By There are many things you need to have in place if you are promoting your brand and building awareness. You need to follow an effective content marketing strategy that includes social media marketing, YouTube marketing, getting inbound leads, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), etc. Email marketing is another vital component of content marketing. Building an email list is vital in this day and age, irrespective of your business or brand. You should build an email list even if you are a fiction author. Here are a few reasons why:
Easy and optimized marketing schedule
Running campaigns without knowing your target audience, your content that gets the best response, and other vital details is a pointless exercise. Instead, you need to focus on identifying your target audience so that you can cater to them. Launching a marketing campaign after gathering the necessary details can help you get the results you want without wasting much time or money. Email lists help you refine your marketing efforts.
Talk to your prospects directly
Spamming prospects with ads and marketing information does not work. You have a much better chance of turning your prospects into customers if you know what they want. An email list helps you find out. Based on the information you get, you can create content for your prospects. Creating content that they deem valuable is your best shot at generating leads.
Retain customers with ease
Do you have customers? Great. But can you keep them? People have an incredible amount of choice in this day and age, which means you need to stand out to gain any leverage. If you want your visitors to revisit your site, you need to give them a reason to. You can use email marketing to remind them to visit your site by telling them how they can benefit from it.
Increase your revenue
You should have no problem increasing your revenue if you can boost your leads and keep your customers. Email lists help you keep your clients and prospects up-to-date on the latest. You can also forge a professional relationship and make them trust you, which is vital to gain customers.
Building an email list
Now that you know why you need an email list, here’s what you can do to build one.
Who is your target audience?
Don’t know who to target? Figure it out. Until you do this, you will not be able to get prospects. No marketing campaign can work without a target audience. This applies to Facebook marketing, Instagram marketing, or any other form of marketing. You need to zero-in on a target audience using specific parameters.
You need a website or landing page
You need to have a website or landing page. If you are able to get leads and customers, you need to be able to direct them somewhere. This is where a landing page comes into play. Get a landing page ready if you are unable to get a website up and running. Make sure it works properly and has an opt-in form that visitors can use to share their email address with you.
You need an email marketing service
As expected, you need to secure an email marketing service. There are tons of options out there for you to choose from. Get one depending on your budget and purposes. If you are entirely new to email marketing, get an easy-to-use service that lets you organize your email list and send people emails. You will need to set aside a budget for this service.
Give people a reason to share their email addresses with you
Sharing personal information like email addresses can leave people susceptible to spamming, which is something no one wants. To get around this, you need to provide value. Give them something they find valuable in exchange for their email addresses.
There are tons of incentives you can experiment with, including bonus footage, discounts, coupons, consultation calls, free ebook, Q&A session, etc. Ultimately, they need to know that they will benefit from giving you their email addresses.
You need to use targeted advertising
While building your list organically is excellent, you need paid traffic as well. You need to get a head-start to stand out from your competitors. You should primarily invest in targeted ads for Facebook and Instagram. By now, you should have found your target audience. Additionally, you will have to optimize your content before you boost your post.
The same holds for other platforms like YouTube, where you have to optimize your videos using YouTube cards. An example of a commonly used YouTube card is Youtube cards for the world record for memorizing.
Once you determine your target audience, you may proceed to run your targeted ad campaigns and gauge your progress by using Instagram Insights and Facebook Analytics.
Email marketing tips for authors
If you are an author and want to build an email list, here are a few tips:
Choose a Content Management System (CMS)
You need a Content Management System to create and manage your website. It serves as the backend structure that you will have to manage to post and edit content, reply to comments, etc. There are many excellent CMS options, but WordPress is the most commonly used CMS on the market.
Purchase a domain and set a theme
Next, purchase a domain for your website. Again, there are many options, most of which are reasonably priced. Make sure you pick a package that suits your needs the best. Aside from this, pick a theme for your website. However, you should keep in mind that you cannot change the theme later, so choose carefully.
Conclusion
There you have it – simple and straight-forward steps for you to follow to get started with email marketing and make the best of it. Invest in email marketing just as you would in other aspects of content marketing to get the best results.
