In this article, I’m going to share with you a lead generation strategy that can take you from no subscribers at all to your first thousand subscribers today!
Before we begin, did you know that this article is the 5th in the Lead Generation Simplified series? Want to start from the beginning so you can use the whole strategy? Click here for article #1 on the importance of building your email list before creating a product.
In the previous article, we talked about viral marketing, and more specifically we talked about three types of viral marketing campaigns that you can implement to build a massive email list in a very short space of time. Make sure you check out that article before you read this because it will make the tips in this article much easier to understand – read it here.
So, drawing on that know-how from the previous article, we will take your viral marketing strategy one step further to actually implement the lead generation strategy that can give you hundreds and thousands of subscribers.
The cool part about this is that the information that I’m going to share with you is something that many people are trying to sell in online courses. I have seen this for a premium price tag but here you’ll learn exactly the same thing at no cost to you!
So, the lead generation strategy that we’ll implement today revolves around the third type of viral marketing campaign that we talked about in the previous article; the value-based viral marketing campaign.
Essentially, to use this viral strategy in your lead generation campaign, you need to create a random drawing contest where you will give away a prize to one or a few random winners who sign up to your email list. At this point, you don’t need to have a product or any kind of lead magnet, you can execute this lead generation strategy with just three simple steps.
Step #1: You need to identify.
Step #2: You need to go through the setup process.
Step #3: you need to activate the viral effect.
Read on for a walk-through of each of these steps so you can understand how to execute them and how to set everything up so you can start to build your email list and generate leads today!
Step One: Identify The Value In The Marketplace
Your first step in implementing this viral strategy is to identify the value in the marketplace. As mentioned in the previous article, it’s super critical for you to understand what people in your marketplace value the most because that’s the thing you can use as bait.
Whatever your audience values is what you must use as a prize in order to attract them. For example, if you sell a physical product that pretty much everyone in your audience wants but they can’t necessarily afford, that specific product could actually become the prize.
For example…
Let me give you a more practical example; let’s say you are in the fitness industry and you’re selling some kind of gadget, or you’re trying to attract people that are in some kind of specific fitness discipline. Maybe you are trying to attract people who are runners, maybe they are into CrossFit etc. You need to think about what kind of gadgets they are using in their daily routines.
One of the things that comes to my mind is some kind of tracker that would monitor their heart rate, or if they are runners they might want to monitor their distance and speed. So, you could think about, for example, an Apple watch as one of the prizes.
Many people are using different kind of trackers but not everybody can actually afford an Apple watch, so the value of your prize would be extremely high for your audience.
This is just one example. There could be something else you could package up like a supplement bundle which is pretty valuable right. Again, maybe people can’t afford that but they actually need it in order to improve their performance.
So, in other words, you have to identify what people get excited about in your marketplace in order to design this campaign and come up with the prize that really attracts your audience like a magnet.
Want to watch the full video? Check it out here…
The identifying process is super critical because then the next steps are very simple and the result will be very predictable.
Step Two: The Set-Up Phase
Now that you have identified the value in the market and you know what people want, you can go with to step number two, which is the set-up phase.
This is where you need to set up everything so it’s ready for the activation, which is the third step. When it comes to the set-up part, you essentially need just two tools (check out our article on tools here).
Set Up Phase Step One: Get The Tools You Need
Tool #1: an autoresponder or email service provider. You need this tool so you can collect the email addresses and data of the customers or subscribers that are going to be signing up for your contest.
Tool #2: the second thing is you need some kind of sweepstakes application or software that can actually allow you to set the thing up and execute it.
Side note: if you are using Dashnex tools, then we have built the sweepstakes app into Dashnex pages, so you can just tap into it and quickly set up these kinds of campaigns. We specifically designed it because we believe that acquiring customers and acquiring subscribers is one of the most important things an online business needs to do. We wanted to simplify that process so that’s why we build it in.
Want to claim your free website for simplicity, speed and results? To try Dashnex pages for free, click here. You can also get $5 credit just for signing up.
Whether you use Dashnex pages for that or some other software, it’s up to you, but the idea is that you need to have those two things in place before you move on to the next step.
Set-Up Phase Step Two: Create Your Landing Page
Once you have set up the tools you need, you need to write the copy for the page you’ll be sending people to.
