If you're launching soon, tell me how important is list building to you right now?

If it isn't on your priority list, it should be. But not bringing in only new people to your list…

Here is a simple 5 step promotion and strategy to start 6 weeks before you plan on open the doors to your online course or digital product.

The action plan I'm about to share is great if you know list building should be your priority and if you also know that your current list needs a little love too!

While this is mostly geared toward those of you planning to launch online courses, digital products or coaching services…and those of you who know you need to be list building more…

You can also apply this to physical product launches as well!

Let’s get to work!

Before we jump in, this is the first of many “Now You Do It” featured posts I’ll be sharing with you. My hope is that you’ll walk away with a specific broken down mini-project to benefit your business, next launch, subscriber growth!

List building doesn't have to be complex or cost a lot of money!

Why This Strategy Is So Important

This 5-step promotion helps you do a few key things and is non-skippable because it helps you do two important things:

• Re-engage with your current subscribers and community members
• Encourage new subscribers to join your list and have a chance to get to know them!

What this means is…

If you start this at least 6 weeks before your launch, you’ll be able to warm up people who join your list fresh without bombing them immediately with your launch messages and also get others who may have forgotten they were interested!

How much can you actually do to boost your list building efforts 6 weeks before your launch?

Step 1: Your Lead Magnet or Freebie

Update your best performing lead magnet or freebie. Breathe some new life into it, by adding a resource…really dust it off and get it ready to share again. There’s a good chance that in between bigger launches, people will have forgotten about that thing they downloaded from you so long ago.

*Important: choose the lead magnet or freebie that directly leads into whatever you are launching next. If this is the first time you’re promoting this freebie, you might not have that information yet – or know for sure that it leads directly to your product or that it helps convert people into a customer. That’s okay! Do your best to make a case for the path someone will take to get to that product.

*Also – if you’re creating an optin for the first time, you’ll need to do a little extra set up. You will need a landing page to describe the optin/thank you page/all set up in your email service provider.

[bctt tweet=”Make sure your pre-launch lead magnet leads directly to whatever you’re launching next.” username=”annesamoilov”]

Step 2: Revise Your Emails

Take a peek into your autoresponder for this freebie and make sure it’s updated, relevant and make sure it’s as evergreen as possible. You don’t need to put any “coming soon” messages in the emails, but you might want to reference your product at some point just for name recognition.

*Important: Write three emails at least that go out over the first 2 weeks – spread apart.

Some examples of what might go in this autoresponder:

Email one: What are you struggling with?

Email two: Click this link.

Email three: I thought you might like this post.

Email four: I’ve got another resource for you, click to get it!

Step 3: Write About Your Revised Freebie

Create a blog post for your updated opt-in. Think of it as a sales page for your opt-in, why someone might need it…maybe even a quick tour of what someone can learn in the actual download/freebie. Key to the post is making it super evergreen so you can keep sharing it.

*Important: Keep it evergreen. Think of it as a “sales” page for your freebie. Try to be intentional about the keywords you use in the URL, post, and meta descriptions. Also, make sure images have alt tags/descriptions too for easy sharing!

You’ll find this blog post as an example when I updated my Launch Workbook and decided to release it separately from the entire Launch Essentials Toolkit.

Step 4: Add Pretty Pictures

Make some new graphics/images to share on all platforms that are visual > i.e. Pinterest is my new/old love, Instagram, FB and Twitter. Get in the habit of having all image sizes created for your blog posts!

*With tools like Canva, Picmonkey and good ‘ole photoshop, this should be a snap to turn your one image into multiple ones. Use your own images please to avoid any problems – especially because you are using the images to essentially sell and promote your product!

Step 5: Tell People What You Did

Email your current list about the new resource, why you updated it and > send them to the blog post to download it.

Important: *This can be as simple as a “new resource added” email. If you can – create a link where they can be marked in your system and go straight to the new or updated resource. Extra credit if you can give them a special email or give them the updated resource first.

Step 6: Promote, Girl!

Promote your post on social media, share it in your Facebook groups, put it in your regular rotation.

Important: Don’t be afraid to try new channels especially 6 weeks before your launch. It’s not uncommon to see people who just get to know you jump in as customers instead of the ones you’ve been nurturing for awhile! Try SnapChat, Periscope, Pinterest, Instagram… get as visual as you can in advance so you can see what to focus on during the actual launch.

Bonus points and extra credit: You may be hearing that you should be adding a Facebook pixel to your website in order to retarget visitors in your Facebook Ads…but if this is the first time you’re even hearing that…you might be like – what is a pixel? Where do I put it? And why do I need one. Follow this simple guide directly from Facebook and do the very first step at least… installing the pixel (code) onto your website.

There’s a lot you’ll be able to do with this information going forward…making ads for people who visit certain types of posts. Making ads for people similar to your current website visitors.

This is the first step and an important one even if you’re not using ads just yet!

What to do next to kick off this list building strategy?

• Print out the action-specific version of this blog post.
• Decide which freebie you’ll use or create.
• Revise & update the freebie
• Review your current autoresponder emails & update
• Make sure you have 4 emails in the sequence
• Write a blog post introducing or re-introducing the resource
• Write social media messages and schedule in order to spread the word about your “new” resource
• Create new graphics for all social platforms and start sharing!
• Write email to your current subscribers
• Report in to the comments below with the link to your freebie!

Still Stuck On What or How To Share With People…

How to find out what people want and need from you

Build your list before your launch (listen)

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