Among the many excellent presentations at Social Media Marketing World 2016, none was more excellent than that by Amy Porterfield. Amy brought a palpable enthusiasm to the stage, and gave a step-by-step explanation of how to use advertising on Facebook to explosively grow you email list. Among the “open secrets” of Facebook marketing, and all Internet marketing is that growing an email list should be your #2 objective (behind actually getting sales leads). Email, after all, is the “Rodney Dangerfield” of social media marketing: it don’t get no respect.
- Amy explained, no Amy shouted: “The energy of your business is DIRECTLY tied to your email list,” and you ** MUST ** make list-building a priority.
Here is Amy’s step by step method to grow your email subscribers.
Step #1: Create an Epic Blog Post
By epic, she means something so amazing, so good, so useful, so shareable that when a user lands on the page they not only read it, they exclaim: “WOW THIS IS INCREDIBLY FUN AND USEFUL”. They need to go WOW this is an amazingly useful
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blog post!!!!!! Among her examples was her own post, “Four Webinar Myths and How to Avoid Them.” Click thru to the blog article and you’ll see a) it’s really really useful, b) it touches on an emotion (FEAR: you don’t know the myths and you are NOT avoiding them you dummy), and c) it has an action (download her cheat sheet), which captures your email address.
Among her tips here to creating your EPIC BLOG POST was to ask yourself: “What are the THREE questions that I get ALL THE TIME from potential customers?” What are their “pain points” / “curiosities” – create your blog post around something hot, hot, hot like that. She then exclaimed that when they land on it, the reader should exclaim, “Wow, you read my mind!”
Step #2: Add a Content Upgrade
By this she means that even though your EPIC BLOG post is amazing and super useful, there is a “wait, there’s more,” offer – a “content upgrade,” like a cheat sheet or bulleted list, or worksheet or something that you can give away that is even more value. Not necessarily a full eBook but something yummy and useful that they’ll want to get now that they have a) read your EPIC BLOG POST and b) trust you as an expert, or at least a useful friend.
Add hooks in the article to it, such as the glaring yellow hooks she has in her own article. Amy then explained, “Pack it with value!!!!” They should get it and go, “I can’t believe this is free!” To get Amy’s ideas, text smmwamy to 33444 and she’ll give you her “lead magnet resource guide” or you can click here to watch her video.
Step #3: Create an OPT IN PAGE and a THANK YOU PAGE
Amy recommends lead pages, which is a service that does the design for you, or if you’re techie, you can create your own. But you want a really simple, powerful OPT IN PAGE and on the THANK YOU PAGE you want to explain that they MUST opt in to your list, and you can use it to co-promote yet another offer. The OPT IN PAGE must be simply and powerful! And the THANK YOU PAGE must explain how they opt in – she recommends a simple video on that page, in which you literally tell them how important it is for them to dig into their spam folder, find the email confirmation and OPT IN.
Step #4: Create your Facebook Ad
You ad should be VERY CASUAL. Speak “as if” you were just posting to your friends, like “Hey, look at this cool, useful blog post I found on such-and-such,” not too slick, not super stuffy. Conversational. Try a few ad images, (split / test), and ironically sometimes the UGLY ones will outperform the pretty ones. Go figure.
Step #5: Install the Facebook Pixel
Also, install the Facebook pixel on both of these pages. The Facebook pixel allows you to track who clicks through on your ad, and it allows for remarketing – those folks who do NOT sign up, can be remarketed to.
Turn ON Your Ad
At that point, you have –
- An incredible blog post that is sooooooooooo wonderful they’ll love it when they land, which builds TRUST.
- A content upgrade, the “carrot” that will spur them to sign up for your email list. And, when they get that carrot, they are going to go yuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmm
- You have an OPT IN page for your email list and a THANK YOU page that build the excitement (so they confirm the sign up) and pixel them so you can remarket
- You have a Facebook ad that is casual in nature (and, remember: you can target your customers by demographic group or even by targeting competitors’ Facebook Pages) and easy-to-look-at.
- You have the PIXEL on, so you can track and remarket.
Now, go do it!
