Learn expert tips from Jillian Leslie on how to grow your mailing list using effective freebies in order to grow your list and engagement.
IE 415: How to Grow Your Mailing List with Freebies with Jillian Leslie
Jillian Leslie started her blogging journey in 2009 when she and her husband started their first blog called Catch My Party, the largest party idea site on the web. Then, they began to build tools to help bloggers.
They first built a pop-up app called MiloTree that many use to grow their social media followers. MiloTree is a suite of tools to help bloggers and creators grow their audiences and easily sell digital products to them.
Their next product offering was MiloTree Cart which allows bloggers and creators to sell unlimited digital products. They also offer MiloTree Freebies which enables bloggers to offer unlimited freebies to grow their email list.
Jillian also has a podcast called “The Blogger Genius” where she interviews successful bloggers, creators, and experts. She shares how people are having success making money.
Freebies are something that a lot of people struggle with. They have an old-school view of their email list thinking they might create newsletters and don’t understand the purpose behind it. The algorithms are always changing and you must be growing your email list or you will take a huge hit in your business.
Can you describe your overall strategy for using freebies to grow your mailing list?
If you are a blogger or online entrepreneur, you have a niche. The more specific you are, the better. How clear you can be on who you help and the problems you solve, the better.
What is the largest, most important problem you are solving? How can you break that down? You might start with social media, bring those people to your email list with your freebie, and then sell solutions to them.
You can put your solution into one of these six buckets to ensure that it is a “must have” (instead of a “nice to have). Can your solution…
- make someone money?
- save someone money?
- save someone time?
- move someone toward happiness?
- move someone away from pain?
- raise someone’s social status?
Why should someone choose your product? You have to package it as a solution. Some examples might be:
- 30-Minute Healthy Meals
- Meals to Help You Lose Weight
- How To Deal with Picky Kids
- How to Prep Meals in Advance
What is the problem that your solution can fit into? This is where your marketing shows up when you start with the problem first. You should solve one big problem to begin with. Where are you getting the most traction?
For example, if you are a lifestyle blogger and you blog about recipes, family, travel, and parenting? What are people consuming on your website?
What are your top 10 blog posts? When you post on social media, where are you getting the most traction? That is where you want to start.
Eventually, you can create funnels for all of the different niches you talk about but Jillian recommends you make yourself known for at least one of them first. This isn’t meant to limit you in your business but instead, free you up. This will help you build a business that will make sense.
Pick your most popular niche and start focusing on that on Instagram, Pinterest, your blog post, or wherever you are putting yourself out there. Instead of serving everyone and yet no one, be known for serving a specific person. Start being specific and talking about the pain points in your content to attract people to you.
Next, you will talk about the problem and be the person to solve it. You have a big solution to the problem and you will break it down. Start with a freebie but it cannot be any sort of freebie that you think about. It needs to solve a very small problem that is “hokey.”
You have a picky eater and it is driving you and your family crazy. How can you break this down into a solvable problem for the person? You can give them a cheat sheet which will leave them wanting more solutions from you.
You can get the freebie listed below to “Create Your Enticing Freebie.” You can have your freebie cheat sheet in about 10 minutes. This should be simple, like a Hershey kiss. You can eat it right away.
You don’t want a 20-page eBook that will sit in a downloads folder. Make it “snackable” so that people open it right away. With this, you want to capture the emotion that they need the next thing from you because you are speaking their language. You want them to need more solutions from you.
Are you going to buy your second home from your eBook sales? Probably not.
Will you make hundreds or even thousands of dollars from it? Yes. It builds your “know, like, and trust.”
When you solve a problem for someone, they are willing to buy the next more expensive product from you, and then the next one. They will sign up for your membership or book a coaching call with you.
When they have a problem, they will turn to you because you are the person who can solve the problem and they will pay you to deliver the solution.
Expertise is something that we struggle with. Too many bloggers have created content trying to chase page views. They create content based on keyword research thinking they are niched because they have a big category like “home decor” but they are not an expert in anything.
They are putting out a bunch of content that will bring in traffic without figuring out the problem they solve. What sets them apart? What makes them the expert that lets them speak about that topic?
Provide the audience with a framework that teaches them how to help their picky eater that teaches them step-by-step how to go about the process of helping their child. You can potentially create a course, do a membership, offer one one-on-one coaching, or do mastermind groups.
The eBook won’t make you hundreds of thousands of dollars but it will make you an expert to create a multitude of digital products that can make you hundreds of thousands of dollars.
This is what Google is pushing. They are not just switching up the algorithms, they are trying to differentiate those who know what they are talking about and are experts.
People get very nervous when they hear they need to be an expert. You do not know how much you know but anoint yourself an expert.
You know enough that a beginner wants to know more from you. You are the expert to those who want to learn. You are relatable and have been in their struggle. You break it down for them.
An expert is an educator. You are educating people on how to do something. When you educate people, it is different from AI just spitting it out.
You are teaching them at their level, differentiating based on what they are looking for, and you can do this with your content and descriptions that are different from just going to Google or AI.
When you educate someone, it is taking them on a journey to get their problem solved and showing them the way you can do that. The way you can differentiate yourself from AI is to have opinions.
Take a position and tell what you stand for and what you believe. These opinions will help you find the right audience for you.
You don’t need a million page views anymore. You only need 1,000 true fans who are attracted to you and will pay you. It changes the way you see your business.
The goal used to be that you wrote toward Google and keywords. Now, it is to connect with your audience.
How do you decide what type of freebie will have real value to your target audience?
You cannot know for sure but you can test them to see if they will work. Then, you can test another one.
If you create a freebie and no one opts in, take this as information. Go into Facebook groups in your niche and see what people are talking about. In your newsletter or on social media, ask people questions to get more information.
We would be more successful if we could create stuff faster to test so that we don’t have to have it perfect before we launch it and don’t have fear of rejection.
You can use AI to help create your opt-in page. You have information on what your top five blog posts are. Take each blog post and add the personalized touch that includes a cheat sheet for that topic. This will help you serve up the right opt-in at the right time.
You can create custom freebies quickly to get someone to opt in. Jillian’s favorite freebies are anything you can create quickly and easily.
You don’t want to create a course or teach lessons. You do an email series where you send a daily email for 3-5 days to solve a particular problem.
Make sure you are writing those emails quickly. You don’t want to include videos that you have to record. You want them to be like a Hershey’s kiss and leave them wanting more. Go faster than you want.
Jenny finds that many people say they are testing something but they only have it in one spot, they haven’t changed the copy on it, or they haven’t thought about the pain points.
They have not talked about it on social media or the places that are driving traffic. You must make sure you are giving the freebie a chance. Be controversial. Be salesy. If you believe in your solution, be salesy. People need your solution.
If you can make their lives better, you almost have an obligation to put it out there because you need to rise above the noise. Let people know you can help them. Go get the sale. Offer their money back. If you believe in your solution, shout it from the rooftops.
Create Your Enticing Freebie With These 3 AI Prompts
This free resource will give you 3 AI prompts to use to get ideas for your cheat sheet. You pick which one you like the best and then you have AI create the cheat sheet. You can then use this to create a landing page. Download this here.
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