Your Most Important Launch Tool: Building Your List

Growing your business from scratch every day is not easy.

Maybe you’re not completely starting over, but if you’re working to grow your business online, you sure can feel that way. Every day is a new struggle to build your email list. Every morning you start the day from scratch and work to see how many new subscribers you can get.

It can be frustrating to add new email subscribers. It’s hard work convincing people that you really want to help them, provide them with great content that they’ll love. You work hard to write great emails and engaging blog posts, and yet your subscriber list builds slowly. You feel like the turtle.

You know this is a job you have to do, but boy, isn’t it just easier to access your social media account and interact with your fans there? Pictures, videos, fast-moving comments – these are the things that get you going and getting your juices flowing. Be careful, this is where you come dangerously close to becoming the hare.

Sure, it’s nice to have a lot of followers on social media. It feels good to know that people respect you, that they enjoy interacting with you, but have you ever considered that these leads, these social media fans that you have are not yours?

It’s all about your list: your email list
In the world of online marketing, where everything is virtual, all you really have… is your list.

The list of people who love what you do will follow your every word and will likely buy everything you sell. If that valuable list of people who love you is only on social media, you’re operating at the whim of a company you can’t control.

What if you woke up tomorrow and Facebook was gone? How would that affect your business, your interaction with the customer? What if it was Pinterest, Instagram or Twitter?

In recent years we have seen how platforms modify their policies, change their algorithms and decide to start charging us if we want followers to see our content. This is no way to build your business: at the mercy of someone else’s business success.

Whether you have hundreds or thousands of followers on Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter, you will eventually need to move them to your email list if you want to be able to market to them. This can be much more difficult than it seems. It’s easy for people to decide to engage with you on social media, there’s very little engagement on your part. All they have to do is click a button. They can log you in or out at will, they can block you or they can unfollow you and you won’t even know it. Don’t let a large number of followers on social media give you a false sense of your popularity.

Just yesterday I responded to someone who is launching his product and even though he has thousands of followers on FB who love what he does and like his posts, he can’t get them to buy. That’s because social media is for interaction, not sales.

Creating your list is personal
Walking into someone’s email inbox is much more personal than getting them to like or share something you’ve posted on social media. Instead of your message being one of thousands that are quickly scrolled through and “liked” without reading it, now your message is among those from the people who matter most: your family and friends.

Once someone entrusts you with their email address, once you start serving them amazing content as your beloved subscriber, they will tell you that they appreciate what you have to say by interacting with you, by buying from you. They are allowing you into their inner circle. Make sure you deserve to be there.

Yes, building an email list is hard. Yes, it can be slow, but it’s also the best way to give your business a firm and solid foundation. You may feel like a turtle, but at least your home is moving with you, not being left behind in the interest of the next flashy new thing.

If you want to build an amazing online business, if you want to be able to pitch amazing products to the people who respect and admire you the most, trust me. Your most important launch tool is your email list.

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