See this?

This is the surprising, yet happy story of how I grew my email list by 71% in just 2 weeks.

And if you’re reading this email, it’s because you’re a small business owner, like me.

I want to be fully transparent with you and pull back the curtain on how I’m growing my small business so that you can do the same with yours. ✊

But first, a reminder:

An Email List Let’s You Build Your Income on Demand

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the marketing tactics and wind up thinking that you need:

• A Youtube channel
• A Blog
• A Podcast
• A Webinar
• A new website
• An ad campaign
• [Insert latest tactic here]

But always remember:

There Are Only 3 Ways to Grow a Business

1) Get new customers

2) Increase how often they buy

3) Boost average order value

📧 Email marketing excels at all three. 📬

“The Money is in the List”

Most people don’t know this, but legendary copywriter Eugene Shwartz would write winning sales letters…

…for FREE!

In exchange, he would gain access to the company's mailing list (pre-internet era) and launch his own offers to that list.

The point is that he got paid in names—which turned out to be a highly profitable strategy for him.

But what does this mean for you, as a small business owner?

• When you’re in between clients and revenue is inconsistent
• When it’s “winter” and you need a way to make sales
• When you want to get past customers to buy again
• When you need a fast inflow of cash

🚨You can turn to your email list to make sales. 🚨

Now that we’ve established the value of building an email list, let’s get to the meat of this edition and cover how I grew mine.

Step 1: The Offer

Email marketing falls into the lead generation “bucket” of a marketing strategy

Which means that if you expect potential customers to give you their name and email address.

👉You need to offer something of value in return.

Enter my lead magnet: Irresistible Offers Made Easy.

​

Which I “splintered” off of my high-ticket consulting offer.

If you’re not sure if you have the “right” lead magnet—or if your lead magnet just isn’t working 🔨🧐 you can learn how to build a lead magnet here.

Step 2: Test

This is important.

There are things your customers NEED.

And there are things that your customers WANT.

Your lead magnet needs to lean on the side of desire. Otherwise, they won’t want what you’re offering, and your lead magnet won’t generate leads.

I needed to make sure that small business owners (like you) actually wanted what I had created.

So I sent it to my current list (you again 🙂).

Why?

Because before I invest any more time and effort into marketing this thing, I want to test it on my WARMEST ♨️audience.

(Your email list knows, likes, and trusts you the most)

And if they don’t want what you built for them, then there’s no way a COLD ❄️ audience will want it.

So I used a 3-day email sequence to see how it performed:

The click rates were high enough to tell me that there was intrigue.

And the landing page conversion rate was 40%.

Meaning, that of the people who clicked, almost half signed up.

🟢Green light. 🟢

This told me that my:

• Copywriting
• Landing page
• Lead magnet

Were good enough to take the next step.

Step 3: Organic Traffic

Now it was time to share the lead magnet with colder 🥶audiences.

(People who know, like, and trust me LESS)

Enter social media.

I created a post on LinkedIn linking to my landing page.

Since I hadn’t been active on social media for a while 😅, I knew it would need a boost to get the attention it needed.

So I asked some of my friends and the marketing communities I’m a part of to give it some love. 🫶

(Side note: I’m very grateful to my fellow supportive entrepreneurs who helped get it the attention it needed.)

Of the people who checked out the landing page, about half downloaded the lead magnet.

Maintaining that 40% conversion rate.

🟢Green light. 🟢

Step 4: Paid Traffic

The last step was to share this with the coldest audience. 🥶 ☃️ ❄️

People who have NEVER heard of me.

People who don’t yet know, like, or trust me.

Since I wanted a simple and fast ad campaign, I used what’s called “Instant Forms” on Facebook Ads Manager.

You can learn how to set up an Instant Form campaign on Facebook here.

“Instant Forms” is different from a regular ad campaign, because the people who click your ad, never leave the platform.

Everything is done on Facebook—making the whole process a lot simpler.

(Seriously, you don’t even need a website to run these types of ads.)

It’s pretty sweet.

Here’s what I did to run the campaign:

• Create a Facebook page for me, Nicholas Kovacevic (felt awkward 😂)
• Set up a daily budget of $10
• Choose an “end date” after 5 days
• Target audience interests (not required but recommended)
• Upload my creative (images)
• Copy and paste the copywriting from my LinkedIn Post
• Turn the campaign on

These were the results:

The number worth looking at is in the top right corner.

CPL, which stands for Cost Per Lead.

After 5 days I had spent $43.61 and generated 7 new email subscribers.

My cost to acquire one new subscriber was $6.23.

Not bad, considering some directories charge $25 per lead.

Become a Pro Marketer

There are 2 things worth noting that I did throughout the entire process.

1.Think of everything as a test.

If I hadn’t gotten the results I wanted, I would have gone back and changed one thing at a time and then re-tested it.

2. Test to warm audiences FIRST.

Before spending money and time on these ads, I was able to test the lead magnet. The landing page. The copywriting.

All for free.

My Next Steps…

Despite that being a successful ad campaign, I’m not going to keep running it… for now.

I just doubled my subscriber count.

My focus is on getting to know the people already on my list and delivering valuable content to them through this newsletter.

However, I’ve started to notice that the majority of my readers are service providers. (A freelancer, a consultant, a coach, etc…)

And most of you are creators—you do your own content marketing.

So I’m tailoring an offer, just for you, that enables you to build a reliable, profitable operation.

It’s called the Small Business Growth Plan.

I’ll work with you 1:1, over 6 weeks, and together we’ll craft a winning marketing strategy that grows your small business.

If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, and you want to learn more, just CLICK HERE.

Your Next Step to Growing Your Email List

The guiding principle here at the Hook is to use a strategy-first approach to your marketing. (The Small Business Growth Plan).

Once your strategy is in place and your funnel is mapped out, then you can get started building a lead magnet.

💡 Think about what quick-win value you can offer your audience in exchange for their email address? Always emphasizing either the speed or the ease it gives them.

Once you have that, test it out with your warm audience first.

👉 Share it with your network, and on your social media accounts.

Get feedback and optimize it.

Expanding to paid traffic is optional, it’s kind of like pouring gasoline on the fire…

It helps you generate new leads for your business faster.

But you can do that with only organic content marketing.

Start small, gather data, and improve. Marketing is all about iteration. Don’t be afraid to tweak and test until you find what works for your audience.

The Tools I Used to Grow My List

If you're wondering what tech I used to do all this, the main hero is Convertkit (affiliate link).

I was able to build a landing page for my lead magnet, build a welcome sequence, and manage all the data from the campaign.

Convertkit is actually acting as the Hook’s website and central business hub.

If you’re a solopreneur, coach, consultant, freelancer… I highly recommend it.

To build the actual lead magnet, I used Canva (not an affiliate link). I use it to do all my graphic design.

Thanks So Much for Reading!

Questions, concerns, thoughts, feelings?

Reply back to this email. I love hearing from you.

Keep Learning,

Nicholas

P.S. If you’d like to learn more about working with me to build a Small Business Growth Plan, just CLICK HERE.

P.P.S Did you find this issue helpful? Share your thoughts below 👇

​

​

​