List Building Challenge #6 – Real campaign, real metrics

Issue #206

Today, I’m going to share another strategy to build your list much more effectively. In fact, it works very, VERY well. It will, however, cost you a bit of money. But, the way I see it, if you’re one that is seeking to avoid any form of spending, you’ve already cut yourself off at the knees.

To give you an idea how well it works, here’s a quick graph of the overall trend of my own personal list growth over the last 8 weeks:

Image

My list growth trend was rather flat while I was out traveling in the RV all summer. I didn’t really have any major list building campaigns in effect. The business was just… coasting. But, as you can see, when I got back, I started things up again and you can clearly see the spike.

Now, there’s a few things I did, but most of that spike is due to a single ad campaign that I re-started on Facebook. Specifically, it is an ad for one of my more popular lead magnets: The 90 Day Online Business Startup Plan. Here’s the actual ad:

Image

You can either point the ad to your landing page or you can use a Lead Ad. Personally, I’m using a Lead Ad right now. This means they’re opting in directly on Facebook without actually leaving the site.

For the ad targeting, I selected people in the United States, over 30, and with interests of some of the “competitors” in my market.

Over the last week, I’m averaging a cost per lead of $0.80. It has gone as low as $0.36… likely because it had a sudden spike in organic, viral sharing.

Anyway, I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty on how to set up a Facebook ad campaign. I have an entire training on that inside The Lab in the form of the Facebook Ads Blueprint.

The “big picture” here is a simple one, though…

I’m taking one of my most popular lead magnets and I’m specifically giving it a massive boost to new people who aren’t connected with me, but are very likely to be interested in what I do here.

And, of course, there is a quick offer for them after they opt-in. That’s a necessity in order to make this not just a matter of spending, but more of an actual investment in activity. After all, traffic today is SOLVED by monetization. Monetization isn’t solved by traffic. Most bloggers have it totally backwards.

For a lot of blog owners, it is easy for your email list growth to remain quite flat-lined. But, that’s because they’re exclusively depending on their blog to do all the list building.

There’s no reason to limit yourself just to people who happen to come by.

If you get out there and specifically reach out to new people, you’ll grow your list MUCH faster.

– David


David Risley

Here’s how I help people every day…


Make everything about managing your site simpler… by having me on your team to help make sure everything goes smoothly. By providing the very best tools, the best hosting and maintaining everything for you… I’ll take care of the mechanics so you can just focus on growth.


  • WP Speed Fix. Get the performance scores and core web vitals for your website fixed. Let me deal with the nerdy stuff. And let’s make your site purr like a kitten.
  • Technical Service: Going cross-eyed with WordPress plugins, theme changes, membership site setup, automations? Having difficulty making it all work? I can handle it. Ala carte work, as needed. No contracts.
  • Book A Call Anytime!. You can book either a strategy call (to talk strategy and planning) or an implementation session (where we’ll work on your site together).
  • ONEPass – All Access Pass To Every Course In The Library. For one small one-time purchase, you can unlock every course in the Blog Marketing Academy library. For life.
  • Get Some Anytime Credits. Use credits on your account to book development work or calls. Credits don’t expire, so services are flexible and “pay as you go”.

Did you like this issue? Consider sharing the opt-in page on social media to help it grow.
And feel free to forward it on to somebody you think will benefit from it.


The WP Edge is the official weekly newsletter of the Blog Marketing Academy.