Even with the advent of thousands of Facebook and Twitter follower, building your own list of past and future prospects is the single most important thing to do. The list is equivalent to all your future income. Facebook followers are not as an engaged, despite the social media hype. Email is still the one to drive revenue and the making your list work through email is your number one priority.
But how do you do it? If you are running a personal blog or are a small business with a small website? How do you get people to sign up?… Show them what’s in it for them. The acronym WIIFM – what’s in it for me -is a staple of all marketing, Internet marketing or offline marketing.The squeeze page or list building page show be the first thing people see on the site. The website has to have a great headline. It probably will have some kind of graphic or image, and three to five bullet points. It will also have an opt-in box, created by whichever autoresponder service you’re using. That’s all you need.
See how www.yourcyclingacademy.com has achieved this: firstly, its very clearly visible on the top right; next it has a very clear heading: ‘Subscribe for FREE to Your Cycling Academy Newsletter and get your FREE “7 ways to increase your average speed” ebook’. The headline of the main page gets them reading down the page further. But the bullet points in the main section tell them why they will want to fill in the box because in them, he answers their question, “What’s in it for me?”
Make a list of every benefit you can think of. What will your product or service do for the client? When you’ve finished, get up and walk away for a while. Let your subconscious work a while, and then go back and write a few more benefit statements. Take your time with this process because it’s very, very important – and it takes much longer than you think.
But what’s a benefit? Put yourself into your customers’ shoes. If you were thinking about signing up for your list, what would entice you? What would your product or service do for you? Here’s an example. On yourcyclingacademy.com, he asks the questions:
Would you like to be a faster, stronger and fitter cyclist?
Do you want to learn the secrets of the cycling pros?
Have you spent hundreds (or even thousands!!) on your cycling equipment – and only seen marginal gains?
These features make you want to say, “that’s me’ – if you are in the cycling niche. You have to paint a mental picture for your customers so that they can see whats in it for them, and imagine them in the future. He then reinforces it with ‘Whether you have just bought your first bike or you have been cycling for years, this site is for you’
See how he subtly places a picture in the mind of the reader. Painting this a mental picture for people will build trust, show them how the features of your product or program will do for them and encourage them to sign up to your list, knowing they are going to a get a tonne of value if they do.
