List Building Tips

As a business owner you have many assets, including your land and buildings, your inventory, your staff, and your intellectual property. But have you ever stopped to think about your list? The list, or database of your clients is the most profitable asset your business will ever have. Hopefully you’ve been adding email addresses to the names, physical addresses, and phone numbers so that you can reach out to your prospects and clients with just a moment’s notice. Here are some list building tips that will be helpful to you as your business grows.

Building your email list will ensure that your business grows steadily over time. But there is much more to it than that. Your list will also provide feedback as to what you have to offer, saving you a tremendous amount of time and money. Additionally, an email list allows you to reach out to new prospects and existing clients without having to see them in person or send them a costly direct mail piece.

Danielle wrote to ask me about how she could start building a list for her brand new business. She has started a company that works directly with people who have retired and are in need of additional income. In order to reach these people she has started a blog, has written a book that’s available on Amazon as both a Kindle version and in paperback, and is starting to visit local groups to share her message.

This is an excellent start, but I would also encourage her to start building an email list from the very beginning. You can get started with a reputable and accepted autoresponder service called Aweber for only one dollar. This service creates the html code you need to easily add an optin box to your blog or website. When visitors come to your site you can offer them a short report on exactly how you intend to serve them in return for their name and email address. Over time you will stay in contact with these people and move them from visitors to prospects to clients.

One point I should make here is that by using an autoresponder service you are providing a way for people to join your email list that fully complies with federal law and the CANN-SPAM Act. A permission based list is the only way to do business in a legal and straightforward manner that protects your reputation.

If you have written a book, even a short one to be used as a lead generator, be sure to include a page at the end where your readers can go to your site and opt in to your list. Otherwise you will have missed a great opportunity to further engage the people who purchase your book.

When you create, or have created for you a website for your business, you will also add an optin box there. Anywhere your name and/or your company name appears online or in print should include this form so that list building becomes the way you generate more business on a daily basis.

Other ways to build your database list include posting videos on a YouTube channel, hosting an audio that can be turned into a podcast series on iTunes, and paying to run an advertisement in local print publications – such as this one – and in magazines and on Facebook. All of these methods work well to get your name out to the world with the message of how you are serving others.

You may also want to partner with complimentary service providers to spread the word about what each of you is doing in the community. I have seen this work extremely well in the trades, with plumbers sharing information on a local handyman and carpenters sharing painters they recommend. It becomes a type of ‘coopetition’, with everyone cooperatively competing to bring in more business for everyone over time.

I hope you can now see the importance of building an email list for your business and that you will begin using some of these proven strategies right away. Years from now you will be glad you took this step when you see how much your bottom line has increased. No matter what happens in your industry or with the economy, your list will continue to be your most valuable asset. There is an excellent training, of which I was a part of, through NAMS called the 30 Day List Building Challenge that I highly recommend.

List Building Tips

List building is an activity you must engage in on a regular basis in order to build your online business, so you might as well do it in an effective way. I’ll be sharing several of my best list building tips with you here.

There are many ways to go about building a responsive list, and I would like to focus on the importance of building your list with your blog, a separate opt in page, and a teleseminar page. Let’s take a closer look at each one of these marketing strategies.

It is my strong belief that you absolutely must have a blog to get started online. By this I do not mean a free blog on one of the free blogging platforms, but a blog that you own and control on WordPress. You’ll need to get hosting first, and a good c-panel hosting account will allow you to set up as many sites as you would like to without any additional fees or cost. My preference is BlueHost or Hostgator for this purpose. You will then be able to install WordPress on your new blog in about five minutes and without any other expense. If you get stuck while doing this, Google for help or go to YouTube to search for videos showing you how to do it.

The next step is to add an optin box to this blog site where people can type in their name and email address in return for a report or something else you will be giving away for free. It must be enticing for your prospects to be willing to exchange their name and email address in order to receive it. Take a look at other sites where you have opted in and see what they offered that compelled you to join their list. You’ll need an autoresponder service for this, and I highly recommend that you get started with Aweber for only one dollar and then nineteen dollars a month after that.

Now that you have a WordPress blog site where you can post about your niche topic and have people opt in to join your list, you have done the very minimum to start your online business. It’s time to take it a step further by giving people more opportunities to find you and join your online community via your list.

