bryan harris on list building strategies that work with timestamps YoutubeScribe.com

[0:04] Hey guys and girls, so this is a bonus lesson
on my course on the topic of list building
[0:10] and I have an awesome guest with me today.
[0:12] It's Bryan Harris. Hi Bryan!
[0:15] Hey, thanks for having me, Tim.
[0:16] I've been following Bryan's work for quite a
few years and I think in my personal opinion,
[0:21] he's one of the best experts on the topic
of list building.
[0:24] He has shared a lot of knowledge
on the topic on his blog for free.
[0:29] So you can go and read a lot of that.
[0:31] And he also has a premium course on list building,
so you might want to check it out if you want to
[0:35] consume content faster.
[0:38] Okay, so Bryan, let's start from some kind
of credibility.
[0:43] Tell us about your own email list.
[0:46] How long it took you to get there and how
do you think, if you were to start your list
[0:50] today knowing everything that you know today,
[0:52] how faster would you build it to the same number?
[0:56] Oh, I don't know about the second part of that
but the first part... we started, the company
[1:00] started in April of 2013, started the email
list in January of 2014.
[1:05] And we're now four years or so later, and our list
is right at 200,000 unique subscribers on our list.
[1:12] So it took about four years to get there is
right at 200,000.
[1:16] This is pretty huge.
[1:18] Okay, so now let's talk about some strategies.
[1:21] I like to generally break things into groups.
[1:24] And I think that email list building strategies
could be distributed into two groups:
[1:30] the ones that you do on your website,
like pop-ups, Hello bars, and stuff;
[1:33] and the one that you do outside your website.
[1:36] For example, I see a lot of people do joint
webinars and then share subscribers.
[1:40] So let's talk about the on-site list building
strategies first.
[1:43] Like, I'm sure you have tried pretty much all of
them so tell us about your experience.
[1:48] What are your most favorite ones, what
are your least favorite ones and why?
[1:52] Yeah, I mean you were just talking to Noah
recently, and the thing I learned from him
[1:56] early on he was instrumental in me getting started.
[1:59] One of the things he taught me is do more
of what works.
[2:02] So when it comes to on-site optimization
which is a lot of what... a lot of list building
[2:07] strategies are masqueraded as just optimizing
your website so that work.
[2:10] And that's obviously if you have traffic to your site,
you're more established and what... not totally
[2:14] the first place to start.
[2:15] So what I do is going to Google Analytics
and find what are your most popular pages
[2:20] like, what pages have traffic coming to them now.
[2:22] 'Cause we can optimize a page that has three visitors
come into it all day long and it's not really gonna move
[2:26] the needle at all.
[2:27] So typically what you see as your top five most
popular pages is your home page and your top
[2:32] three or four blog posts that are typically
SEO dwell.
[2:35] So those are your three or four most popular
blog... popular pages.
[2:38] So what we do is have two different types
of optimization techniques for those.
[2:41] Number one for the home page is something
called an "upside-down home page."
[2:46] So you go to VideoFort.com or MichaelHyatt.com
or GoinsWriter.com those will be three examples
[2:50] of that and see examples of it.
[2:51] You can also just Google "upside-down home
page," and there's a guest post I wrote on the
[2:55] Leadpages blog, you can read to get a full
detailed version of it and some templates
[2:58] and whatnot.
[2:59] But basically the concept is on a typical home
page, you come to someone's home page,
[3:03] and there's just stuff everywhere.
[3:04] There's category bars, and there's social icons,
and there's "sign up for the free trial," and here's
[3:09] all our features.
[3:09] It's like the first time.. this is the first time me
and you ever, like, talked on a video before, Tim.
[3:14] It'd be like the first time we ever had a conversation
and I try to tell you my entire life story.
[3:18] Like, that's really awkward.
[3:20] If the first time someone comes to your site,
you try to just tell them everything about you.
[3:24] So what we've done with upside-down home page
is just flip that upside-down.
[3:27] We put all of your links, and all the navigation,
and all the social stuff at the bottom of the page
[3:32] but give people a single clear call-to-action
at the top.
[3:35] And tell them a story that introduces you
but mostly tells them how you can help them
[3:39] and give them an opt-in on that home page they can
do... they can download in order to join your email list.
[3:44] So you can see some examples of that but just by taking...
[3:47] 'Cause what typically I see on pages you
have all the stuff at the top, usually there's
[3:50] 50 call-to-actions at the top of the page
there's all this different things they can do.
[3:54] And then a blog post or some like call-to-action
at the bottom.
[3:57] So just flip that upside-down and make the
first interaction with you really fluid and
[4:01] really easy with a single clear thing to do.
[4:04] If you can't go to your home page and in less
than five seconds know the single clear thing
[4:08] you want someone to do, you're losing conversions,
you're losing leads you could potentially sell to.
[4:13] Second thing is going to your most popular
blog post and creating content upgrades
[4:18] which is just a lead magnet for that specific post.
[4:21] So instead of having your universal lead magnet
you have all over the site, on the most visited
[4:25] blog post, if you're ranking really high for some
keyword and you don't have a lead magnet specifically
[4:31] made for that, go and make one.
[4:34] Put it inside of the blog post in the intro
and at the end.
[4:36] And if you won't put up a time to exit and pop-up on
that page that shows before someone goes to leave
[4:42] and introduces that lead magnet to them,
we've seen those two things alone were
[4:46] working with people.