Create Your Headline
On that page, you just need a simple headline which says something like “Hey, join my incredible free contest where I’m giving away an Apple watch…”
Obviously, you can attribute that title to a specific niche too. For example, “Hey Fitness activists…” or “Hey, runners please join my free random drawing where I’m giving away an Apple watch…”.
You really need to think about creating copy with your audience in mind and think what people would in your market would respond to the best. Anything that can unify people in a group or identify them as a specific set of people is a good thing because people like to be part of the group.
Present Your Reason
Now that you have the title, the next thing is to write a couple of paragraphs to basically explain to them the reason why you organized the contest. Again, the reason be absolutely anything – “We’re celebrating summer” or “We love October! Do you love it too? or “It’s assistant Becky’s birthday so we decided to organize this sweepstake as a celebration…”
People like to be part of something and so giving the reason for the competition is super important.
Decide on The Sign-Up Process Length
It’s important that you then decide on the length of the sign-up process for your audience to go through when entering your sweepstake competition.
The sign-up can be anywhere from 7 days to 14 days to 21 days. My best advice to you would be to run this random drawing between 7 to 14 days because people don’t like to participate in something that they don’t see ending very soon. They want to be part of something that ends very soon because then they know whether they are the winners or not.
They want to be part of something where they can set their mindset to thinking that in a week, or a couple of days they might win this awesome prize.
Write Your Welcome Email
The final thing that you definitely want to do is write a welcome email where you confirm their entry to the to the sweepstake and you tell them all about when they can expect to hear if they’re the winner or not. Then you explain to them how you will announce the winner – tell them if you’ll email them or if you’ll announce the winners on your Facebook page etc.
Then, in the second part of the email, you would explain more about your brand, about the products or services that you provide so you get more people familiar with what it is that you do with your business.
That’s essentially the entire set-up process; a couple of tools and a little bit of writing, spend about half an hour maximum setting up this set and you’re ready to go to the next step.
Step Three: Activate the Viral Effect
Now it’s time for step number three where we are going to activate the campaign. There are obviously many different ways you can do it but regardless of your method, the concept remains the same. Activation of the campaign is all about driving traffic and getting as many people to your sweepstakes page as you possibly can.
The best way and the fastest way, from my experience, especially if you are just starting out and you don’t really have a brand that is recognizable is to create Page Post Ad on your business’ Facebook page.
In this ad, you basically tell people that you’re organizing a contest where they have a chance to win an Apple watch and give them the steps to enter. This is the moment where you basically enforce the viral effect of your campaign. This is super crucial for the success of your campaign.
Essentially, the goal here is to make that page post go viral on Facebook, instead of trying to make your lead page or your sweepstakes page on your website to go viral, which is pretty hard.
Follow these steps and you’ll have the best chance of getting your post to go viral.
Step #1: tell people to enter your sweepstake by liking, sharing and tagging a friend in the comment of your post. In this step, you actually activate the viral effect of your campaign because now when people click like and when they will, they are exposing that post to their friends on Facebook. Then they also tag someone specific and that creates another effect because that person who was tagged may then follow exactly the same steps.
Step #2: Step number two is where you tell people to go to your landing page to fill out their details and confirm their entry. Obviously, the reason why want to do that is to get people on your email list, but also the real drawing will happen between those people who actually enter their name and email, not those people who click like, share or tags.
So, that’s as simple as that when it comes to this activation step but make sure that you do everything in order to activate the viral effect of this campaign because that’s how you are going to build that massive email list in a matter of hours, and certainly within a day or a few days.
The Key Takeaway
Using value-based viral marketing campaign to build your email list is as easy as 1, 2, 3!
- Get the 2 tools you need
- Set up your the mechanics of your campaign
- Activate the viral effect!
The “Lead Generation Simplified” Series
Check out the previous and next videos in the series below. Want to see the whole series? Click here.
NEXT: Lead Generation Marketing – The Most Effective TRICK To Turn More New Subscribers to Money
Make sure you sign up to receive the freshest lead generation tips to your inbox. There are more awesome articles coming in the series where we simplify everything so you can get more leads, get more subscribers on your email list and grow your business faster than you ever thought possible.
