How to Grow Your List with Information Products

Attracting people to sign up to your list is crucial for the success of your business. An effective way of doing this is to offer them something of value in return for their name and email address.

Generally, that valuable offer involves an information product or related digital download products. Your information product would be something that helps your visitor solve a problem they might have. You can create your information product in any format you want. For example, it could be an eBook, a checklist, a report, a mindmap, or a membership. Just as long as the product provides your visitor with the information they need.

Identify Your Target Market

Get a clear picture of who your ideal customer is and create a unique detailed profile of them. This is essential to build a sustainable business.

I’d suggest creating a customer avatar. What is a customer avatar? Well, in case you don’t know, a customer avatar is a fictional character that represents your ideal prospect.

A customer avatar will help you to target the right people and repel the wrong type of customer. You’ll know the problems they’re facing and how you can offer to solve them. Creating an avatar will help you figure out your customer and what they want.

Think about the following when you’re creating your customer avatar:

Demographics – Age, gender, education, job, income, politics, hobbies, and interests.

Psychographics – beliefs, attitudes, aspirations, values, etc but essentially how your target market thinks and feels.

How do you research your avatar? Maybe you’re the customer so build your avatar around yourself. Or perhaps your avatar mirrors friends or family members. You can use Google or YouTube, etc to do your research. Develop a good knowledge and understanding of your avatar and establish what worries and concerns they may have.

Are they trying to solve a problem or learn more? What’s their negative emotions if they can’t solve their problem? What would be the positive emotions they’d feel if they could solve their problem?

When I’ve created an avatar for projects I’ve been working on I name my avatar. Then I find an image (not of a famous person though!) so that I can look at them. Moreover, I think about what they’ll gain from my product, what they’ll achieve when they use it, etc.

A worthwhile exercise:

When researching your avatar hop over to Amazon.com (more fruitful than Amazon.co.uk) and check out book titles and read the reviews. Type in the product you’re selling, for example, “LinkedIn for Beginners”. Amazon will throw up lots of book suggestions relating to your search. Focus on the books that have lots of reviews. This will give you an idea of what people are looking for in your target market and niche.

It’s also a good idea to investigate where your target audience are hanging out. What groups or forums are they involved in? If your audience is there in large numbers, then join in the conversation and get to know them better.

Start Creating Compelling Content

Once you’ve established who your audience is and have decided on the problem, you’re going to solve for them you can start creating useful and helpful content. Try to deliver the information in as many different formats as you can. This way it will appeal to all portions of your target audience. For example, some people prefer to read content whilst others prefer to watch video or listen to audio. Also, some people prefer to view content online whilst others prefer to download it. Remember you’re trying to cover all bases within your target market because you don’t want to miss out on any potential leads and customers.

It’s important to remember that when you create content you give away the “why,” and sell the “how.” This enables you to divide your free content and your paid content. There may be times when you want to change things up though. For example, you may want to run a list building campaign where you give away the “how” because you have an irresistible upsell as a follow up.

I’d suggest setting up a content calendar and publication calendar.

I do this especially if I have a variety of projects on the go that require me to write lots of different types of content. It allows me to plan ahead and stops me from becoming overwhelmed. For example, if you know that you want to publish an article about New Year’s resolutions you’ll want to start finding and crafting that content a couple of months beforehand.

Your publication calendar can also be made available to your list members and your affiliates. For example, you can use it to create excitement around any promotions and launches that are coming up. In addition, it will get people fired up and engaged. It will also give people the opportunity to get onboard in advance and doing this can lead to more profitable promotions and launches.

Use Automation to Capture Emails Wisely

Autoresponders nowadays, like Aweber and GetResponse are so sophisticated and make the process of list building super easy if you set them up correctly. Their features and functionality go way beyond what was available even a few years ago. If you’re integrating your landing page software with your autoresponder, then you can make the whole process efficient and smooth for everyone. However, you want to make sure you use all this highly effective automation wisely.

1. Avoid Too Many Popups

Popups can be highly effective but if they’re not executed properly, they can be a major annoyance for your visitors. In fact, some people get so irritated by popups that if one appears they’ll immediately leave the page. You’ll want to display your freebies and offers in multiple places on your page, but you don’t want to turn your visitors off before they’ve even had a chance to take a look around. However, you can use them sparingly for new visitors or people who haven’t clicked away from them.

