There are only 3 activities that are constant in any eCommerce business. These are, in order of
importance:
1. LIST BUILDING – building interest
2. LIST NURTURING – building trust
3. LAUNCHING — making valuable offers of service
Although you must tend to each of these important activities, List Building is, easily, the most important activity of your business. Without an expanding and responsive list, you are limiting your growth potential. List building takes attention, but is not hard and you can get started building your list from nothing in as little as a week (a few days if you have nothing else to do).
It’s All About Serving Your Tribe
List building is about serving and connecting with your tribe. Who are the people interested in your work? What makes them tick and what solutions can you provide to them? List building is all about creating interest. Your writing is about creating a relationship with people that will last. This not a list that you will “blast” with sales pitches but rather you will offer solutions to their problems, the issues that matter to them in their lives and businesses.
If you do this well, you will have a list of interested and engaged people who will be much more likely to open your offers when they arrive in their inbox.
Best ways to Find Your Tribe
There are multiple ways to build a list.
- Gather names at your networking events and specifically ask if they would like to receive emails from you.
- Offer free stuff on the internet and prepare a landing page to have them opt-in.
- Provide webinars at no cost except their email address.
Yet the challenge remains, how do I know what my potential customer might be interested in?
Well, that is the question of the day. How do you know? Fortunately, there is a way to locate your potential customer by getting clear about what they suffer about. What are the things that keep them up at night? Those aspects of their life or business that they really need to figure out and they have no answers, or the answers they have did not produce the result they expected or needed.
These are the issues that folks will pay money to resolve. These are the issues that folks will go to lengths to find a solution to. This is really the hardest work of building your list. You have to spend time thinking about your ideal customer and what they are struggling to accomplish.
If you can provide a solution to an issue that your potential customer is tangling with than they will gladly give you their email address for a free solution.
Best advice: Do not tease them…
If you are going to offer a solution then give them the solution, yes for free. Remember that you are building trust with your tribe. They have not met you and a post may be the first time they ever engage with you. When you give real value for FREE, they open their hearts to you. The next time they get an email from you; among the hundreds of emails that people receive each day… they are way more likely to open it. This process takes time and it is about building a real group of people who love what you do!
This also helps to build some resilience into your business. If you offer real value to them, when you ask them to buy something they will respond — and share.
Overall motto: Be generous!
I started my first Creative Business when I was a single mom with four tiny children. That was 25 years ago and I started Business 101 for Creative Entrepreneurs to give back. I am so grateful for all who supported my while I was started, but more than anything I wished I had some business support, some mentoring or guidance. I want you to know that I get how hard, confusing, and challenging it can be to be alone and have real questions with no one to ask.
Please take this FREE 30 Minute Creative Business Consult as my way of saying “You Can Do It!”
What you can use the call for:
- Ask anything you need to know!
- Get important, reliable resources for whatever you need
- You can design a Next Actions plan for building the life of your dreams!
- Create Learning Plan so you can begin powerfully
- Feel supported