Are you just starting out and wondering if there is something you can do NOW that will have a positive influence on your business in the future? We have good news for you! You can grow your list before you have your branding, product, or even a business name and lay a foundation for lead growth. Read on to learn how!
Find Your Audience
“You can start growing your list from the very moment that you have your idea.” – Tessa Ashford
Understand your target audience clearly before you do any marketing. Ask yourself, “who do you sell to?” and “what is the problem you solve?” Once you have that clear, you will be able to build your list and attract the people whose life your product is going to make better.
If you worry that you don’t have a logo or even a name, don’t. You are going to fly under the radar for a while. Use a personal profile to connect with people. The process begins with the end in mind because you want to know whose problem you are going to solve with your product, service, or app.
Social connecting and researching is about getting in touch with the people who will help you grow your base. Social media groups, influencers, hashtags, SEO, and keywords are the tools that will generate and feed that engine of your business.
S.E.E. Method (Study, Engage, Educate)
The first thing you will do is study your influencers, look at the target audience, groups, and get to know them before doing anything. Study 30 minutes every day for a week.
“Study your influencers before you approach them about building your base.” – Tessa Ashford
The first E stands for Engage. At this stage, you will like, comment, and share, but you won’t give opinions. Again, you do that 30 minutes a day for a week. You don’t talk about yourself or the solution you provide. Educate is the last step where you start offering value, but without selling anything. This step also takes a week.
The worksheet you can download HERE is the best way to go through this process. The first step you can take in building your business is to start filling out the worksheet.
The Worksheet
On the worksheet, you have Facebook groups, influencers, hashtags, pain points, keywords, and phrases. Find groups to join by category, search for groups by topic to see the name of the group, the number of members, and how many posts per day they have. Copy that info into your worksheet.
If you find a group interesting, you can click to see more and join it. Once you join, you will see which posts get the most engagement and what the audience is doing. It helps you create a list of people you can go back to and follow and observe. Then you can make friends with members of the groups you’ve joined from your social profile.
From there, you can move on to influencers. You can come across them when browsing or search for the topic you want on Instagram. When you see who dominates that specific feed, look for a high number of hearts and comments and visit their profile so you can check them out. Take a note of the name and number of followers in your worksheet.
When researching hashtags, you want to note the number of followers for each one you find. Observe what people say about the service or product in question, is there anything they complain about? If there is, write it down. For keywords and phrases, there is a great Chrome Extension called Keywords Everywhere where you can see information about searches people do. You can find out how many people are searching for a specific keyword, how much they pay, what are the long-tail keywords, cost per click, and who your competition is.
Learn more strategies and tips about how to grow your list in part 2.
The “Idea Pros” at IdeaPros have the resources, experience, and tools to help you at this step or any step in the entrepreneurial journey.
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