Marketing

Using call to action triggers to drive conversion

November 7, 2018

A while back, we reviewed some of the general best practices if you’re going to run Facebook ads. I want to drill down a little deeper into one of the most critical tools you have to increase conversions – the call to action (CTA) trigger.

Bottom line – if your audience does not interact with your ad, you can’t convert them. You absolutely can and should use call to action buttons if that makes sense with your message. As you’re building your Facebook ad, the ad manager will give you pre-set buttons with a variety of options from contact us to download, learn more, sign up or request time.

I know it seems obvious but choose your CTA carefully. Match the offer with the button label, so people know exactly what’s at the other end of the click.

Don’t forget about calls to action that don’t require an actual call to action button. Your ad copy might invite the audience to click on the ad itself to take an action (give us your feedback, sign up for free product, vote for a favorite, etc.) or to answer a question that you pose either in your graphic or text.

Another element of a successful Facebook ad campaign is social proof. Social proof is public social engagement that other users can see. This includes likes or other reactions, comments, and shares of your ad. When someone sees your ad, they’ll also see who among their Facebook connections already interacted with the ad. These small interactions can matter just as much, if not more, than the ad copy when it comes to gaining more conversions.

For most of us, if we see a Facebook ad with ten positive comments and a couple dozen likes, we’re much more likely to pay attention to the ad than if it had no reactions showing at all.

The power of consumer-generated reviews and reactions carry over to this channel as well. That’s why, according to a study by KISSmetrics, Facebook ads with some sort of social proof had 300% more conversions, and 50% lower clicks per actions and cost per clicks.

In addition, social proof has an additional, less obvious, benefit. Social engagement boosts your relevance score, which gives you a higher priority in the ad bidding system. It’s a great way to lower your ad costs.

Once the campaign is launched, the best way you can improve the performance of the campaign is to keep an eye on the metrics. One of the most under-utilized is the relevance score.

The Relevance Score is a calculated metric that monitors how your audience is reacting to a particular ad. The scores can go from 1 to 10, depending on the positive and negative feedback your ads receive. If your score is below a 5, you should do some testing to see if it’s your audience, the message or the visual that is causing the disconnect.

Choosing when your ads appear (based on your audience’s time zone) is another way to increase success. By watching which times of day perform the best, you can adjust your campaign to increase conversions and reduce your cost per lead.

If you’re running ads to build brand awareness or some other top of the funnel activity, then you aren’t measuring success by conversions, and this may be less important to your campaign.

But in most cases, you’re running Facebook ads because you’re trying to drive an action of some kind. You want to give yourself every advantage you can and how you entice the audience to click on your ad is the most important step.

 

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Digital engagement

October 31, 2018

It’s hard to imagine there is an active business today that doesn’t have some level of digital connection and engagement. But the truth is that how business leaders define engagement and the level in which they invest (time, money, staff, etc.) in that engagement is an incredibly wide range.

Deloitte did a study for Connected Small Business US, which was commissioned by Google to explore the levels of digital engagement among small businesses (250 or fewer employees) and the impact of each level.

The study determined that there were general levels:

• Basic (no website/no social media presence)
• Intermediate (simple website/basic digital marketing)
• High (advanced, mobile-ready website/multiple social channels)
• Advanced (use of data analytics/mobile apps)

As the researchers reviewed the activity level and the outcomes that aligned with each of the four levels of engagement, they came to some very interesting conclusions.

Digital engagement increases revenue. Seventy-seven percent of businesses in the advanced category reported expecting revenue growth over the next year—almost double the percentage of businesses in the most basic engagement level. The reason the advanced level businesses were confident in the potential of growth is because forty-five percent of them had already experienced revenue growth over the past year, compared to only twelve percent of businesses identified as having a basic digital engagement. Thirty-two percent of the organizations in the high category reported revenue growth.

