Building Your List

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This is a lesson taken from our Dad Hustle online program and brought to you here on the Dad Formula Podcast each Thursday.

We covered the different funnel types in an earlier lesson, and now I’ll focus on traffic coming in to your squeeze page and some examples of how to warm the prospect after they opt-in.

The best way to get traffic in to your squeeze page right now is through social media. Sure, there’s plain organic Google searches, but good luck. You have to have a really established website for that.

And when I say traffic, I mean prospects, not customers, because they’re not goign to be customers just yet. This lession and the last one is about list building, and that means we’re building a list of prospects. We’re going to do this slowly and correctly and not just shove a pitch at them to try to make them an overnight customer.

Now, people all the time decide to do social media but have absolutely no plan, and this includes most businesses out there using social media for their marketing. They just throw things at the wall, hoping a few will stick.

Now, if you want to use this shotgun approach, at the very least, you have to be driving traffic. So, say you just post something that’s teaching, learning. And sure, there’s no direct call to action to get a freebie on a squeeze page. But you need to at least LIST the URL for the current squeeze page you’re promoting right now in the post or ad. At least just include it, even if you’re posting something else. Include the squeeze page link in everything you’re doing. Even if it’s just pushing people to your waiting list.

A social media plan isn’t just posting on a schedule, it’s posting in a way that it connects to your funnel, and the front door of your funnel is your squeeze page. At the very, very, VERY least, point them to your website where you probably have an opt-in form. And remember, we’re not talking about a “Join our Email List” Opt-in form. That’s just saying: “Hey, gimme your email address and I’ll… just send you a ton of crap emails.” No! It has to be something they really want – something enticing and valuable and specific.

And speaking of specific. The FB post or ad you create should specifically relate to the page you’re sending them to. Did you know that in Google Ads, Google’s crawler will actually scan the text on the landing page that you’re pointing the ad to, then give you a Relevance Score. The higher the Relevance Score, the more your ad appears. Because they know it’s important to be specific and relevant.

Like corporate branding, where all brand imagery of a company ties tightly together, you need all of the pieces of your funnel to be relevant to each other and focusing on something specific.

People say that general, or broad style, advertising is dead, and social media replaced it because it’s much more targeted. But if you’re not posting in a targeted way on social media then you’re just doing broad style advertising. You’re just splattering junk out there for virtually anyone to see.

Okay? So social media posts or ads always need to have either:

A call to action, or

A request for engagement, like commenting, sharing or liking.

How Facebook Ads work with Funnels

Now, there’s Facebook Posts and there’s Facebook Ads. The Ads are the ones you spend money on, and FB will serve them up in other people’s feeds. Posts only appear to people who are following your page, and maybe friends of friends if the post is really popular.

So when you’re posting, you can always lead them to a squeeze page, and immediately ask them to opt-in for something. Because these people are already following you, so they’re a little warm.

FB Ads, on the other hand, go out to a cold audience. So you don’t want to send cold traffic from an ad directly to an opt-in. You do take them to the squeeze page with an opt-in on the page, but before they see that, they’re given some free content that they were promised in the FB ad – before they give their email.

Does this make sense?

Instead of doing an ad telling them to opt-in for free content, you do an ad, telling them to click and get free content. No email required. You can’t ask a cold prospect to give you something on the first step – whether it’s their money… OR their email address. So you just point the ad to free content, no email required.

*** Let’s recap:

You would NEVER pitch a product to a cold audience.

Well, you should also NEVER pitch an opt-in to a cold audience.

So they click and go to the squeeze page where they get the free download or video… BUT – THERE you have an opt-in below it for MORE advanced (but still totally free) info.

And, if you give them a free download on that first squeeze page, include the squeeze page URL throughout it and keep telling them in the PDF to come back and enter their email for more advanced training. Because a lot of people will just grab the free PDF download and close the browser window and forget where they even were.

Or, if you do a video, you say the URL of the squeeze page right in the video while you’re teaching them the free, valuable content.

You can also use FB retargeting to send a later ad to the exact list of people who already clicked the ad, leading them to an opt-in page relating closely to what the video was. This is very targeted, since you know they already clicked the ad previously. FB has this feature and it works really well.

So let’s think about this for a sec:

1.  You gave for free.

2.  Then you gave in trade for info (their email).

3.  Then you gave for free repeatedly (email sequence).

4.  Then you will FINALLY give your product in trade for money (buy).

vs:

Asking them to buy. NOW! Green. Big. Exclamation. Flashing.

Right??? If you need to make money starting tomorrow, this isn’t the strategy.

But if you want to build long term customers, create a cult following, and build a really big, warm list, then this is how you do it.

Okay, so they enter their email at some point – they opt-in. What next?

Well, after they get added to your list, you start to warm them like we talked about earlier – by giving valuable free content to them a few times in a row, then slightly pitch them. Then repeat. You give, give, give, slightly pitch. ABout every month or two, you will get agressive and Launch. This is where you really pitch them. And when you do, you send them to a sales page that has a pitch and a checkout button, also maybe a sales video.

You repeat this forever, or until the prospect buys or opts-out. It’s how 95% of people sell an online product. It works, but not as good as it coulkd work, and I’ll give you the REAL strategy in a sec. This method I just described is pretty overdone because it’s easy – there’s email or marketing software out there like Mailchimp that lets you do this so incredibly easily. And it’s cranking 24/7, round the clock.

Automated is great, but if you really want to kill it, then you need to be developing new promotions and really working it each month.

