Everywhere you go, you must abide by the rules. The same is true with online marketing. But here, if you break the rules you don’t just lose the match, you also lose your shirt.
The first unwritten rule of online marketing is that nobody buys from people that they don’t know and trust. The many scams online can be partly blamed for this situation.
If you try to send people directly to a sales page, you will not make sales. The only way to let people first get to know you, is by building an email list.
Five Steps to Build Your List Effectively
- Create a lead magnet to attract the right people.
- Create a landing page where people can subscribe to your list.
- Set up a follow-up email series to build a relationship with your list members.
- Send targeted traffic to your landing page.
- Make an irresistible offer to your list members.
To accomplish the above, you get access to this new marketing platform at no cost to you. You can have up to 2,000 subscribers before you must upgrade. This will allow you to start making sales long before you have to pay for the upgrade which is only $27 per month.
Have a look at everything you get immediate access to:
Systeme.io with Autoresponder for 2,000 Subscribers – FREE – (no card needed.)
The Role of a Lead Magnet in Marketing
The lead magnet has two functions:
- It should get the attention of people that might be interested in what your main offer is.
- It should have enough perceived value that they will exchange their email address for access to that valuable content.
The way in which you get people’s attention is by using a splash page and it can be separate of the landing page or it can be your opt-in page.
With a splash page you grab their attention and ask them to click the link. The link then takes them to your subscription form or pop-up. This first way is a two-step process and is the start of your funnel. It helps to get people to click your links.
The second option is to combine the splash and opt-in on a single landing page. Here you grab the attention of your intended prospect and tell them more about your lead magnet and what it can do for them. You then have a strong call to action to get them to fill in their contact details on the subscription form.
Your lead magnet plays a huge role in establishing your online business and it does not matter if you sell your own products and services or if you are an affiliate marketer.
The lead magnet is where you show people how much you care about them. If you spend enough time to do thorough research, then you will know exactly what they need and what their obstacles are. Your lead magnet should solve a problem for them so that they can get early results.
When you help people to achieve their goals or part thereof, they will trust you enough to also look at your paid solutions. The higher the quality of your content, the more they will see you as the expert and will want to learn from you.
How to Create a Winning Lead Magnet
Recently I watched a video of Alex Hormozi, a well-known online marketer and multi-million business owner. He has created more than 35,000 pieces of content and made a study of what worked best.
He saw that a simple way to engage your ideal customer is to use lists, steps and stories. He found that by educating your prospect got more results than trying to entertain them. Especially business people want real information that can help them in their business.
Always focus on what the customer wants and less on what you have achieved. Only use your results as proof to show that it would be worth their while to listen to you. Do not try to satisfy everybody but select your target market carefully so that you can focus on a specific problem.
I created a guide on creating lead magnets that you can download here: Ultimate Lead Magnet Blueprint (no opt-in needed).
Today it is much easier to do proper research with the advent of AI. You should make full use of ChatGPT now that it has access to the internet. It is not necessary to get the paid version, because there is a way to give the free version of ChatGPT 3.5 access to the web as well.
Just download the free Chrome extension (also available for Firefox and Edge) called WebChatGPT. You will even get access to 1-Click Prompts as well.
Just ask ChatGPT who your ideal customers are and what it is that they want urgently for your chosen topic.
For instance my chosen topic is online marketing, but it is very wide. So, I have chosen to focus on email marketing.
Here is the first question I asked WebChatGPT:
I even received the sources:
You can do the same with any topic that you choose, but I went deeper and asked the next question:
ChatGPT came up with these answers within seconds. You can now even go further and ask it to take each point and elaborate on it.
Can you see how you can use such a powerful tool like ChatGPT to help you with your research. Soon you will have all the information to create an in-depth analysis of your ideal customer and exactly what they want and need.
Using Alex’s simple formula of Lists, Steps and Stories, you can create your own lead magnet that will help your chosen audience to solve one of their initial problems.
At first, when you still don’t have proof of your own, you can make use of what other people in your field are able to achieve. Just the quality of your lead magnet information and the value it has for your audience, can go a long way to show your audience that you know what you are talking about.
If you are not a born writer, you can even use ChatGPT to help you with the writing of your lead magnet. Bill McIntosh is also a multi-million online marketer and he has a whole range of YouTube videos that shows how you can use ChatGPT to write emails, articles and other content for you.