This is accomplished by setting up a page that is devoted to only one thing – offering a different free giveaway when someone joins your list. This is known as a  squeeze page or optin page and it is a stand alone page on its own domain. I recommend doing this to attract different segments of people within your niche by age, gender, specific interests, and so forth. For example, in my business I have stand alone opt in pages that are directed at women, moms, men under thirty-five, and so on. The idea is to relate to the people who may benefit from what you have to offer.

The next way to build your list is to offer free teleseminars where you will discuss a topic and answer questions. This can also be on its own page, allowing visitors to sign up for your call and then access it right away. i did this for eighteen months straight, offering a free teleseminar every single week back in 2007 and 2008. I now do it twice a month and repurpose the call into a podcast (take a look here). This continues to build my list, but that’s an altogether different strategy.

Set up a dedicated page where you will be able to make the changes yourself. Describe in some detail what you call will be about, and ask people to opt in to receive the call details. Use some bullet points to explain what you will be sharing and why it will be a benefit for your prospects to sign up. When they opt in and join your list, take them to a page where you give the details of how they can join the live teleseminar you are hosting.

These strategies work extremely well in building your list while you are serving others by sharing your knowledge and expertise in your niche.

Local Networking Events

Local networking events are an excellent place to connect with other like-minded individuals.

Attending Local Network Meetings to Build Your Client List

It’s natural for an online services business professional to seek out other online businesses to work with, but did you know that you can also find clients locally, too? The key is to strategically attend local network meeting events that meet your criteria. There are probably many local business events in your area. Let’s take a look at the possibilities.

Chamber of Commerce:  Every community has a local chamber of commerce. Many times you do not need to be a member to participate. I have been to events at the Chamber in both Santa Clarita and Santa Barbara over the past seven years and I do not belong to either group. If you can get involved in events using your skills to help, people will start recommending you.

Your Strategy: Align yourself with the smallest businesses and if they have a sub group, those who work from home or do business exclusively online. If they don’t have this already, offer to start the group and host it at your home, the library, or somewhere else that works for everyone. You’ll become invaluable to the organization if you do this.

Women in Business Meetings: Women sometimes prefer a group that caters just to them, and women’s business organizations are now more popular than ever before. Many local women’s business meetings like to have an expert speak on various topics and you can learn from those who are active in specific areas, such as business blogging or social media marketing.

Your Strategy: Share your knowledge and expertise openly and see where it leads. Offer to be a speaker or to assist in any way you can to show that you are sincere and dedicated to helping others succeed.

BNI International Meetings: Business networking groups like this are excellent ways to find clients to work with. I have not attended these meetings personally, but have many friends who have made great progress with the connection they have made. The way it works is that only one business or person from each profession can join each group. The members agree to recommend each other. It can be pricy to get in and you have to be comfortable giving a presentation to the others before they accept you, but it can be very lucrative in the long run.

Your Strategy: Showcase your business in the best light during presentations, and become a resource to this group of networkers. Recommend them to others in the rest of your local networks and they will return the favor many times over. The great thing about BNI is that within a group, you’re the only one in your niche, so you can offer a lot to the other members.

Start Your Own Meetings: Using a social program like http://www.meetup.com to plan and organize local business meetings. You can start it with your own presentation. You’ll need to find a space. A good idea for locating space is asking for free space from an hourly office rental firm. They might like the idea of getting some free advertisement for your weekly meetings being hosted with them. You can also rent space from your local public library, some churches, and clubhouses associated with local HOAs.

Strategy: Become an expert in your field on a local basis, such as with blogging, SEO, or email marketing. Get known as the go-to person regarding your niche. By having your own meet ups and conducting your own presentation those who attend will automatically see you as an expert and come to you if they need extra help. If you can align with an office rental agency you’ll be golden.

When you attend any local events go prepared to promote your business. Bring business cards that list your website or perhaps a QR code on them that will take them to a form to get on your email list. Get their cards too and contact them. Invite them to coffee. Give them advice if they ask for it and really connect with these local people and you’ll be surprised to find that you can find plenty of local clients to fill any open billable hours you have.