Digital engagement increases employment needs. When a business experienced increased revenue, it only makes sense that they’d need a larger workforce. So no surprise, the category of companies that reported larger percentages of revenue growth (high and advanced) also reported an increase in employment growth. The research also pointed out that people employed by a digitally savvy company “tend to be relatively more productive, with the average revenue per employee at digitally advanced businesses being two times as high as small businesses with a basic level of engagement.”

Digital engagement creates new products and services. Over the past twelve months, businesses at the basic level had less than a ten percent chance of introducing a new product or service. On the flip side, almost seventy percent of the most digitally advanced companies reported did. New channels mean new opportunities, and if you’re not there, you can’t take advantage of them.

So what does this mean for your business? It means that maintaining just the “table stakes” level of digital engagement is costing you opportunity, market share, and money. If you are at that level, which was defined as just having a simple website and not really using effective email marketing, social media or exploring the data that these tools can give you, you need to recognize the consequences. This should not come as a surprise to you but perhaps the outcomes that this study points to can serve as the wake-up call to drive you to explore how your business can step further into the digital realm.

This study emphasizes what common sense has told us for some time. The way we do business has changed. The expectations that the marketplace has for us have changed. We may be the only element that hasn’t yet changed.

For every business, whether you only serve a local audience or an international customer base, embracing digital strategies is a business must. Tools like marketing automation, social media, mobile readiness, and letting the data help you determine what your prospects are interested in and what you can offer to encourage trial and conversion is more business survival than anything else.

Today, as the research clearly demonstrates, businesses that ignore that truth are simply behind in revenue, growth, and innovation. But pretty soon, without making some changes, they may just not exist anymore.

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The mechanics of a successful webinar

October 17, 2018

A while back, we focused a series on the channels too critical for you to ignore in 2019 and one of those channels was webinars.   We covered the basics then but now I want to get into the mechanics of executing a webinar well, so when you’ve got your content ready, you get the biggest bang for the buck.

When I’m talking about a webinar, I am not talking about a one-on-one web-based demonstration or sales meeting. I’m talking about an event you would promote to a larger audience, and the event itself is intended to be a group experience.

Webinars are a smart tactic if you want to:

• Educate prospects or customers
• Field objections and questions in a live environment
• Demonstrate aspects of your product or service in an interactive way
• Establish your thought leadership or authority on a topic
• Capture sales leads

Note that drive sales is not on that list. A webinar is not a hard-driving sales tool. It’s higher up in the funnel and serves more of a marketing function. That doesn’t mean you won’t garner sales from the webinar. But it shouldn’t be your focus. Webinars are successful if they’re helpful, if people connect to the presenter and feel like they walked away with knowledge or insights that are valuable.

Here are some mechanics to consider as you think through your webinar strategy:

Tools: There are many good webinar tools out there, and the right one for you will depend on price, number of attendees possible, the ability to record and other factors. This guide may help you decide.

Promotion: Webinars are not a “build it and they will come” sort of thing. You need to get the word out and issue multiple invitations. Give yourself at least a 30-day window for promotion. If you already have a list of prospects, that’s a smart place to start. You’ll get your biggest flurry of sign-ups about ten days before the event. If you make a big deal out of the fact that they’ll get access to a recording of the webinar whether they attend or not – you’ll get more takers.

Leave behind: I think of my PPT deck as a leave behind when I am working on a webinar. I’m always going to offer it to the attendees at the end, so I build it with that in mind. Unlike a deck for a speech, where I might have a single image and no words, I use a lot of bullets and text for my webinar decks. I know I am in essence taking notes for the attendees, so my slides are a little denser in content.

Format: As you think about constructing your webinar, explore easy to grasp “packages” for the information you want to share. Like:

• Five mistakes to avoid
• Ten questions to ask before…
• Four unexpected benefits of…

This style of formatting will help you tease and promote the content. It will also help you avoid trying to pack too much information into the webinar. It lends itself to a strong wrap up for you as a presenter and gives your attendees something to grab hold of and remember.

