Congratulations! You've started to spend time and resources on your email marketing -- how exciting. There are two ways to 'grow' your list of email subscribers -- known as 'lead generation' -- via paid or organic traffic. In this post we'll look briefly at each and consider the strengths and weaknesses. As always it is wise to create a strategy that works for your brand, which can sometimes mean a fusion of 'lead generation' tools.
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Paid Traffic...A.K.A. Advertising
Through strategic paid advertising across search engines and social media platforms you should be able to direct traffic to your website. The right advertising can work wonders for your brand. It will work 'behind the scenes' -- with direction -- to find new audiences and put your brand in front of the right audience. Once on your website visitors will engage with your lead capture 'form' (which is some instances may take the style of a pop up). Then it's time for your beautiful email marketing to take the reigns...first with a 'Welcome Flow' and then tailored, relevant one-time send campaigns. The dream!
It's no secret that advertising -- especially good advertising -- isn't cheap.
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When you are determining your marketing map, advertising budget will be one of your key considerations. Determining advertising spend should be a priority for your growth plan. A word to the wise...advertising spend should be a priority but equally so should be finding the right partner to facilitate the advertising for results. If you are not an expert in the area consider the range of experts available to you and investigate the options available to you. Not sure what to ask? Start by querying how your potential partner or agency will determine the effect of a 'campaign' (i.e. your spend). If they don't emphasis the importance of determining KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to track and measure the ROI (Return on Investment) of any spend related to your marketing budget...run.
Organic Traffic
There are three ways to best utilize organic traffic for growing your newsletter.
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These three ways are:
Content Marketing: Creating blogs and videos for your website which establish your expertise in your niche. These banks of content can be repurposed for social media or email marketing. By establishing your expertise in your given industry or area you are likely to gain the trust of a new visitor brought to your site via paid or organic search. Either way, it pays to have content.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): By using particular key words and phrases your content marketing (i.e. blogs) and even your product pages can 'rank' better on Google and therefore attract more positive attention from search engines. The better your website ranks for what you choose to feature there, the more likely your website is to be seen. Making sense? Good!
Social Media: Work what you've got! If you're managing the social media for your brand or business and not regularly mentioning the newsletter (or even, website!) you are missing the mark. Challenge yourself to post -- be it 'permanent' on the grid or account, or 'temporary' as a disappearing 'story'' post -- about your newsletter or website at least twice a week to start. No one will follow your newsletter if they don't know it exists and if you're spending time and energy on the social media side of things, protect your efforts by converting those leads from an app to your very own list.
Summary
The good news is that when paired with a healthy paid advertising strategy, your organic traffic will blossom. One cannot survive without the other -- paid or organic. Make sure to outline an advertising budget and find someone to manage the labyrinth of paid ads for you, that you trust because of the results they yield. Once you have a strategy in place for directing traffic to your website with purpose consider how your content marketing, SEO and Social Media are working in partnership with your website to nurture your list growth. Spend time in the garden of each and watch them bloom!
Get in Touch
Have a question about how to grow your email newsletter list? Get in touch! Write to us at liz@litirmarketing.com
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