List Building is perhaps the most essential element when it comes to nurturing your audience. There is nothing more important to a Business than a list of willing & able buyers.

Statistics also indicate that list building (particularly email marketing) gives the highest ROI for every dollar spent.

Thus, if you still haven’t built a solid process for building your list, you’re leaving out dollars on the table & the potential to grow your business manifold.

In this crisp & concise blog post we’re going to cover 7 actionable steps that we ourselves as a Digital Marketing agency cum training institute use, to build our list.

These 7 steps are tried & tested. They work like a charm.

Excited?

Let’s jump right in.

Step 1: Define the bigger purpose of your brand

Knowing ‘why’ you’re doing is equally important as knowing ‘what’ you are doing
In a nutshell, you should clearly define how your brand is solving a large problem while simultaneously contributing to the development of the human race.
Clearly define what is the unique selling proposition of your offer (product/service) and the statement of value.
Aligning your mission with the wants and aspirations of your target audience is the recipe for Business success.
Here’s the template for statement of value:
(Product/service name) enables (ideal customer) to experience (after state)

Step 2: List down all the problems your brand is capable of solving

Make a list of all the pain points & problems your product/service is capable of solving. This can be done with the help of the before/after grid. Filling in the grid gives you an idea of the transition your prospect will have after they buy your product/service.
Here’s an example of the Before/After grid for one of our core products (Integrated Digital Marketing Certification Program):

Step 3: Identify the audience who have these problems & need your help

The objective in this step is to identify and segment the group(s) of people who have either problems or needs that your business is capable of solving.

Step 4: Segment your audience

Create buyer personas (customer avatars) for your brand. I.e Segment in to different group of willing and able buyers with similar problems/needs. The objective is to clearly know whom you’re selling to.
List down the name, age, occupation, marital status,gender, languages & other demographic information about your buyer persona.

Step 5: Define lead magnet for each segment

A unique lead magnet has to be created specifically targeting to each segment of your audience. For example, if your target audience are bloggers, a lead magnet could be an ebook or a pdf titled “29 proven hacks to quadruple your blog traffic within the next 10 days.” Specificity is the key to create a winning lead magnet.

Step 6: Promote it on display advertising networks

Identify the display advertising networks that each specific target consumer are active on. Push your lead magnets on these networks so as to meet their particular need or solve their problems. Some examples of display advertising networks are Google Display Network & Social Media (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc….)

Step 7: Build tripwires & promote it on search advertising networks

Advertise your tripwire on search advertising networks in order to obtain highly relevant & targetted traffic. Tripwires are deployed on search advertising networks inorder to obtain leads and collect the cookie data of the visitors with high buying intent.

This process is also a list building activity.

Now that you’ve built the list, the next step is to convert this list to contracts.
If you’re wondering how to convert contacts to contracts, read our article on 11 Step Content Creation Strategy.
And there you go! 7 actionable tips that will help you build an email list & an unshakable business in no time.