Read any marketing website, and it will tell you the money is in the list.
I'm also telling you the money is in the list.
However, growing an email list can be incredibly difficult because of a number of variables.
In this article, I am going to show you how I collected 41 leads for $31 without using a website and bypassing most of the variables.
The problem most novice marketers face when building lists
Typically, to grow an email list, you need the following:
- Traffic source
- Website
- Landing page
- Sign-up form
Too many confusing steps for the novice (and even intermediate) marketer.
What traffic source should I use?
How do I build a website that is mobile-friendly?
How do I craft copy that will turn website visitors into leads?
What colour should the sign-up form be?
Which email service should I use?
What should my welcome email say?
Every question is a roadblock to growing your list. If you're on a budget, it might be a costly expense to build a very nice website and hire a content writer to craft your copy.
What if you could avoid building a website and paying someone to write you a landing page, and didn't even need a sign-up form?
Well, that's exactly how I generated 41 targeted leads for $31.
How? By using Facebook.
Facebook Lead Ads
Facebook Lead Ads are what every marketer should use to test their ideas.
Forget spending weeks or months trying to get your website right for an idea that may never work.
A Facebook Lead Ad is an online advert that allows you to collect emails from users on Facebook. You don't need a fancy website, landing page or even an email service to collect emails.
Users simply tap the sign-up button, and their name and email address is automatically populated into the form without them having to leave Facebook.
One of my recent ideas was to set up a wine subscription service, but I didn't want to spend hundreds of dollars on setting up a website and creating copy to test my idea.
I'd rather gather a bunch of leads and then email them my idea and hear their response.
So I created a Facebook Page (it's free to do) and crafted my advert copy.
When running adverts on Facebook, Facebook gives you over 1 million free images because of their deal with Shutterstock, so you don't even need to pay for an advert image!
In one or two sentences you simply have to explain to the user what they are signing up for.
As my service is catered around wine, in the targeting section I specifically chose people over the age of 30 and those who had an interest in wine.
I created two different audiences to start with and scaled the one that provided me with the lowest cost per lead. After seven days, my Lead Ad reached 4,652 people and generated 41 emails for $31.
I got 41 leads from an advert that took me less than one hour to create.
That's around $0.75 per email.
What to do next?
You can easily import your emails from Facebook into a CVS file which you can import to any mail service provider. I suggest using MailChimp because it's free for the first 2,000 users.
Using MailChimp, I emailed my idea to my list and asked them if they would be interested in learning more about the service that I was about to offer.
Of the 41 subscribers, 50% opened my email, and 11.9% went on to click the link and show their interest.
(The image shows 42 emails because I added my email to test).
For $31 I learned a lot about my audience and gauged their interest.
Your Turn
You can use this method above to sell eBooks you list on Amazon, affiliate products on ClickBank or even your own products by giving them direct links to PayPal.
When you first start out, building a website and creating a landing page is hard and time-consuming. Why not test your next idea out by running a cheap Lead Ad on Facebook instead of spending weeks building the perfect website.
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