At this year’s Social Media Marketing World conference, Amy Porterfield, a self-employed social media strategists and co-author of Facebook Marketing All-In-One for Dummies gave a great talk on growing emails lists on a budget. Speaking to a room of marketing mavens, she tells begins by explaining the importance of the email list. According to Porterfield, the energy of your business is tied directly to your email list. For every business, list building needs to be a priority, and it turns out that Facebook ads are a strategic way to grow your email lists.
Amy passionately explains how she was able to grow her list from 600 subscribers in 2011 to 200,000 in 2015, proving to be the best person to talk about email lists. All successful and profitable entrepreneurs say that their business is fuelled by emails; these emails are really intense Facebook ads.
Porterfield calls Facebook ads a “list building funnel,” and to help us grow our lists, Amy gives these 5 steps to killing it with your emails.
- Create an Epic Blog Post
According to Hubspot, 96% of visitors who come to your site are not ready to buy your product/service. As a solution to this, Amy emphasizes having something to provide context of how you are valuable. You need to include a number of examples, stories, how-to’s, sharable items, and videos. You need to have posts that can engage the audience and show them why this is worth their money. If you are wondering, what it is that people will find interesting? Porterfield says to think about your 3 most asked questions. These are what people want to know about. Your posts should answer the things you know people will ask. Read their minds.
- Add a Lead Magnet
Adding a content upgrade to your post is a great method for promotion. Amy mentions using things like giveaways, freebies, gifts, and freemiums to attract the user. These added promotions should be well aligned with the blog post, acting even as an extension. As Amy puts it, go for the quick win. She puts out the golden question to the marketers of the room, asking, “Before someone buys your product, what does he or she need to know, be aware of, or understand in order to want or need your product?”
Amy raises a great point. You need to make sure that you are educating your customers so that they are fully primed to buy!
- Create an Opt-in Page and a Thank-You Page
The point of having an opt-in page, Porterfield says, is to encourage to the public to, well, opt-in. It is about creating something that captures people’s undivided attention. The thank-you page is also just as important. Amy stresses that with this, you can create cool stuff on the page, highlighting your creativity. It also allows you to up-sell your product and explain the freebies in detail. However, she warns not to create these pages yourself. You don’t need to try to build these pages from scratch. That can be time consuming, and there are much better and easier ways to move.
- Create a Facebook Ad to Drive Traffic to Your Blog
When it comes to writing your blog post ad, it should be about the blog post. Give your posts a casual tone. Why? Porterfield adds that it is more relatable for customers, and comes across as more interesting to users. This tone is much more beneficial because it relieves users of having to worry about being sold to. When running ads, variety is key. You’ll want to have a range of ad types. For example, ads with faces work well for people you know, but if it is a cold lead base, then it is best to keep it simple. Amy also advises using bold colours. These seem to give the best opportunity to gain attention.
- Add the Facebook Pixel to Your Opt-In and Thank-You Pages
Porterfield clarifies that you will want the Facebook pixel on your pages. Having the pixel helps you decipher the people who are coming to your page. Amy says that the reason you want to go these pages is that it is important for you to know how many people are actually reading your posts long enough to click through to your gift. The pixel helps you retarget, and retargeting to people who have already shown interest is a vital lifeline to continue the sales funnel. A great tip for targeting is to focus your targeting dollars on your warm prospects. There are some great targeting options for Facebook marketers, so make good use of it!
Amy also shares some of her Facebook Ad targeting tips with the crowd:
- Target Your Fans
- Create a lookalike audience of your email list and Facebook fans
- Target other Facebook Pages
- Target Your Retarget List (The people who have already shown interest)
With this priceless advice, you can make the most of Facebook ads and build your user base to numbers higher than you could imagine. In this day and age, Amy promises that Facebook can be your best friend.