In order to make the best decisions for your business several factors will need to be considered
. One of the most important is list building. As well as being vital for your business it is also one of the most difficult tasks, especially if you are starting from scratch.
We have discussed list building in the past so I will just briefly define what a list is and how it can help your business. A list is a number of people who have subscribed to your free offer and have expressed interest in receiving more information from you. They are in fact potential customers for your products so are a very important part of your business. Over time these same leads will often convert and become your loyal customers.
So how can you build a list from scratch? Here are 3 ways that I have found to be effective.
Free newsletter: One of the best ways to build a loyal list of potential customers is to publish a quality newsletter. When you send out your newsletter every week or every two weeks you will build up a solid readership that will open your newsletter every time you send it out. These readers will be interested in offers you put in your newsletter and will over time become your customers. The trick of this list building technique is to remember to give your readers a good informative article that they can use to help them in their businesses or some tips and to make sure that the newsletter does not contain too many ads.
Free report: if you use this method you will need to set up an autoresponder series to follow up with your list. After they receive their free report. This makes it a little more challenging than the free newsletter.
Free mini course: this is also a good way to build your list. However you will need to set up an autoresponder series for this method as well.
To encourage signups you can create a squeeze page for any of these methods. This is like a small sales page that will show the reader all the benefits of your free gift. The squeeze page should also include a bonus to sweeten the pot that subscribers will get when they subscribe to the list.
To discourage freebie seekers always make your gift targeted to your market so that the subscriber will want to stay on your list and get more information. They will also be more interested in any offers you may make.