List Building is a key tactic for online entrepreneurs.
Network marketers need to build lists of prospects who show inclinations of following them into their primary business opportunity.
Internet marketers are continually involved in List Building because they know an email list represents their customer base. It’s important for them, though, to build a highly responsive list more than a big list. The way they build it largely determines how responsive it will be.
Bloggers need to stay in touch with their readers, in order to remind them of their latest blog posts and to give them opportunities to buy products and services related to their niche.
It’s not easy to present sales offers directly on your blog. Those that do, and do it often and as a primary function of their blogs, are not likely to attract a wide readership since they seem to be “pitching” far more than informing, educating or entertaining.
List Building is a reflection of how valuable your blog is to it’s visitors.
List Building Is For Leaders
In each instance, list-building will be far easier when you are perceived as a leader in your niche, an expert and an authority.
In order to establish yourself as a person, not only of authority, but of the kind of authority that people actually want to follow, learn from and happily purchase products and services from… you need to learn to establish your leadership from the moment they meet you.
I’ll be teaming up with Donna to teach this process in great depth on our upcoming webinar called “Awesome Authority.”
List Building With Video
One of the List Building tactics I Iike to teach my clients for establishing these leadership qualities, is what I like call the “breakthrough “video” presentation.
This short article is not about the art of video production, bur rather, the way to use your videos to build lists of followers, prospects, and subscribers to your email newsletter.
Video, in general, is a great way to let people get to know you a bit. They can see who you are, hear what you sound like and generally begin a bonding process with you.
Most of this bonding process is linguistic, while effecting an unspoken, subconscious thread that begins to establish your leadership and authority. Again, we will delve into this in detail in our “Awesome Authority” presentation.
For now, let us just say that your videos will give you a way to connect with people in a way that is entirely outside the ordinary sphere of logic and language.
You see, logic and language form a barrier between you and your prospect. Human communication is far deeper than logic, and extends way beyond verbal language.
With video, you get to begin tearing down that barrier.
With “breakthrough” video, you get to really show people that you can be pivotal in their efforts to succeed at something.
List Building With “Breakthrough” Video
So what elevates an ordinary, personal branding sort of video, to a breakthrough video?
It’s very simple, really.
A video makes you a real person, someone your prospect may begin to like.
A breakthrough video makes you essential to your prospect, someone they trust to help them achieve their goals.
How do you suddenly achieve this trust with video? By actually helping them achieve one tiny step along the way toward achieving their long-term goals.
Not by telling them you can help them, but by actually helping them.
In order for your video to function at this level, though, it must not only help them break through some barriers that have been standing between them and the achievement of their goals, you must do it almost instantly.
I tell my clients to do this in a video no shorter than 3 minutes, but no longer than 7. I think 5 minutes is perfect.
Is that a strict rule?
Of course not, but it’s a guideline I’ve found works best to elicit a special kind of trust-bond reaction, known in online marketing as “conversion.”
What To Do With Your List Building Videos
You may be thinking that the main function of these breakthrough videos is to get someone to join your list.
Using them as enticement for joining your list is not where I’ve found them to be most effective, though.
Their more strategic positioning is actually after someone has already joined your list, and more specifically, as the enticement for them to do so. In online marketing lingo, this means that your breakthrough video becomes the actual “lead magnet” product that you use as enticement.
So, for instance, you might offer this.
“Enter Your Name and Email Below, and Get My Free Video That Will Show You Exactly What You Can Do To Lose 10 Pounds In The Next Month.”
People join your list, not in response to your video, but in order to watch it.
This kind of offer is an excellent list-building tactic insofar as it trips your something in your visitor’s brain that tells them you have some kind of expertise or authority.
This only works to your long-term benefit, though, if your actually do have that expertise or authority.
Your new subscriber will decide whether or not you do very quickly.
If they watch your 5 minute lead magnet video and actually gain a breakthrough from it, you have gained their loyalty and trust for as long you continue to build on that initial breakthrough experience.
If you fail to deliver that breakthrough, you’ve probably lost them forever and they’ll never even open your emails. In other words, they will be unresponsive.
Your entire List Building endeavor is dependent on the quality of your response to the trust people freely lend you.
You can learn more about this process, and more about how to effectively engage in List Building with video at the upcoming “Awesome Authority” event.
Do you use video for List Building?
Has this article given you some new ideas for using it effectively?
Do you engage in other List Building tactics?
Please let me know in the comments section below.
Thanks so much for being here today!
