Publishing blog posts regularly is an essential component of any winning content marketing strategy—but it’s only one piece of the puzzle.
You’ve got to have people to share your blog posts with on a consistent and persistent basis if you want to grow your audience, increase your reach, and achieve your business goals.
Multiple Marketing Tools Create a Great Content Marketing Strategy
It’s not enough to create world-class content and let it sit on your website—you must have a strategy to get your content in front of your audience.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one valuable tactic that is part of any solid content marketing strategy. But its not without its challenges: Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving, and your ranking could drop at a moment’s notice.
Social media is another valuable tool in a seasoned content marketer’s toolbox—but it has problems as well. Algorithm tweaks can hide your content from viewers, and changes to the platform—or worse, platform outages—can sabotage even the most carefully planned engagement efforts.
And unless you’re Zuckerberg himself, you don’t own any information on Facebook. Same goes for LinkedIn, Twitter, and every other platform.
There is no perfect content marketing channel, which is why a solid content marketing strategy employs multiple channels. But to get your content flywheel up and running, you need one other ingredient—an email list that’s continually growing.
Email Marketing Is Critical for Modern Content Marketing Strategies
If someone told you email marketing was dead, please rest assured that person was wrong.
By some estimations, the total number of business and consumer emails sent and received per day was over 300 billion in 2020 and will exceed 361 billion by 2024. And for a good reason—the ROI on email marketing can be as high as $42 per dollar spent.
Having an email list, growing it consistently, and implementing a strategy to help you engage with your subscribers is table stakes for modern professional services marketing.
7 Strategies for Building Your Email List
At Every Little Word, we leverage clients’ email lists to send regular blogs and newsletters to their subscribers. If you’re looking for ways to build your email list and maximize your reach on this trusty platform, here are several strategies to try:
- Leverage your calendar. Invite everyone you meet and speak with via discovery calls, consults, requests for proposals, and more to subscribe to your emails. While you’re at it, make sure all of your current and former clients are on your list, too!
- Promote a piece of gated content. Gated content (also known as a lead magnet) captures email addresses for your list and provides value to your new contacts. Don’t forget to build in a follow-up email sequence to encourage prospects to take the next step with you. Website pop-ups, opt-in forms, social media channels, paid advertising, and blog posts all present opportunities to get your gated content in front of people.
- Host a webinar. Check out local or industry associations or organizations that include your target audience, and offer to host a free webinar on your area of expertise. Agree in advance that you’ll receive contact information for all attendees and add them to your list.
- Sit on a speaker panel for an organization or association. Ask the audience to subscribe to your emails, whether you’re sitting on a panel or headlining the main stage. You can do this the old-fashioned way by passing around a sign-up sheet—or use technology like QR codes to make your gated content instantly accessible onsite.
- Join someone else’s podcast. You don’t need your own podcast to be on one! Join a podcast as a thought leader on a topic that matters to your target audience. Align your talking points with a piece of gated content and encourage listeners to download it to learn more.
- Adjust the settings in private Facebook groups. If you have a private Facebook group, request email addresses as a prerequisite for people who ask to join. Tell participants what the benefit is and what to expect up front, then add them to your list and your group simultaneously.
- Include a link in all emails. In your current email campaigns to customers and prospects, include a link to a sign-up form for new subscribers. Encourage your list to forward your emails to friends and colleagues so they can sign up, too.
There are many ways to grow your email list, but we would be remiss not to mention that email marketing efforts are being more regulated as privacy concerns increase.
All list-building strategies should comply with legal requirements and that regulations such as GDPR may affect your list-building efforts. The ideas included here are not legal advice and may not be compliant with your audience, industry, or territory, so be sure to perform proper due diligence before taking on any list-building efforts.
If you’re ready to create awesome content that you’ll be proud to send to your email list, we’d love to work with you! Contact the Every Little Word team today.