No matter how or when you deliver your webinar, be sure you know what you want to happen once you sign off. Do they get a “thanks for attending” email? Do they get a link to deeper content on one of your key points? Don’t lose the momentum. When the webinar wraps, it’s not the end, it’s the beginning.

 

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You can’t be anti-social today

October 3, 2018

I’m wrapping up my series on the marketing channels you need to consider for 2019 with our last channel – social networks.  Don’t forget to consider the other channels we’ve discussed as you map out your 2019 plan.

Just to refresh your memory, they are:

• Digital video
• Podcasting
• Infographics
• Webinars and webcasts
• Ratings and reviews
• Website
• Social networks

I remember when we launched our agency’s blog in 2007. Back then it was novel and felt very cutting edge. People were just starting to explore Facebook and Twitter for business, and there were a lot of people who declared that those channels were for personal use only and they’d never put their business in that sort of setting.

Fast-forward to today, and it’s absolutely clear that our businesses need to have a social presence. Business owners and marketing leaders need to decide HOW they want to engage on the various social channels but I would argue that there’s no decision to be made about whether or not you’re there.

There are quite a few decisions you need to make (or review) as you map out your social strategy.

Which networks should you invest in? There are way too many to be active on them all. This is definitely an “it’s better to be a mile deep and an inch wide” rather than the other way around situation. Social is all about making connections. If you’re posting and no one is responding, that might be a clue that either you’re on the wrong channel, or you’re not actually connecting with your audience.

And don’t discount smaller more niche channels. If you’re a veterinarian, dogster.com might be where you need to be. If you sell into the knitting and crocheting industry, try ravelry.com. Work with attorneys? Check out lawlink.com.

Who should you be talking to? This question should inform the “which channel” question as well. Imagine trying to start a conversation with someone if you had no idea who they were or what they cared about. It’s a lot easier to be interesting if you know your audience because, of course, being interesting is all about focusing on them and their needs, interests, and worries.

Who should you be? This is not a trick question. You need to decide how your brand shows up on social. Do you keep yourself at arm’s length? Are you 100% professional 100% of the time? Does your social activity come from the business’ founder/owner or is it created by the marketing department? How/where do you draw the line on topics that are controversial – like politics? Do you let your own opinions or practices (Merry Christmas versus Happy Holidays) influence your posts?

The key to answering this question correctly is that what your audience sees and feels from you online should match their in-person experience. You want to show up in the same way on the phone, in your store, online and on social.

How will you avoid selling? This may be the most important question of the bunch. Think of social networks as a perpetual first date. You don’t propose on a first date, and you don’t sell on social. You let them get to know, like and trust you and your company. You help, and you serve, and you give away your smarts. When they’re ready, they will ask you to sell them something. Then, you can sell.

This is the most common mistake marketers make. They crash the social party and demand that they become the center of attention. Keep the audience’s needs and interests front and center, and you’ll be a social hit!

I’d love to hear which channels make your cut for the coming year and how you’re going to explore in the next few months.

 

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Your website is your workhorse

September 26, 2018

I am hoping that you’re still giving some thought as to how to head into 2019 with smart marketing that gives you the edge. To that point, we’re continuing with the ongoing series I’ve been writing on the most important marketing channels to consider for 2019. The focus of this post may seem like a “duh” but honestly – most businesses still get this wrong. Your website is THE workhorse of your marketing toolbox. I don’t care who you are, what you sell or how big your business is, without an effective website, you are losing sales.

At some point in your buyer’s journey, they are going to visit your website. It’s pretty much that cut and dried today. If you remember the statistic, I quoted earlier in the series, 92% of consumers visit a retailers website before making a purchase. 94% of business-to-business buyers check out your site before committing.

Here’s what they are looking for when they visit. Do an audit of your site to make sure you are providing exactly what they need to see before they say yes to your offer. Not only do all of these elements need to be there, but they also need to be easy to find.

