Back to the base line: you want to build a list of people who are interested in your niche, and you want to build a relationship with those people so that they respond to your promotions in a way that makes you money. Right?
Now let’s break that down into smaller pieces that we can digest:
You want PEOPLE to give you the permission to send them emails of a certain nature so that you can make money.
What kind of PEOPLE do you want to give you this permission?
There are 2 main characteristics that have to be represented in those PEOPLE to make your list building efforts profitable. These 2 characteristics are:
1. They are all interested in your niche
2. They are all in a position that they can buy from you
There are other characteristics that depend on your niche, like gender, age, location, level of education, have a certain health concern, … the list goes on. But without being interested in your niche and/or without their ability to buy from you, then there is no money to make here.
By being able to buy from you I mean that they are over 18 in most cases, have their own electronic payment methods, and can afford your product(s).
And being interested in your niche is vague, but it can be finely defined by doing the proper market research.
In most cases, the proper market research starts with doing a keyword research. Google’s keyword research tool is the best and is free. You don’t really need those fancy keyword research tools if you know what you are doing. They save time though, so you decide at what point in your Internet marketing career you’ll need a fancy keyword research tool.
Click here to learn how to use Google’s Keyword Tool.
From the keyword research you need to know what actions do your prospects search for: are they searching for how to stop something, learn about it, increase it … etc. These action words are not necessarily typed in the search box by the searcher. It’s your job to learn that from they searched terms.
Example:
If you do a keyword research about “panic attack” you’ll find that there are searches about how to treat it, how to stop it, and about the symptoms or causes of panic attacks.
So you have 3 actions searched here: treat, stop, and learn. Treat and stop are mentioned clearly in the searched terms, but “learn” was implied by searches about the symptoms and causes.
Why is that important for you as an Internet marketer who wants to build a list?
These searched actions are going to be your guide on how to bribe those people to join your list.
Following the same example; if you are selling a cure for panic attack you might want to give an educational bribe to help your potential customers decide whether what they are having is panic attack or not. Your target will be those who are searching the keywords that imply the need of education. Provide them with what they want then tell them about what they need.
One of my favorite instructors used to say: “You don’t know what you don’t know”. And it is true in our exmaple above. People who are searching for panic attack symptoms or causes are not sure yet whether they need a pill, a diet, a visit to a psychic, or an informational ebook. You will give them what they want (more information) and after you educate them about the condition you tell them that they need your ebook or audio (or whatever you are selling) in order to solve this problem.
I know when I try to educate people about things that I had to learn on my own I don’t pass the information easily to them. So, if you still think it’s not clear enough please use the form below to ask your questions.