TIPs*7*Day 9: Leveraging Other People's Lists

TIPs*7*

If you live in North America then you are probably familiar with the superstore Walmart. It is a giant of a store that sells pretty much everything at very competitive prices.

I have noticed recently that most new Walmarts that spring up are built in an area that has little or no other stores. Since they are a huge multi-billion dollar corporation, they can afford to be a pioneer in any new locations.

What is interesting is that shortly after the new Walmart is built dozens of other smaller stores appear around that same location.

You might think "Why would these smaller stores try to compete with Walmart when clearly most people love its convenience and low prices?"

It's about Leveraging!

Why is "Leverage" The Key to Your Business Growth?
If you are like most people, you have probably found it quite difficult to start getting a lot of traffic to your new website. This is a common problem that many marketers face every day. Another common problem that marketers have is looking at others in their industry as competitors.

In my opinion it is very rare that you really have any competition. You need to look at them as potential partners.

Looking back at the Walmart example, why did those other smaller stores appear around Walmart? Was it to try to compete with that giant of a store?

Of course not! The owners of those stores realize that Walmart will draw a lot of customers (i.e. traffic) to that specific location (i.e. website). They can benefit from that traffic even if they don't get all of it.

You need to apply this same philosophy when trying to build your first email list.

Rather than setting up a shop in the middle of nowhere so that there's no competitor who can touch you, consider leveraging other people resources to build your own business.

Ezine Advertising Is A Great Way To Leverage Other People's Efforts
Think about it for a moment - let's say that you are in the market of helping others to quit smoking. You have no list, but you want to build one.

After doing a bit of Google searching, you find another website with the same purpose that gets ton of visitors daily and also been building a list for quite some time.

You could do one of two things:

1. Get discouraged as somebody else is already doing what you want to do and give up.

OR

2. Contact the owner and see if you could advertise in their ezine for a price.

You could also try partnering with them, but let's stick with advertising in their ezine. If they don't already have advertising you will need to negotiate some sort of price. However, most of the established ezines that accept advertising already have prices worked out.

This benefit you greatly as you are able to target the EXACT market that you want to work with. They have already shown that they are interested, so they are the perfect match for your website.

4 Steps To Effective Ezine Advertising
1. Find ezines that you are able to advertise in

You can run Google searches and look for potential prospects, or even better you can use a resource that I have used many times before: www.directoryofezines.com.

It isn't free, but it contains thousands of ezines that accept advertising, so most of the work is already done for you.

2. Create a "special squeeze page" for your ezine advertising

You should create a special squeeze page for each ezine that you advertise to. This helps to improve your conversion rates and thus build your list faster.

They could all be identical except for a simple headline that says:

Welcome Friends of [Enter Ezine Owner's Name].

3. Set up a "Top Sponsor Ad" for each of the ezines

There are generally two types of ads that you want to advertise: Solo Ads and Top Sponsor Ads.

Solo Ads are where you get an entire email dedicated to your advertisement. Top Sponsor Ads on the other hand, are shorter ads that appear at the beginning of the ezine.

You will want to start with Top Sponsor Ads as they are cheaper and it will help you to gauge the effectiveness of the advertisement and the responsiveness of the ezine's owner subscribers before spending money on Solo Ads.

4. If the Top Sponsor Ad produces good result then set up a "Solo Ad"

Chances are that if the Top Sponsor ad worked well then a Solo Ad will work even better and justify the money that you spend on getting Solo Ad.