He found that it is best to not let ChatGPT create the whole thing in one go, but to take it segment by segment. He even gives you the prompts that you can use to get ChatGPT to create its own prompts.
I have created a free membership where I show you in more detail how you can make use of AI in your online marketing. You can get access by clicking the link below:(no opt-in necessary)
Pro Tip for Affiliate Marketers:
An easy way to create a winning lead magnet for an affiliate offer, is to create a walk-through video of how the product or service works and also show the results that you are getting with it.
Yes, it is always best to own the product that you are promoting and much easier to sell when you can show the results. The proof of the pudding lies in the eating – always!
Creating Your Winning Landing Page
With Systeme.io, the marketing platform I told you about in the beginning, it is super easy to create your own landing pages.
They give you several templates to choose from and you can quickly adjust it to suit your needs.
Here is an example of the landing page that I created with it and you are welcome to subscribe to my list through it:
Here are some more examples of landing pages that does a good job of getting the right people to subscribe to your list.
Building a Relationship With Your List Members
The whole idea of building a prospect list for your online business is to let your audience see who you are, what you do and how you can help them to solve their problems.
You do this with your follow-up email series through your autoresponder. Again you can use ChatGPT to help write these emails. You use stories about what you went through in your online journey. Show your list members how you were able to solve problems and overcame obstacles.
Your emails should be a guide to them in their journey online by giving them the necessary steps to get results as soon as possible. If you can help them to get nearer to their goals, they will appreciate what you did for them and will begin to trust you.
Start with suggesting that they look at the tools and systems that you use in your own business. Show them exactly how to set it up for optimum results and show how you discovered the short-cuts and business strategies that work well.
I discovered this new system developed by Billy Holder recently and was impressed with the free training that he gave in it. He makes it very simple for you to set up your own funnel and he even let you copy his email series.
We became partners and you can have a look below: (no card needed) Easy Commission Blueprint
The funnel will do the selling for you in a way that your prospects will enjoy and don’t even see as selling. They will just realize that what you are giving them will help them to succeed sooner. It will also show them that by investing in their business can be the best thing to do.
Most people don’t know where to start and what the next step is, but with this funnel you will help them to follow a proven strategy.
Getting Traffic and Converting It Into Leads
This is where most people fail with their online marketing. They are not able to get enough visitors to their landing page to see results.
First we must look at some metrics:
- Your Opt-in Rate to your list.
- Your Conversion Rate to making sales.
Your opt-in rate is the percentage of visitors to your landing page that subscribes to your list. If you are able to get targeted traffic, then it can be as high as 20-30% and even higher. As a beginner you should aim to get at least a 10% opt-in rate.
There are several ways that you can define your conversion rate.
The first one is where you convert a visitor to become a lead.
Secondly you have a conversion when your lead opens your emails.
The third conversion is when they click on the links in your emails.
The final conversion is when they buy your offer and you earn a commission.
What many beginners do not realize is that you need many visitors before you can hope to make a sale.
Say that you get 1,000 people to visit your landing page. With an opt-in rate of 10% you will get 100 subscribers. With an email open rate of 20%, you will get 20 emails opened.
Since the people don’t know and trust you yet, you will probably get a 2% click rate on your affiliate links. That means that you must get at least 50 subscribers to open your emails before you will get a click.
This is what it looked like when I started to build a new list a few years ago:
My open rate was only 2.6% and the click rate was 40% but that was due to the fact that those two people who clicked knew me well for a long period and actually bought products from me before.
The good news is that things will get better for you once you develop your skills and focus on what is working for you. The emails that Billy will give you have been tested over a long period and we know that they work well to build a relationship of trust with your subscribers.
Here is another example of what can happen when you have the skills to write good emails. It took just six emails to start making sales with this campaign. Here my open rate was an average of 43% and the click rate was an average of 27%.
I was able to make three sales from just 32 people on this list!
That is nearly 10% sales conversion rate.
As you can see, it is possible to make money with email marketing if you keep at it and grow your list quickly. To help you with this, I am going to let you in on a secret.
There are ways in which you can get help from others to get leads on a daily basis. In the Easy Commission Blueprint you will discover the first way.
Here is another way to get leads quickly with the help of others:
Pro Tip:
To really become successful overnight, you should not only build a leads list for your business, but a buyers list.
