Why list-building should top your priority list

The last few years have been a challenging time for many small and medium-sized businesses who have had to adjust quickly to changing circumstances. Yet many have also thrived during this time.

According to the Worldpay Small Business Performance Against Customer Expectations (PACE™) Report, 75% of businesses said that they benefited in some way from customers changing their buying behaviors. As a small business owner, how can you capitalize on changing consumer habits?

In a world where social media plays such a significant role, it may surprise you to learn that email lists are still important. If you want to grow your business, building an email list needs to be at the core of your online marketing strategy.

According to the 2021 SMB PACE Report, 58% of small businesses increased their online marketing – despite the pandemic. Sometimes it seems easier to just pop a post on social media and hope for the best. Writing emails can seem long and arduous and without the immediate feedback social media offers in the form of comments or likes. Marketing emails don’t seem to be as hip – or as fun – as social media posts.

But the reality is that conversions from an email list are typically three times higher than from social media. That means you can get three times as many sales from your email list as from social media.

In addition to the constant changes in social media algorithms, only 5.2% of your social media audiences are actually seeing your posts (source: Hootsuite 2021). If you aren’t prioritizing your email list, here are some tips to get you started.

1. Create engaging content

The best way to build an engaged customer base is to create engaging content. When the content is interesting, consumers will think about it and talk about it.

Your content needs to reflect your business and provide value to your audience and address their challenges. But it doesn't need to be complicated. Keep it simple and make it valuable. Think about how you can provide your ideal audience with a quick win.

Quizzes are one of the best ways to increase engagement – as long as the quiz is relevant to your target audience and provides relevant insights. You can also engage customers with checklists or workbooks.

2. Embed your lead magnet in all your (relevant) content

After you've created your content, now’s the time to leverage it. This is where a lot of businesses go wrong; they create the lead magnet or quiz and then stop there. But that’s just the beginning. Next, you need to get the word out.

The quickest way to do this is to embed the link to your asset in every piece of content you create for any social platform. You can embed a link to your hero quiz or asset in your bio, but where you're really going to get traction is where you post content that is relevant to your lead magnet.

If you're blogging, include a call to action in the blog that directs people to your quiz or lead magnet. If you don't have a blog yet, now’s the time to start one. If you're creating content for social media, your blog can work harder for you.

Tip: Turn your emails into blogs and social media posts. Repurposing your content saves time and resources.

3. Create three hero pieces of content

What is a “hero” piece of content and why do you need to create three heroes? To get the most out of your lead magnets and quizzes, you need to use them all the time, in all your content – but you need to be sure the content is relevant. If you only have one lead magnet, you will have limited relevant content. But if you have three assets, you will be able to cover more ground.

A hero piece of content is one that has mass appeal. It should be based on a topic that’s broad enough to appeal to a lot of your target audience, not just a small part of it. For example, for this article, three pieces of hero content could be: Tips to build an email list; How to become a published expert; and a What's stopping you from scaling your business quiz. This covers all core areas of my business and my audience's desires and challenges.

If you’d like more tips, you can find them at shaa.com/list, and of course, you’re welcome to join my email list anytime.