Advertising

How to grow your email list (without the use of social media)

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A few days ago I wrote an email ranting about the current state of social media and the boring, unfulfilling, and downright soul-wrenching game you have to play if you want to achieve any kind of ‘success’ according to most “social media gurus” out there.

That message seemed to have struck a chord somewhere because I received quite some responses.

One of those responses was from a long-time reader (whose name I won’t share for obvious reasons) who felt exactly what I was talking about.

He mentioned how he felt like he “had to” play this social media game to build social proof and authority to get started as a beginner in his market.

Obviously, that didn’t please him. So he asked me, yours truly, what I would do if I were in his shoes instead and wanted to build my business from the ground up when nobody knows my name.

So here goes:

First, realize that social media is a new thing.

Marketing and sales aren’t.

There have been plenty of ultra-successful marketers selling all sorts of products, services, and even experiences for far longer than social media has been around.

Don’t get trapped in this mindset that social media is the end-all-be-all. The only people who want you to believe that are the ones who want to sell you their social media course.

I’m not saying social media doesn’t work—it clearly does.

But it’s not for everyone and it definitely isn’t your only option.

Second caveat:

Realize that social proof, while definitely being powerful and useful, is far lower on the ladder of necessity than you might think.

90% of all the ads you see (if not more) don’t use any kind of social proof. They simply make you aware of a problem you might be having, and then offer you a potential solution to said problem.

If the advertiser did his homework, aka he knows what keeps his market up at night, then the problem will be so close to home you can’t help but pay attention to whatever solution the ad might be offering. And if the solution is positioned correctly then you, the customer seeing the ad, will end up buying it.

Regardless of whether you’ve heard of the product before or your next-door neighbor Nancy also happened to have used that same product.

Once your realize this, that’s when countless doors will open for you.

You’ll realize all you have to do is get your product, service, or better yet, yourself (and a plug to your email list—the most valuable asset you’ll ever build and which allows you to create repeat buyers and die-hard fans instead of having to survive on one-time sales) in front of your target audience while talking about their problems or their interests—regardless of what market you’re in (every single product in the entertainment industry solves the “problem” of boredom—which just so happens to be at an all-time high right now; making it the best time ever to grow your entertainment business if you know what you’re doing).

Some possibilities:

  • Run ads on Google, Facebook, Amazon, popular forums, or wherever your target audience hangs out (simple yet effective)

  • Get on podcasts as a guest speaker: start small and build your way up. You won’t get on Joe Rogan’s podcast as a no-name but there are thousands of people with dreams of building a big-name podcasts who just so happen to always have a need for guests to interview. Mention what you’re working on and how that could interest their audience and chances are most, if not everyone, would like to talk to you.

  • Write blog posts, articles, or press releases for online newspapers, other people’s blogs and email lists, internet magazines, or any of the tens of thousands of media outlets all scattered around the internet (most of which are owned by people who dislike writing articles but want to publish as much content as possible so they can make a living off the ad revenue)

  • Message local newspapers, radio shows, or television channels: Most people lead boring lives. So just by building a business or doing something artsy or creative, you instantly become so much more interesting—which is more than entertaining enough for every local media outlet to want to interview you (what’s a better story than the “local celebrity”?)

  • Meet new people and keep an eye out for potential joint-ventures: You’re not alone in your market. Use this to your advantage. Work together with other creatives or entrepreneurs. Ask if they’d be interested in recommending you or your products to their audience if you’d do the same for them (or simply pay them to recommend you).

There’s a lot more where that came from, but this should be more than enough to keep anyone busy for quite a while already.

After all, no amount of information will save you if you never get to implementing things.

So get to it.

Start implementing at least one or two of these and build yourself a big email list.

At that point, you might want to master how to write engaging, entertaining, and persuasive emails that’ll help sell your products while keeping your readers reading day after day as well.

For that, consider checking out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


My love-hate relationship with social media

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Once in a while, I’ll enter this period where I’ll write up some social media post guiding people to join my email list.

This, however, never lasts long.

Sometimes I’ll do it for 2-3 days. Sometimes I’ll keep it up for a few weeks. But eventually, I’ll disappear from the platform, without any notice. Only to pop up, unannounced and as if nothing happened, a short while later.

And it’s not because I can’t stay disciplined enough to keep it going. In fact, I used to write 5 post a day on Twitter for over a year, without missing a single day. That’s how I got started with all of this.

So it’s not that.

Simply said. I just got tired of playing the social media game and how fake and unfulfilling it is (ask anyone in the social media business who’s making real money—it’s shallow, its repetitive, it’s boring).

That’s just how it goes when social media is only good for top-of-funnel content (aka, aimed at the 95% of the population who are beginners in your market).

And it’s the same for the consumers as well.

Eventually that social media content gets boring—especially once you’ve read the same 10 beginner lessons a hundred times over and over again.

So for the entirety of 2024, I’ve been working on making my business work without requiring leads from social media—it helps a bit here and there, that’s why I write the occasional post, but I don’t rely on it.

How have I been doing this, you ask?

Many different ways. But one of them is through paid advertising—an incredible alternative source of guaranteed (and often high-quality) traffic that’s easily customizable to whatever you require.

It’s easy to keep going as well.

Far more rewarding and less shallow than social media content creation, at least.

Coincidentally, I’m also working on a new product that’ll teach my paid advertising framework so you can rely on a more stable and higher-quality form of traffic generation that, once you get it going, requires dramatically less time investment than anything else out there.

But that won’t be for now just yet.

In the meantime, if you already have traffic, but you don’t have a great product or service to do something worthwhile (aka, get paid) with that traffic, then I’d highly suggest you check out Product Creation Made Easy.

It ain’t cheap, but it’s damn worth it and you might find it to be just what you need.

Check it out here: https://alexvandromme.com/product


3 reason you might want to consider running classified ads

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I’ve run 2 ads in the past few weeks in my daily emails.

The thing is, I wouldn’t have believed you if you told me that last year.

Not because I didn’t think I could do so (everyone can) but simply because, at least back then, I told myself I’d do any ads because why would I advertise for someone else’s stuff if I could just sell my own and earn more?

I still believe that, at least to a certain extent, but, as with anything, there are exceptions.

First, sometimes you just don’t care, don’t want to offer, or simply can’t offer (either because of a lack of expertise, time, or other resources) a certain solution that would help your readers out.

Would it then be fair to withhold such an opportunity from your readers?

No, of course not.

My main goal, first and foremost, will always be to keep the customer and the market in mind, think about what they want (read: need—the customer doesn’t even know what they want, let alone what they truly need) and how I can offer it to them.

So in that case, I’ll gladly refer people to someone else to buy from or do business with—and if I can get paid for it in the meantime, then even better.

Another one.

There’s always unused capacity in everything you do—daily emails are no exception.

Yeah, I can write daily emails selling my own stuff all the time (and I mostly do), but I can’t be running promotions 24/7, and even when I’m not running promotions, there’s always a diminishing return from sending more emails (most people don’t send enough emails to notice it though, me including). So withholding one email here and there to write an affiliate email or do a sponsored post is making use of the unused capacity and filling the gap or “less optimized” email you would otherwise have sent.

Last but not least.

It’s simple to do and doesn’t require much (if any at all) investment on your part (not every reason has to be profound, right?).

Anyway.

This has been an important lesson for me (and one I found valuable enough to share with you) and marks another clear sign of personal growth in my entrepreneurial journey of email marketing.

That said.

If you’d like to pick up pace in your own journey and learn more about email marketing and building, growing, and selling to your list then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla