focus first, where you might say, okay, this month I'm going to be doing lots of guest posting, or this month I'm going to be doing lots of webinars, is that you will have a lot of different people, usually affiliate partners or other strateg partners that will actually help you spread the word for you, or if you are doing guest posts and webinars and all kinds of things, you'll actually schedule them to all go live around the same time. So you have this kind of taking over the Internet kind of feel. And that can be super, super powerful. So I've talked about the three strategies. There's one more and that one is entering different verticals. So if you've done a lot of list building, maybe you have a great opt in freebie that you've done. Maybe, maybe you have some prelaunch content that you've used, but you have maybe something that you've created that will help you build your list that you give away in exchange for somebody's name and email. So the idea here with the verticals is that you can take the exact same opt in gift that you've already created and you just show it to a different part or segment of a market, or you enter different markets. So let's say that you are in a market that helps handmade designers. So you might have an opt in gift that's just for them. And maybe you'll repurpose your opt in gift and create a different opt in page that is not for handmade people, but that's maybe for musicians or maybe for bakers or somebody else that's kind of related to the handmade market, but that would actually never have seen the handmade stuff that you've already created. So what this allows you to do is to tap into different sites, segments, or different little bubbles of the Internet that might not have heard of you because they were just not in the immediate circle that you were promoting in. So the good thing here is that you've already done a lot of the work. You've already done the setup, you've already done the creation of the thing that you're doing and you can just start to kind of shop it around to different marketplaces and sort of infiltrate different communities. And this to me is a really smart way to go. Because you're not reinventing the wheel. You don't have to create tons of new content. Even though I have to admit, as business owners, sometimes that's the fun part. But this is something that maybe you can have somebody on your team help you with, or you can just strategize and come up with a brainstorm list of different places that you might want to approach to start to build some of those different verticals. And then over time, as you add more verticals, you get to be known in different circles and that can just increase and improve your list building efforts. So now that I've talked about the four different strategies for building your list, I want you to think about which of these you're going to commit to and then start looking at your calendar to see how they'll all fit in. So maybe you will do a big launch or a big splash and maybe that's something that you're already planning for the year or maybe you know that you're not going to have a lot of time this year because you've got something else happening. So for example, personally I'm having a baby in the early part of 2016, so I know that I'm probably not going to be doing a launch, I'm probably not going to be doing anything massive. But if I set it up right now, I can get some residual, you know, list building happening from the slow and steady approach. So if I do some guest post post now, or if I do more SEO search engine optimization now, I know that I'll still keep getting people coming to my website while I'm off on maternity leave. So that is really what I want you to do now. Take out your calendar and actually schedule in time to do this list building stuff that we talked about. And if you're not really sure what kind of opt in gift to create or how to do any of this stuff that we talked about, you know, like approaching people for guest posts or approaching people to be interviewed on a podcast or, or hosting webinars, then make sure to sign up for the free 30 day list building challenge because they walk you through exactly how to do all of those things step by step over 30 days. And obviously you don't have to do everything in 30 days, but if you go through the program, which is totally free by the way, you'll actually see how to do some of these things. I've got scripts for approaching people to be a guest poster, scripts for asking to be a podcast guest, all kinds of stuff like that inside the challenge. So it's totally free. Just go to 30daylistbuildingchallenge.com to sign up now. And of course there are other ways that you can build your list in the slow and steady approach. So one of the things I'm also going to recommend is to check out popup ally. So it is a tool that my husband and I developed together and it's a WordPress plugin that you install on your website that helps you to build your list faster. So even if you're using slow and steady, you'll actually increase your conversion rates on your website and you can design not just pop ups, but beautiful opt ins for all over your site. So now that you have kind of that big picture strategy that we've talked about, you've decided when you're going to do some of that list building, it's time to also implement some of these little tweaks on your website that'll actually help you build your list faster so that everything else that you're doing, all the guest posting, all the interviews, all that stuff, will actually feed back into your website and help your list build faster because you've got all the right tools and setup there in place. So definitely check out Popup Ally. We've got a free version and a paid version. So if you go to ambitionally.com popupallypro you'll get the full scoop on how to get started with Popup Ally. And of course, if you want to start doing webinars and you've never done that before, check out Webinar Ally. It is super amazing, super affordable, and we've got a really special offer for you. You're gonna just kind of go crazy when you see how ridiculously affordable it is, but you can just go to ambitionally.comwebinar ally to grab your copy of that plugin, which also helps you do webinars even if you're not technical. So I have talked a lot today. Definitely go ahead, schedule some time to do some list building in the year. It does not all have to be at the same time, but just knowing when you're going to do it is going to make a huge difference and actually ensure that you do focus on list building and then make sure you've got some of those tools on your website to really help you maximize all the efforts that you're making out in the world, spreading the word about your business. Thanks so much for watching. I'm Nathalie Lussier and I can't wait to hear about your successes with all your list buildings. Thanks again and talk to you soon.