Service Organizations: I got my start with Rotary, and international service organization, so I can personally attest to the value of being a part of groups such as this one.

Strategy: Attend a few times to see if the group is a good fit for you. Every group is about the people, so you’ll want to make sure you like the members before going any further. If you do decide to join, do it from a purely philanthropic standpoint. Spend time helping with the group’s projects and learn to enjoy serving others in need. Rotary was the first service organization I had ever been a a part of, and I loved it so much I soon joined other groups as well, including the Elk’s (based only in the United States) and Zonta (an international business women’s group that works to advance the status of women worldwide).

In October of 1992 I found myself in the office of an oncologist who was telling me that I most likely had less than a year to live. At some point I stopped hearing his voice, and the words hung like a cartoon bubble above his head. I was nodding, not understanding what he was talking about, and as the ceiling fan turned I was aware that my face was cold, wet from my tears. I had two initial thoughts; thank God I do not have young children to care for and that even having a million dollars in cold cash would not be helpful in this situation.

The next week was a blur, filled with visits to two other doctors (I was hoping one of them would say something more encouraging) and grueling tests to determine how they would proceed next. I was forced to sort out all of this information and make a decision, and on Thursday, October 8 I underwent a radical mastectomy that would leave me exhausted and disfigured. A couple of days later I removed the bandages and peered in the mirror to see what my new reality looked like. I was hollow on my right side, with a twelve inch scar going diagonally down my chest. It wasn’t pretty.

What followed over the next six months made this first week seem like a visit to Disneyland. The treatment almost killed me, but it allowed me to discover who I was and what I was made of. It turns out that I’m a fighter, and that my life is more important than I ever knew. This may sound odd, but I did not fully appreciate the gift I had been given until it was possible that it would be taken away from me.

I faced each day and each new obstacle bravely. It got much worse before it got better, with additional operations and treatments necessary to keep the cancer from spreading to other areas of my body. At one point I even gave permission for my tissue to be shared with other hospitals around the country because of my rapid cell growth, and I was there when more than twenty people from the hospital carried little pieces of me in small coolers to get to the airport quickly for their flights. One day I looked around the waiting room and counted how many of us had a drained safety-pinned to our shirts. We were a sad bunch, but we felt like this was our second chance to make a difference in the world.

I was not the best patient. There was the time when I made a volunteer cry when I yelled at her to get out of my room. Another time I told the surgeon he was an idiot for making some of the suggestions he was forcing me to hear, like having my head shaved now to avoid the look of losing my hair over a few weeks. I am not proud of what I said or did, but it was my way of dealing with some of the pain and anger of what was happening to my body.

Now I treat each day as a gift from God. Each morning when my feet hit the floor I say a prayer of thanks for the life I have been able to create for myself since that dark period in the 1990s. when I came online in 2006 I looked up my first oncologist and wrote him a letter. I thanked him for saving my life, apologized for my ugly behavior, and told him what I was doing with my new business. I told him that I was devoting the rest of my life to helping others live the life they deserve.

In honor of twenty years since I was first given encouraging news regarding my chances of survival, I am walking in the Avon Breast Cancer Walk 2013 in September in Santa Barbara. I need your help to train for this thirty-nine mile (63 kilometer) walk over a two day period. I have also pledged to raise some money to help find a cure for this insidious disease. Please visit my page and also leave a comment here to let me know I can count on you.

This past weekend I was one of the speakers at Dennis Becker’s Earn 1K Seminar in Las Vegas. this was my second year attending this fantastic event, and the people and information shared there this time was just phenomenal. If you are able to attend next year, I can promise you it will be a game changer for your online business.

Dennis Becker’s Earn 1K Seminar – Takeaways

There were so many great ideas shared here, and I am always looking for ways to improve upon what I’m doing in my own business. You may already know that I am once again hosting my own events, with the next one to be held in Las Vegas October 11-13. I have now decided to do the first day of my three day event as a Mastermind, the way Dennis has done it at his seminar for several years now. This gives people the opportunity to share their ideas, thoughts, concerns, struggles, challenges, and successes with like-minded people who are able to help in so many ways.