Proof that you get them: Everyone believes that their circumstance is unique and they want to work with someone who understands their situation. If you serve families, make sure that your copy explains why you have insight into that world. If your business works with IT departments, then your copy and visuals need to demonstrate that you live in that world too.

This is not your first rodeo: This is not about making the site all about your 25th anniversary, which for the most part is only a big deal to you and your team. But it is about demonstrating that you’ve been successful in your field for a while now and that you’re not going anywhere. You can talk about your company’s history, the tenure of your employees or customers or how the industry has changed. Be interesting in documenting your depth of expertise.

That other clients like and trust you: Earlier in the series, we discussed the power of ratings and reviews. Whether you go the ratings/review route or you go old school and use testimonials – you need the social proof that other people count on you and you don’t disappoint. Ask your current customers to tell a story about what you sold them. Don’t make these so brief that they don’t capture both the before and after.

How to contact you: This blows me away, but many businesses make it difficult for a potential customer to actually reach them. Make sure that your email address and phone number (not just a form) are visible and available on not only your contact us page but also in your footer or header on every page.

If people actually come to you to make a purchase, be sure you include your hours of operation, physical address and a map. Don’t forget your social media links as well.

The details of what you sell: By the time they visit your site, the potential buyer wants to know the specifics of your products or services. This may be the right place for strong visuals, be it photos of your products or a visual outlining a service process or outcome. This is a really smart spot for some additional testimonials as well, that tie into your descriptions.

Make sure you follow this list to the letter.  You and your business can’t afford not to.

 

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The eyes have it – Infographics

September 5, 2018

We’re knee deep into a series that is focused on helping you plan for 2019 by identifying the channels too critical for you to ignore. Today, we’re going to investigate the value of infographics.

Visual content works. Consider these facts:

• The human brain processes visual content 60,000 times faster than it does text.
• Infographics are liked and shared on social media three times more than any other type of content.
• High-quality infographics are thirty times more likely to be read than text articles.

An infographic allows you to communicate complex ideas in an easy to understand format. They make it easy to show the relationship between various elements so your audience can see the bigger picture.

You can deliver more information because the format itself is simple, clean and holistic in how it presents your ideas. If your audience needs to understand how one fact or choice impacts other elements – an infographic may be the right choice. If you know that your audience is faced with multiple options, help them follow the path to the outcomes tied to each decision.

Infographics are also a smart option for telling a linear story and showing the flow of events in a relational way. Think of it like a storyboard that outlines the key events or milestones. You can use colors and design choices to suggest emotions behind the facts and set a tone for the entire discussion.

For those of you that invest in research, be it a customer satisfaction survey or actually going out into the field and doing primary research, consider using an infographic to communicate the most important findings. You will enjoy the increased distribution that infographics garner and you’ll be able to connect the dots for your audience.

Infographics are incredibly effective when you need to communicate the facts underneath an emotional issue. By using graphics, facts and building the story to show multiple sides of an issue, you can help your audience separate their sentiments and examine the data so they can make an informed, fact-based decision.

As you might imagine, infographics are a no-brainer when you need to demonstrate something visually. Whether it’s a spatial relationship or a comparative that is tied to how the elements look, you need to show it, and an infographic gives you that ability.

If you’re going to jump on the infographic bandwagon, there are some best practices you need to keep top of mind.

Be mindful of your audience. Think about your color, font and graphic style decisions based on who you’re talking to. You also need to think about your own brand standards and make sure that you don’t violate those boundaries.

Be mindful of the size. Remember, you’re going to be sharing this on your website and social channels. A file that is too wide or too long will either display badly (or not at all) or discourage people from passing it along.

Remember that color and fonts are critical tools. This isn’t just about the colors or fonts that your designer likes or even your own brand standards. The color palette and font choices within your infographic are all about making your information easier to consume. Be mindful of color contrasts and font legibility and how they help tell your story.