Now, if it’s a closed funnel, well then you’re doing two or four big promotions each year, and that’s it. And we have promotions that are specific for closed funnels. Because remember, after you do the launch, you close it. So we need to basically have three promotions: One promotion leading up to the cart opening, that pitches the offer to the people who opt-ed in to the waiting list, then we need a promotion for those who opt-ed in to the waiting list but didn’t buy, then finally one for those who come later, asking them to get on the waiting list.

A closed funnel gets more complicated and confusing to run, but it works better. It’s confusing because there’s so many small parts, but the fact that it has so many small parts makes it work, becasue it compartmentalizes choices and keys in on certain segments of the warm audience.

Okay, so after you launch, you’ll have that waiting list where people can opt-in to be notified of when you are opening the membership again. They just go into the regular list to get pitched the next time around.

But the REALLY important people are the ones who DID opt-in to your waiting list previously, and were pitched, but didn’t buy when the cart opened. The timing just might have been off for them and you might be able to get them again.

This is when we do a flash promotion. A flash promotion basically gives them a second (or even third) chance to buy again, and it’s open for only 24 hours. So they missed the chance, you closed the cart, but they get a chance to buy again. We do this only through email to that list, and you can do this with a special title, like “Preferred Access Group” or something like that. This way, they don’t think you’re just opening it up again for everyone. You give them a new web page url that is basically a sales page that speaks to them directly and has the cart or checkout button on it.

A flash promotion can also be done early to the people that were on the list first. Typically this is done with a discount offer. The cart is closed, but they have access early. And don’t worry, I’m going to show you how to open and close carts later!

So you have a few types of promotions: The monthly promotions that you do each month for the open funnel, the single quick promotion that always runs for the open funnel, and the big promotions for the closed funnel, and before or after that, the quick flash promotions.

In the Launch section, I have a lesson with a lot more details on promotions. I just like giving you the overview first, letting it sink in, then coming back later and hitting it hard.

So promotions are really just big “pushes” that you do. These are common with Closed Funnels, but you can do big pushes with Open Funnels too. But like I said earlier, Open Funnels typically have ads always running, pointing to them.

So now that we did a full overview and walked through the process, let’s jump back to getting traffic to your list through ongoing promotions from Facebook, and this is more suoted to the Open Funnel.

When doing ads, we want to be pointing them to something free, but there’s some different ad types you can do. You can follow this format for posts too. But remember, you’re always sending them somewhere, and that somewhere will have a List Builder opt-in form on it!

I suggest that you do 3 types of FB ads or posts:

Awareness, Content and Authority.

Awareness Ads – These are about you, and they create likeability and trust. You’re not necessarily giving free content, but you’re creating likeability.

Content Ads – These lead directly to your blog post. They teach and give content.

Authority Ads – These show yourself as the authority. They create awareness about your credibility and the page they lead to may include testimonials or stories.

Most of these will just be image ads with text, but also do video Ads in any of the three formats too. The video ad might even just be for fun or a spoof.

So you have the ad. The prospect then clicks it and goes to your page or blog with the content on it that they were promised. They then get an offer for, say “Get the 5 Minute Business Makeover” and then they have to opt-in to watch.

They then opt-in, and get taken to a video that gives them the 5 minute makeover. It delivers the value that they were promised, and you’ve got their email and you can start giving and pitching from there.

But what I like to test is to get agressive right away. At the end of that video (after they opted in), you tell them that they have just 48 hours to get the $7 trial to the Business Hacks Lab. And you have a timer at bottom of the page.

We call this a self liquidating offer.

You send them 4 targeted sales emails for 48 hours – two per day. As soon as they purchase, you stop.

If they don’t purchase, THEN you put them into your regular funnel where you give, give, give, and eventually do the launch where you pitch. The launch will happen every month or two. Or, you use FB Retargeting to send them more ads later on. Or do both retargeting and email.

And when you’re doing the giving emails, you also mix in the ad types as emails too. We’ll cover that in a lesson coming right up, but I’ll introduce it here while it’s fresh.

So you’ll do some awareness emails, then content, then authority. You’re always mixing it up, but as a general rule, as the prospect gets warmer and closer to where you can pitch them, you’ll do less teaching and proving that you’re the authority, and just keep it to more fun and awareness.

See the difference? More giving and proving to a cold list, vs. keeping in touch and news (awareness) to a warm list.

—————–

Before we end, I want to share with you one really great traffic building strategy we use all the time that doesn’t include any paid ads, and it does a lot of great things all at the same time. It will build your email list, and it will keep the people already on your list warm. It’s the basic strategy I give to absolutely every single perseon I ever work with, because it’s cheap, and so comprehensive.

We call it the vlog Method. A vlog is just a blog made up of videos instead of posts.

1.) Create an engaging video of you – teaching, whatever

2.) Post it on Youtube

Link to your website vlog post from the YouTube description

Ask them to subscribe to your YouTube channel – you can use YouTubes “cards” feature for this.

3.) Post the Youtube link on FB

Note: Other times you can do a direct FB upload, but not here, because

Youtube posts get more clickthroughs, while direct uploads get more engagement

Link to your website vlog here too in the post description, plus the clickable link automatically goes to Youtube

4.) Create the vlog post on your website vlog

Embed the Youtube video here. It will link to Youtube (because it’s embedded)

Include two opt-ins:

Subscribe to the youtube channel

AND

Subscribe your your vlog (just an email list)

5.) Create an audio version of the video

Add that to the vlog post too

Add that as an episode on your Podcast (you should have a podcast)

Link that back to your vlog or a squeeze page

6.) Send out an email to your list that says there’s a new video available and link to the vlog post

So in that whole process, we have one video that generates content across 4 platforms, has 5 links in multiple directions, 2 opt-in forms and 1 email.

And THAT, my friend is the million dollar vlog method, right there!

Take a breather after this crazy one, then on to the next lesson!

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