Dennis Becker’s Earn 1K Seminar – Speakers

I knew most of the speakers already, but Justin Popovic was someone I had previously only known from being with him on a Google Hangout put together by Dennis a couple of months ago. Justin is an excellent speaker who works in the area of mindset. He really made us think when he talked about Entrepreneur Psychology: 6 Ways to a Winning Mindset. I saw myself in some of the struggles he talked about from his early days of coming online.

Dennis Becker’s Earn 1K Seminar – My Presentation

This year I spoke on the topic of ‘Positioning Yourself As An Authority’, something that has enabled me to quintuple my income over these past few years. The steps I discussed included:

• Deciding exactly what you want to be know for
• Being seen in the right places
• Showing your credibility quickly
• Using Storytelling to connect with your audience
• Becoming an author, something I’ve done nine times so far
• Having a consistent look and feel
• Leveraging the power of repurposing

The audience loved what I had to say and many of them made the decision to take advantage of the Authority Leverage System™ I offered. You’ll be hearing more about this over the next couple of months.

Dennis Becker’s Earn 1K Seminar – Forum

Now that the event is over, where do we go from there? Most of us who were in attendance in Las Vegas are also a part of Dennis Becker’s Earn 1K a Day Forum, where we are able to connect with each other to build relationships and further our businesses. This is a safe haven for online entrepreneurs who are serious about taking their businesses to the next level. In the picture on the left, Dennis is leading a Google Hangout on mindset for entrepreneurs, where I was one of the panelists.

Do you need help with your online marketing? In this episode of the Online Marketing Tips Podcast With Connie Ragen Green, my newest podcast series, I discuss all things online marketing and how self-publishing your own books for Kindle and Create Space is an excellent way to build a residual and passive income stream.

My calls are interactive so that you may be heard. During this call I am joined my many of my students who share their questions, concerns, and accomplishments with their online business. This time we discussed how to promote and sell information products when you don’t yet have a list, writing books for sale on Kindle and Amazon, where to find someone to design your book’s cover, finding help on sites other than Fiverr, using keywords with your images for SEO (search engine optimization), affiliate marketing strategies, the key difference between websites and blogs hosted on the WordPress platform, organizing email effectively, and much more.

This podcast and these online marketing tips are intended to teach you how you can take your business to the next level quickly and effectively, and as a way for me to share my very Case Studies, secrets, and advice on creating a profitable and lucrative online business using the ‘multiple income streams’ approach. Each session is first recorded live as a teleseminar, and then repurposed into a podcast to extend my reach to the world. Please join my list to be included on these calls, and be sure to introduce yourself and share your site for optimal exposure for years to come!

Also, you can now pick up my training on winning affiliate contests and other online marketing tips for only seven dollars at Affiliate Contest Secrets. Use the discount code CONTEST to bring the price down to $7. This training has been updated for 2013 with the latest information, strategies, and Case Studies for you to use in your own business.

Outsourcing saved my sanity and has helped me to quintuple my online income over the past few years. I know this is a powerful statement, and it’s completely true. Allow me to share some details with you.

When I started my business in 2006 I thought I had to do everything myself. My excuse at that time was that I was not yet earning any money and could not possibly afford to pay others to help me. Within a couple of months I realized that my tech skills were lacking and that I would need to get some help to set up my sites. WordPress was much more technical at that time and writing HTML code was not something I wanted to learn.

I had met a woman through a course I was taking who was a web designer and we agreed to barter our services. She would set up some sites for me and in return I would write some articles for her and help her with marketing. If was a perfect solution to both of our problems and this continued for a couple of years before we both went off in other directions.

By this time I was becoming better known, speaking at and hosting my own live events, and doing lots of writing in the form of articles, short reports, eBooks, and online courses. I soon found myself spending hours each day with clerical tasks, such as submitting articles to the directories and spending time with social media setup. I had come to a crossroads in my business and had to make a choice; was I going to try to do it all and risk burning myself out or was I willing to pay someone else to help me with the tasks that were eating up so much of my time?

Finding someone to submit articles for me was easier than I thought. I found someone who had lost his job and needed to earn some money quickly to pay his bills and feed his family. We agreed that I would pay him two dollars for each article, and to do no more than ten each week. Twenty dollars a week was definitely in my budget and I could easily check to see that he was doing it the way I would do it. That’s always an issue when you begin to outsource, and rest assured that many people accomplish these tasks in a way that is superior to the way you would do it. I love it when others make me look better by implementing tactics that work so well. This man did so well that I quickly recommended him to my students and others.

