Introduction

What You'll Learn
In this lesson we dig deeper into how to build a valuable email list. In This lesson We’ll discuss methods for growing your email lists and getting fans by writing eBook’s, presenting webinars and simply by asking people to follow your blog.

Why is This Important?
Email marketing is the holy grail of digital marketing.  How do you do social media and email marketing if you have no fans or no one to email? That’s where lead generation comes in.

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​It should go without saying that your fitness marketing efforts are going to be wasted without an audience to market to. To build an audience, you need to generate leads, to generate leads you need a way to capture email addresses so you can talk to your subscribers regularly. This is what we will be discussing in the guide below.

Step 1: Setting Up Feedburner

Feedburner is an invaluable tool you can use to manage your RSS subscribers. You’ll need a Google account to use Feedburner, so if you don’t have one, go ahead and set one up, then complete the following steps:

1. Go to Feedburner.com
2. Paste in the URL of your blog and Feedburner will find the RSS feed
3. Navigate your way to the Publicize—>Email Subscription section where you will find your email form code
4. At the top-left of your screen you’ll find a little RSS icon. Click this icon and you’ll be given the URL of your Feedburner RSS feed. It should look similar to this: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Unbounce

​You can find a more detailed tutorial on how to set up Feedburner here.
Now, once your RSS feed is set up, the next goal is getting readers to subscribe to it. Here are two effective ways to do this:

• Add an email registration form to the end of every blog post where you ask readers to subscribe to your blog

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• Place one of the orange RSS icons some place on your blog where readers are most likely to see it (the top of the right hand sidebar is usually a safe bet)—add a link onto the RSS icon that takes readers to your Feedburner URL.

You can find some cool RSS icons for free at Iconspedia. ​

Pro Tip: Display your subscriber count once your blog becomes popular. A high number of subscribers is a great way to establish social proof. Once you reach a certain number of subscribers (somewhere between 500 and 1000 is a good benchmark), replace your RSS icon with Feedburner’s Feedcount widget. This widget will display the number of people who subscribe to your blog, demonstrating to new readers that you are a force to be reckoned with in your Fitness niche! ​

Step 2: Collect Emails

The most popular way to obtain emails from your website visitors is with a lead magnet which we'll talk about more in Step 4.

​Read: How to Create Your First Lead Magnet

But you can also get email subscribers before you launch any new online product or service so that you have an audience to direct your marketing efforts towards. Setting up a basic “coming soon” landing page is a great way to collect email addresses. Here’s an example of an effective coming soon page:

​Tips for setting up a killer coming soon page

• Write a clear and concise statement detailing exactly what your product or service offers.
• Offer your guests a free gift in exchange for them giving you their email address. An eBook is a great free gift as its inexpensive to produce, and helps to establish your authority within your field.
• A great way to build a buzz and generate leads is by offering readers a chance to become part of your beta testing team. Let readers know on your coming soon page that there are a limited number of spots for beta testing; you’ll be marketing to all those early adopters and beta geeks out there who love to be on the cutting edge of new services/products.

​LaunchRock is a great startup where you can create professional looking “Launching Soon” pages in just minutes.

Step 3: Answer Questions

​By far, the most straightforward way to generate leads is to establish yourself as an expert by answering questions on various social media platforms. Check out the discussions happening on Facebook and Twitter and you’ll see countless people looking for expert diet and fitness advice. Here’s how to generate leads through social media Q&A.

Facebook 
Becoming an expert on Facebook is as simple as joining as many local groups as possible, especially those groups that are associated with your area of expertise. Bridal groups, longevity groups, weight loss groups, body building groups, all are full of people who have questions regarding health and fitness.

Search through the various discussion topics for questions you know how to answer. Once you have become an authority figure within a discussion group, direct the members to your website where they can follow the previously discussed steps to subscribe to your blog.  

Twitter 
The process of becoming an expert on twitter is similar to that of Facebook, the only difference is that you’ll be searching for popular keywords and hashtags.
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The great thing about using twitter is that you can use the advanced search settings to isolate the tweets that are coming from people in your area. 
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Step 4: Give to Receive

There are a lot of freebees you can give away to generate leads. For example, you can:

• Write an eBook
• Host a webinar
• Write an authoritative report (a comparative study for example)
• Write a whitepaper
• Create a video series

I can’t stress how important a good landing page is for marketing your free product or service. This post has a great breakdown of exactly what a solid landing page should look like.
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Keep in mind that people are going to be reluctant to give away their email address. If your free giveaway doesn’t provide a tremendous amount of value to your reader, they’re not going to give up their contact information. 

Your "ethical bribe" should solve your ideal clients problem and offer a way for them to both do it for themself and also get in touch with you should you they want to hire you instead.

Frequently Asked Questions

WHAT THE EASIEST WAYS TO GET EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS?
The easiest way is to have an amazing lead magnet like an e-book. It is passive marketing technique too, because once you have this awesome piece of content, you just have to set up a sign up form and the magnet does the rest.

WHAT TYPES OF LEAD MAGNET ARE THERE?
The main types of lead magnet are content based so...

• An ebook
• Webinar
• Video series
• Mini course
• A white paper report
• A study guide

HOW DO I ESTABLISH MYSELF AS A THOUGHT LEADER?
Join social groups and get communicating. It takes effort, but it is not in vain, as people will start to come to you as an authority and that earn you credibility, which no marketing campaign can give you.

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