Why is this important?
Buyers have already proven that they are willing to take out their credit card and invest in their business. They are not merely freebie seekers, but are action takers.
These are the people who you want to have on your list. It is much easier to get them to look at your offers and they might be willing to buy from you much sooner. Especially if they see the value in your content and lead magnet.
You get the opportunity to upgrade in the above lead system for only $7 and then you will receive buyers instead of only leads. This will drastically improve your chances of making sales.
Next we will look at how you can improve your chances even more.
Create an Irresistible Offer
Most affiliate marketers make the mistake of sending people directly to the vendor’s sales page. However, there is a much more effective way to make affiliate sales.
You do this with pre-selling.
Now you might ask what pre-selling is and the answer is simple.
You do it by means of a bridge page in your sales funnel. In Easy Commission Blueprint you got access to your own funnel at no cost to you. In the blueprint you will discover an easy to use page builder that even host your pages for free.
On this bridge page you show your visitor how you use the affiliate product yourself and give them a walk-through video about the suggested product. When they see how they can use it to solve their problem, they will be more inclined to buy it.
You can even sweeten the deal further by offering a bonus or two that will help them to implement the solution and give them even faster results. Ask them to email you the receipt so that you can send them the bonus in return.
This way you can also build a buyers list effectively.
In the Easy Commission Blueprint you will see how it is done. We give you a way to copy all the pages of the funnel and as a further bonus you even receive the follow-up email series.
By using this simple but proven system, you will be able to build your list, build rapport with your new subscribers and start to make sales sooner than you think possible.
Template for an Irresistible Offer
You can follow these simple steps to create your irresistible offer:
- Ask yourself what topic you will choose – find your niche. Do you have certain skills or knowledge?
- Determine who your ideal customers are.
- Find their struggles, pains and problems.
- What are their aspirations or goals?
- What do they want to do, have or become?
- How can your product or service help them?
- What will they achieve when they work with you?
- What will their results be?
- What final outcome will they experience?
Answer these questions and you will be able to create your offer that will get you buyers galore. Then use the following template to formulate your offer.
“I help my clients that are suffering from [Pain, Struggle or Problem], instead to experience [Benefit, Result or Outcome].”
Here are a few examples of good offers:
If you have an audience, followers or list, you can ask them what their struggles are, what they want to achieve and what results will mean for them.
If you don’t have people that you can ask yet, then you can visit relevant Facebook groups and see what the top questions and problems are and what people want to achieve the most.
You can also ask ChatGPT what your ideal customer looks like for your chosen topic. Here is a prompt that you can use:
“Create a curated list of use cases for ChatGPT, each thoughtfully designed to align with my chosen topic or niche. This list will serve as my personalized guide, enabling me to leverage ChatGPT’s capabilities in various aspects of my chosen topic. Organize this list into 10 distinct sections sorted by their relevance to my chosen topic. In each section, construct a table with columns for “Use Case” and “Example Request”. Each section will contain 5 use cases examples. The “Example Request” will be written in the form of a direct request to ChatGPT. Begin by asking me about my chosen topic, and based on it, fill in the interests, goals, challenges of my ideal customers. It is imperative that you follow the request for 10 sections and 5 use case examples in each section.”
With this prompt you can get ChatGPT to create prompts for you that you can use to get even more detailed answers about your chosen topic or niche.
Here is an example of what I got when I used this prompt and told ChatGPT that my chosen topic is Email List Building.
As you can see, it gave me examples of prompts or requests that I can use to reach my target market. ChatGPT is a great tool that you can use to create content, emails and your irresistible offer.
You can continue and ask ChatGPT to help you further to describe your ideal customer, their main problems and goals they want to achieve. To give you all the prompts and proper guidance would make this article too long.
I have compiled a guide that you can access below:
Your AI Prompt Guide to Create an Irresistible Offer
Here are the other links again:
Your Free Marketing Platform:
Systeme.io with Autoresponder for 2,000 Subscribers
Develop your own sales funnel with copy and paste solution:
Discover how to use ChatGPT in your business to save lots of time:
Getting Leads for your business with the help of others:
To have success online, you need a proven system. My system is to use the above resources to build my list, get my subscribers to know and trust me and then to bring them offers through my sales funnel.
I have now given you the recipe plus the ingredients. It is now your turn to celebrate with a winning cake!