This discussion reminds me of a story you may have heard:

A boy and his father were out in the woods. When they came across a very large tree branch the boy asked, “Do you think I could move that branch?”

His father answered, “If you use all your strength, I’m sure you can.”

So the boy tried mightily to lift, pull and push the branch but he couldn’t move it. Discouraged he said, “Dad, you were wrong. I can’t do it.”

His dad said, “Try again.” This time, as the boy struggled with the branch his father joined him and together they pushed the branch aside.

“Son,” the father said, “the first time you didn’t use all your strength. You didn’t ask me to help.”

Asking for help was very difficult for me, as it might be for you. It’s also an issue of giving up control. I would encourage you to start out slowly and see what happens.

Just like when there are dishes in the sink or clothes in the hamper, it’s difficult to concentrate on your business when you have lots of little issues pending. Why not hire someone to tie up all of your loose ends so that you’ll be freed up to do what you do best.

Once I stopped wearing all the hats in my online business my income began to soar. By not having to think about the little things, I was immediately able to focus on the bigger things that earned me income. I began to create more products, write books, host my own live events, speaking at other people’s events, creating content for membership sites, and working privately with high-level students. After eighteen months of outsourcing I was earning five times as much as I did before I began having help!

This is an outsourcing guide that will get you started in the right direction. I highly recommend Dennis Becker and his training, especially in this area.

Copywriting to market your business is crucial to your success. Basically all that copywriting is, is writing that you do to market your business to your target audience. It includes different components like sales page content, website content, articles, email messages, autoresponder messages and even social media posts you write to promote your product or service.

Copywriting To Market Your Business

In your copywriting to market your business, you write things that will persuade your audience to do something specific such as to:

•  Opt-in to your mailing list
• Purchase from you
• Refer someone to you
• Click on an affiliate link

One of the most common mistakes that people make (and it’s not just brand new online marketers that do this) is thinking that it’s as simple as throwing some words together, driving traffic to their site and the sales will start pouring in. Of course it’s not that easy and it definitely doesn’t work like that. Pat yourself on the back though because simply by reading this post all the way through you’re putting yourself ahead of so many other marketers – marketers that fall into that category of thinking it’s just a matter of driving traffic to a page they threw some text on. Because you’re reading this, I presume that you believe copywriting is an important aspect of your business.

Someone comes to your website and they have a question but you aren’t there to greet them personally, so obviously you can’t answer it for them. Or, what about if you have an amazing product that a website visitor wants to know about, and wants to know how it will solve their problem. Again, you aren’t there so you can’t help them. Or can you? Actually you can! And that’s where good copywriting skills come into play. Your words have to answer their questions, paint a picture for them of how your product will alleviate a problem they’re having. Your words need to be compelling, interesting and the ultimate goal – persuade them to purchase from you without being pushy.

What are your biggest challenges when it comes to writing copy for your online business?

In this episode of the Online Marketing Tips Podcast With Connie Ragen Green, my newest podcast series, I discuss all things online marketing.

During the call I am joined my many of my students who share their questions, concerns, and accomplishments with their online business. This time we discussed using keywords with your images for SEO (search engine optimization), affiliate marketing strategies, using words like ‘wordpress’ in the domains we purchase, the key difference between websites and blogs hosted on the WordPress platform, organizing email effectively, and much more.

These online marketing tips are intended to teach you how you can take your business to the next level and as a way for me to share my very best tips, secrets, and advice on how to create a profitable online business with multiple income streams. I record each session live as a teleseminar, and then turn it into a podcast within a few days to extend my reach to the world. Please join my list to be included on these calls, and be sure to introduce yourself and share your site for optimal exposure for years to come!

Also, you can now pick up my training on winning affiliate contests and other online marketing tips for only seven dollars at Affiliate Contest Secrets. Use the discount code CONTEST to bring the price down to $7. This training has been updated for 2013 with the latest information, strategies, and Case Studies for you to use in your own business.