Building Your List? How to Leverage Content to Grow It Quickly
Email marketing is still the most effective form of marketing for small to medium sized businesses. It’s particularly important for business-to-consumer organizations because it’s a tool that helps you make connections.
However, email is also a key ingredient in any business-to-business marketing strategy. The first step, of course, for any strong email marketing campaign is to attract leads and motivate people to sign up for your email list. So how do you accomplish that? How do you grow your list and attract people who are interested in your company’s information, products, or services? It all starts with content.
The Role of Content in Building Your Email List
Content plays several fundamental roles in marketing and growing your email or lead list. The first role that it plays is with your opt-in or lead magnet. This is an offer that you make which is so appealing to prospects that they’re willing to exchange their email address to obtain it.
For example, a software company could create a case study or a white paper related to the software solution they provide. The information in the content is valuable and informative. A personal coach might give away an eBook on a key personal coaching question. For any business model or industry, there are dozens of opportunities to create an opt-in.
The second way that content plays a role in building your list is that you use it to drive traffic to your blog or website. Social media can play a key role in this process, as can a solid SEO strategy. On every page of your blog or website is the opportunity to sign up for your email list. For example, the software company might publish a series of articles on LinkedIn or in a technical journal. They might share a press release announcing the release of their updated software product. Links embedded in the press release and in the LinkedIn articles all drive traffic to the company website, where visitors are invited to grab the opt-in content (and sign up for their email list).
So, content drives traffic, it builds awareness, and it also works at the same time to build a relationship with the reader. Then, once someone visits your website, content encourages them to join your list.
The Key is Your Opt-In Offer
Because you’re competing with potentially hundreds of other businesses for any given prospect, it’s important that your opt-in content is powerful. Start interviewing your customers. Find out what their buying cycle was and what problems they had before they made a purchase from you. Then address those problems in your content.
Research your audience. Create a content plan that addresses key problems and drives traffic to your website. You can also advertise your lead magnet and ask your affiliates and customers to promote it for you. Then, with that lead magnet content you’ve created, build your list.