Infographics offer marketers a fresh way to share the complex, demonstrate connections and make a compelling case that would normally be dry and less interesting. Think about how you’re communicating some of your more complicated messages and explore whether a visual representation would make it more compelling and easier to understand. Infographics probably aren’t going to be the staple of your 2019 marketing toolkit, but they should probably be one of the supporting elements.

 

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Jumping on the podcasting bandwagon

August 29, 2018

As we march towards January, I am devoting my time here to talking about some of the channels and marketing tactics that you need to have in your consideration set for your 2019 marketing plan and one that rises to the top of that set is podcasting.

Previously, I shared these statistics:

• The average US adult now spends over 100 minutes a day watching digital video (eMarketer)
• 26% of US adults listen to at least one podcast a month (statista.com)
• 65% of B-to-B marketers use infographics (Content Marketing Institute)
• 55% of B-to-B marketers use webinars and webcasts (Content Marketing Institute)
• 40% of consumers form an opinion by reading just one to three reviews (BrightLocal)
• 92% of consumers visit a retailers website before making a purchase (Episerver)
• Online adults 18-34 are most likely to follow a brand via social networks (MarketingSherpa)

And most recently, we explored how you can leverage the popularity of video as a channel and now I want to turn our attention to podcasting.

Podcasting came into being back in the 1980s and in those days, we called it audio-blogging. The content wasn’t very accessible because technology hadn’t caught up to the idea, so it was really a niche way of communicating to a very small audience off of a website. With the advent of broadband internet, portable digital audio playback devices (think iPod) and iTunes, podcasting became a viable thing in late 2004.

Fast forward to 2018. Podcasting is on the cusp of being very mainstream. 44% of Americans (12+) have listened to at least one podcast and 26% listen to at least one podcast a month. Podcast listeners are an affluent, educated consumer, with over 51% of monthly podcast consumers earning $75,000 a year or better. (Edison Research)

One of the reasons podcast adoption is growing is that people can listen while doing something else. Listeners report binging on their favorite podcasts while they’re commuting to work, on the treadmill, walking the dog or cleaning the house. Given the reality of how we multi-task, the appeal of being able to consume information while accomplishing other tasks is very appealing.

If considering a podcast, remember this is not a sales tool. This is about you making your audience smarter/better or entertaining them. Umpqua Bank’s Open Account is an insightful example. Their premise is that people are uncomfortable talking about money and the podcast takes an unconventionally honest approach to talking about financial struggles, pressures and stress and how people have overcome them.

This is about creating an audience that becomes your community by demonstrating that you understand who they are and what they need. Once you’ve done the hard work of getting all of your technology squared away and are producing podcasts, you’ll also enjoy how that content can be sliced and diced.

From one 60-minute podcast, at a minimum, you can create:

• 1 podcast episode
• 1 article to submit to a trade or specialty publication
• 2 video clips
• 2 blog posts (1 based on the content and 1 announcing the episode release)
• 10 tweets quoting you or your guest
• 3 FB posts
• 3 Instagram quote graphics
• 3 Pinterest graphics
• 1 Linkedin article
• 1 webinar
• 1 lead magnet piece of content (ebook)

That’s 28+ pieces of relevant, branded content. It’s hard to beat that from an ROI perspective. Not only are you building a community but you’re also building out your content calendar.

A podcast is a commitment. The last thing you want to do is launch one and then stop producing it. But when done consistently and well – it’s a very unique and effective tool for building lasting relationships with your customers, prospects and referral sources.

 

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You’ve got to multiply

August 22, 2018

The new year is fast approaching and as you start working on your marketing plan for 2019, you’re going to need to multiply. Consider these facts.