2. Don’t Confuse Your Visitors with Your Technology

When a prospect arrives on your landing page don’t dazzle them with your technology. If you’re prompting them to download something or buy something, then you want them to be as focused on this as much as possible. Don’t put distractions in their way and risk having them leave your page without finishing what they started.

3. Get Personal

Whenever you’re able to personalise aspects of your emails, page, download or product please do so. People respond more positively to personalisation even when they know it’s done with a machine. They feel more connected to you when their name is mentioned. Everyone loves the “human touch” of someone being friendly, personable, and warm.

4. Behaviour Match

Many types of landing page and autoresponder software is so refined now that they can also carry out certain actions based on a visitor’s behaviour. It’s advantageous if you can set this up in the first instance. For example, if the customer does this, then the technology performs that. This of course makes the overall user experience much smoother and more natural. Technology is great when it works but can be a nightmare when it doesn’t. Ensure you test everything thoroughly before you make your page live.

Multiple Info Products and Traffic

When you want to grow your list using information products it’s essential that you create numerous free information products and landing pages. Even when you’re giving away something for free you should aim to produce a high-quality landing page. In addition, make sure you tell your prospects what they’re downloading and how you’ll process their information. Always demonstrate the benefits and explain that downloading this is valuable for them and why.

Landing Pages

One of the reasons why it’s a good idea to have multiple landing pages and multiple free products is that it gives you more opportunities to amass email subscribers. The more entry points you create, the more people join your list, and this in turn will ultimately increase your sales.

You could use one of your landing pages as a conversation starter on your subject and provide answers. For example, if someone asks a question and your freebie is the answer, then offer to share it with them. Furthermore, if you’re in a Facebook group where you’re part of a discussion but aren’t permitted to promote your business you could say, “I have some free information about this and I’d be more than happy to share it with you if you DM me.” Lots of members of the group will send you DM’s and you can then reply to them with a link to your freebie.

Always make sure your pages have a prominent CTA (Call to Action) that speaks directly to them. Furthermore, remember that a variety of landing pages will be favourable for your SEO as having more pages on your site gathers more attention from the search engine bots.

Traffic

Once you’ve created your landing page it’s vital you drive traffic to it. You can let people know about your product through your social media accounts, your networks, your peer groups, and business connections as well as placing ads. Once someone has subscribed to your list you begin to establish trust and build a relationship with them by sending out a follow up sequence of emails that your audience wants and needs.

Ways to drive traffic:

• SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) – When you create a landing page it’s important to pay attention to the SEO of that page. For example, create a keyword rich title, headline, and sub-headline. In addition, name the page accordingly and sprinkle your page with keywords. Also provide effective navigation and don’t forget to make sure your page is mobile responsive and works across all devices.

• Blogging and Social Media Marketing – When you create a new product, be it free or paid, make sure you write a blog announcing this. Posting on your blog gives you credibility and readers will be interested to find out more about you and what you do. You could also include a video presentation about your new product as this will engage more people. You should be excited about your new product and subsequent launch, so share it across your social media accounts several times and ask your audience to share it too.

• Affiliates – If you’re in a position where you already have willing affiliates ready to join you in taking your product to market, then great as this will help you grow your list even more. Now, you must make the entire process as simple and easy as possible for your affiliates. Make sure you walk them through your entire sales funnel so that they know how many upsells and cross-sells you have and most importantly for them how much commission they’ll make on each customer they send your way even if they send them to a freebie offer.

• Ads – Paid ads can work very well for list building. You can try running ads on Facebook but make sure you know what you’re doing and that you have enough of a budget to test multiple versions of your ad. Facebook ads can prove highly successful for many marketers, but they can also quickly cost you a lot of money if you don’t know how to execute them properly.

• Create a Buzz – By creating a buzz around your launch people will be curious and interested to find out more. Start working on this several weeks beforehand and keep the momentum going with teasers and posts about the benefits of your product and how it will help solve your audience’s problems. You could even post a short video message each day for a week in the run up to your launch. Mention each of the benefits and end on a cliff-hanger so that people tune in the following day for more.

An email list is central to having a successful long-term business both online and offline. Information products, in any format, are an incredibly effective way to grow your list.

It goes without saying that every subscriber you welcome into your community should be nurtured and communicated with regularly. In addition, you should work hard to build a relationship with them and gain their trust. Always deliver top quality information and products and people will stick with you a long way into the future.

To Your Success!