Keith Keller shares his secret about Building Personal List

Laura: Keith, as every accomplished online marketer knows, the money is in the list. So what is one insider secret that you can share for how it is that you build your personal list?

 

Keith: Uh-huh. I want you to resonate with this model. I’m a foodie. So when you resonate with this model, and then I’ll decode or unpack. Entrée. Main course. Dessert. I’m getting to the point. Hang with me.

 

Entrée. Main course. Dessert. Something free, something small, something fancy, right? Now this model, using the Stephen Covey quote ‘Begin with the end in mind.’ If you can give your tribe something of incredible value for free right at the start, this is an incredible buzz builder, an incredible trust builder, and I want to use the example of social media examiner, which we know, at this point in time, has 295,000 people on their email list.

 

So it’s a model that works. And the way they do it is they give you a blog post once a day, a freebie, completely free, a blog post to podcast something for free that is of value to you. That’s the essence of the email marketing strategy.

 

But they’re going somewhere with it. They have these cyber events, these online conferences that don’t cost very much money, but they give you a bit of a sense of how you can take this further, and the company gets some revenue, and then the something fancy, the dessert menu, if you like, is their annual conference in San Diego, which 2,000 people go to, and it’s the gourmet price.

 

But none of that would have happened if they didn’t start with the old idea that every day, you get something for free from us. In our case, we actually give you a free podcast, which I’m so proud of. It’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever done in my whole life. I should get out more, yeah.

 

But the idea of something free, something small, something fancy is sort of like a strategy that you can build on because the idea of email marketing blows people apart. It’s still a challenge for most people, isn’t it?

 

Laura: Yeah, it really is. It is because you have to come up with new content. You have to be always putting something in front of people. There is an incredible burden that is felt when people look at email marketing.

 

Now in reality, there are so many ways to simplify it, and it’s like anything. How do you eat a dinosaur? You eat it one bite at a time. And when you understand the simplicity of email marketing, all that overwhelm is eliminated, but until people get to that point, yeah, they felt completely overwhelmed by it, and really don’t understand the importance of building that list.

 

So I love, love, love, love what you share. It’s such a great analogy to kind of take the foodie aspect and really help people understand a phenomenal way to build a list.

 

Interviewer: And it’s working.

 

Laura: Yes, it is.