• The average US adult now spends over 100 minutes a day watching digital video (eMarketer)
• 26% of US adults listen to at least one podcast a month (statista.com)
• 65% of B-to-B marketers use infographics (Content Marketing Institute)
• 55% of B-to-B marketers use webinars and webcasts (Content Marketing Institute)
• 40% of consumers form an opinion by reading just one to three reviews (BrightLocal)
• 92% of consumers visit a retailers website before making a purchase (Episerver)
• Online adults 18-34 are most likely to follow a brand via social networks (MarketingSherpa)

Today’s consumer isn’t living a mono-channel life. We can’t get locked into one channel and hope that we can actually create an on-going conversation. We have to stay interesting and helpful for a longer period of time because we don’t control the pace or place of the conversation anymore.

We also can’t present our messaging in only one format. We have to stay interesting and multiply if we’re going to survive the long haul of earning and keeping our audience’s attention.

Your prospects can stay in the consideration stage for a day or a decade, and we need to be able to not only wait them out, but we also need to work hard to stay on their radar screen for that entire time. Marketing is becoming an endurance sport, and we have to hang in there long enough to have a shot at winning the new customer.

Life is not linear or logical. If we’re trying to be a part of our audience’s narrative, we need to be where they are, and as you can see by the statistics I’ve given you, they’re all over the place. I’m not suggesting that you need to dominate all of the channels, but you need to carefully consider which mix of them make sense for your product, service or brand.

To know which tactics will serve you best, you need to truly understand the buyer’s journey and where along the way they intersect with different mediums. As you can see from the data I’ve shared, odds are your potential buyers are consuming a little bit of everything, from infographics to webinars to videos. You also need to understand how to multiply – how to present your brand’s products and services in the best light. Does it lend itself to a visual presentation? How critical is data to the buying decision? This is all about knowing your buyers and what you sell and figuring out how to make the most effective connections.

The multi-channel approach will serve your organization well. It allows you to show up in many places, with the same consistent messaging so that those impressions stack upon each other and over time. Remember the know • like • trust continuum we’ve talked about many times. Consistency in messaging moves the prospect along that continuum more quickly.

Multi-channel also means you’re more likely to connect with your potential buyers on the channels where they feel most comfortable. We hear better and understand more deeply in our native language. The same is true about our communication channels. If you connect with a prospect where they spend most of their time, they’re less distracted and more open to hearing what you have to say.

On the flip side, trying to juggle multiple channels is a drain on your resources. So you’re going to want to multiply or choose carefully and judiciously.

Stay tuned because we’re going to explore each of the tactics (video, podcasting, infographics, webinars, webcasts, reviews, websites and social media) and identify how they might fit into your plans for 2019.

 

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Channels to consider for 2019- Video

August 15, 2018

We’ve been talking about some of the channels  – email, reviews, video, etc. – that I think every organization needs to consider as they build out their 2019 marketing plan based on data that suggests they’re too big to ignore.

Back when I started my marketing career 30+ years ago, video was a very different beast than it is today. Back then, when we produced a video for a client, it was an incredibly expensive endeavor and took weeks, if not months, to plan, execute and complete. A $50,000 video shoot was considered low end so unless the client was huge, it was a once every few years sort of luxury.

The other big difference with video back then was distribution. There was no YouTube or Internet to use as a way of getting your video in front of your audience. You had to assemble them at a meeting, trade show or some other event and actually run the video while they were in the room. To even type those words sounds so absurd today.

In contrast, this year the average US adult will spend over 100 minutes a day watching digital video (eMarketer). Video has gone from a “few can afford it” marketing tool to one of the most common and one of the most effective.

Brands are producing videos on the fly and publishing them within an hour (if not faster) of being shot. Tools like Facebook Live are bringing us the ability to publish on the fly, and the biggest shift of all – our consumers’ perceptions of these raw, less produced videos has completely changed. Consumers appreciate the authenticity and real-time aspect of the shoot and show style we’re seeing more of today. They aren’t judging the value of the content based on the production value.

Don’t get me wrong; there is still a place and a need for a well shot and artfully edited/produced video. Everything shouldn’t be a run and gun effort. But there’s plenty of room for both.

Interestingly, even though the production requirements for a successful video have changed dramatically, the best ways to use video are still pretty much the same.

Tell a story: Everyone talks about the importance of being able to tell a story in your marketing. That point of view is nothing new, but it’s as relevant today as it was 50 years ago when Leo Burnett introduced us to the lonely Maytag repairman.

Demonstrate something: There’s no better way to teach than to let the audience see if for themselves. Demo videos make the unbelievable very real and the hard to understand, very tangible.

Testimonial: This can be a blend of telling a story, touching an emotion and even demonstrating something. We all know the power of hearing an endorsement from an actual customer. It’s why ratings and reviews are so coveted today. But actually seeing the person as they tell their story of your brand and how it helped them is so much more compelling than just the written word alone.

Teach: This is an aspect of video that has exploded thanks to YouTube. If you want to know how to do something today – from swapping out a toilet to repairing your car’s engine, odds are you head to YouTube to watch a video or two before you touch a tool.

Touch an emotion: This is a tricky one. It can be the most powerful use of video, but if it feels manipulative or staged, you can lose a lot of credibility. But when done well, whether you make us laugh or make us cry – this is marketing gold.

This is probably a channel you can’t ignore. Don’t let your pre-conceived ideas about budget or timeline get in your way of leveraging this very powerful medium.

 

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Build your email list

August 8, 2018

If you’ve been following along, we’ve been talking about some marketing resolutions to help you get a jumpstart on your 2019 marketing plan – email, reviews, video, etc. Over the next few posts, I’m going to tackle these suggested resolutions one by one and help you map out how you can crush each one in 2019.

In case you missed it, the resolutions were:

• Build your email list
• Work on earning great reviews
• Produce more videos/build a YouTube channel
• Do less but do it better

Today we’re going to tackle building your email list. Having a strong email list is vital for your business. It’s an asset that you own, and you control. Very few platforms convert more consistently and continuously than effective email campaigns.

Email allows you to target sub-sections of your list, be personal in your delivery and really take advantage of the one to one medium. But before you can take full advantage of your email list – you need to have one.

Make your content something they actually look forward to receiving. While that seems obvious, very few organizations deliver on it consistently. Your content can’t be about you, your team, your special sale or some award you’ve just won. It has to contain ideas or resources that they can learn from, use or share.

Offer different types of subscriptions. Create different resources for different audiences. Help them self-select what insights would be most valuable to them and serve it without the content they don’t care about. You might also offer a variety of frequencies. One person may prefer a monthly communication while another would rather get it in bite-sized pieces every week.

Create free tools, resources or guides that you can trade for email addresses. The key to this strategy is that there has to be a lot of meat on the bone. You can’t earn your prospect’s trust if you skimp on this kind of content.

Create links to capture email addresses throughout your website. Don’t just count on your “sign up for our newsletter” button on your home page. Pepper opportunities for people to join your email list on a variety of pages. Serve up different offers based on each page’s subject matter.

Use other platforms to promote your content. Email may be one of the most effective platforms, but that doesn’t mean the other platforms should be ignored. When you’ve gone to the effort of creating something that is really noteworthy – share it out. Create a private Facebook group or Pinterest board to woo prospects to get a little closer. After they see that you’re focused on adding value to their world – invite them to partake in some of your gated content.

Don’t forget offline events and activities. While we live in a digital world, there’s still plenty of analog activity that allows you to connect with people and identify common interests and needs. As you work your way through networking events, trade shows, conferences and all the other places you bump into people you can help – make those connections. After you nurture those relationships, extend the invitation to join your list so they can get even more of your goodness.

Focus on the two parallel goals in terms of your list. Grow it in quantity and also grow it in terms of engagement. You want people to reply, share, and come to rely on your regular communications. Calendar your communications, so you stay consistent and invest the right amount of time and resources, so you are always serving up something worth getting excited about, from your audience’s perspective.

That’s step one to a very successful 2019.

Next, we’ll tackle the second resolution – getting reviews from your raving fans so you can attract more raving fans!

 

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