[4:47] Those are the first things we do on any site that gets over just a few thousand visits
[4:51] on the site per month.
[4:52] And that... that'll take the on site conversion from
1-2% to 8-10% we've seen regularly with people.
[4:59] Yeah, this is great, I totally support these two strategies.
[5:02] Do you think you can apply the upside-down home page to, for example, company blocks?
[5:08] I know it works perfectly for kind of
personal blogs, for one-man-army blogs.
[5:13] But what about company blogs, for example,
for us, at Ahrefs blog?
[5:17] And the same other question about...
Okay, let me ask another question later.
[5:22] What about the upside-down home page for companies?
[5:25] I'm pulling up your website now, y'all do a
pretty good job, so let's just start with this.
[5:30] Сompany, individual, there's no difference -  you're
marketing from a person to another person.
[5:34] So whether you're marketing B2B or B2C, you're
trying to get individuals to do an action.
[5:39] So in that regard, it's no different whether you're Brian
Dean selling a course with a one-man army, or your
[5:45] Ahrefs selling a software with an entire company.
[5:47] At the end of the day what you want is SEOers
to sign up for your tool or sign up for your course.
[5:51] This is the core actions, the same at end of
the day, doesn't matter whether you're Brian
[5:54] or whether you're Ahrefs.
[5:55] So you all do a pretty good job -  I'm just looking
at the site right now -  above the fold call-to-action
[5:59] "Start seven-day trial for seven dollars."
[6:01] That's not gonna optimize for email conversions,
you're optimizing for signups, right.
[6:05] You're trying to get a sell right off the bat
at the top of the page.
[6:09] So that's not terrible but you're not gonna... you
would have more email signups that you could
[6:13] then... can convert into a trial, if you went with an
email approach and though it to be something you
[6:17] could test, or maybe you guys have already tested.
[6:19] After that when I'm scrolling down the page, the
next thing I see is the tools you get with Ahrefs.
[6:24] So a little sample size a bunch of numbers
bragging on the tool and how powerful it is...
[6:29] Yeah, but that's a home page.
[6:31] Click on the blog link at the top.
[6:33] No, I'm not talking about blog I'm talking about the home page.
[6:35] Okay, okay, so you're talking about the whole... Okay.
[6:39] The number one traffic page on your site I bet is Ahrefs.com
[6:43] Of course, yeah.
[6:45] Obviously people link internally to pages as well but almost every site you go to unless you're have...
[6:51] In SEO world it can... it can vary a little bit if you
get some really good... like Jeff Goins, for instance,
[6:55] he's a friend of mine, that teaches... he's a
single-guy kind of blog.
[6:59] But if you go to, like, "how to write a book," he writes number one for that
[7:02] So obviously that gets more traffic than any other page but number two is his home page.
[7:06] So for you guys it can be similar, maybe it's three
or four, but the home page itself is really important
[7:12] to optimize.
[7:13] So it doesn't matter whether it's a company that
gets into some nuance of design that you can just
[7:17] have a designer, design end up in a way that fits y'all's design criteria.
[7:20] But what you want to do is have someone who's never
heard of Ahrefs before, someone that's never heard of
[7:25] you before has come to the site for the first time,
they're not clicking that orange button and sign up.
[7:29] It's just not happening.
[7:30] A returned person might, someone that's heard of you before, has been in the industry some...
[7:34] But a brand new person - they're not clicking the button there just not
[7:36] They're not going to pay you $7 the first time they've ever heard of you.
[7:39] But they will give you their email address in exchange
for a piece of information that will help them.
[7:43] And then you can indoctrinate them into that.
[7:45] So it could be worth using something like right
message to know whether it's some of these
[7:48] first-time or they've been there multiple times
and adjust that call to action accordingly.
[7:54] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
[7:56] About content upgrades, I'm actually a big advocate of the strategy.
[8:00] I used to have a plugin that did content upgrades for WordPress blogs.
[8:05] But the general concern I have about it ,and this is
a tricky question that I was also asking to Noah in
[8:12] our interview, is that basically you offer people a lead magnet.
[8:16] Yeah, it is like 100% relevant to the article that they landed on and that they're reading
[8:21] So there's a high chance that they will grab it.
[8:24] I know a lot of people for whom the conversions of content upgrades go, like, through the roof.
[8:31] But how do keep people engaged from there?
[8:34] Because they got the freebie, they got what they wanted, they don't really expect any more emails from you.
[8:40] Well, first of all, if they don't expect any more emails
from you, you're doing the content upgrade wrong.
[8:44] So one of the things you give them when they download the upgrade is...
[8:47] Hey, let's just take an example.
[8:48] I'm just gonna go to your blog real quick and pick out a recent post.
[8:51] So "How to find and fix broken links to reclaim valuable link juice," I suppose you have posted the other day.
[8:58] So if you're gonna... Now, I wouldn't recommend creating the content upgrade when you launch the post.
[9:02] When you see it's getting you traffic and it's starting
to rank and then go back and create one.
[9:05] That's the better way to do, 'cause the only people signing up for it when you first launch it with people
[9:08] already on your list which can be a content strategy.
[9:11] But if you're doing it just to collect new email
subscribers, wait till you know it's ranking and
[9:14] then go back and create it.
[9:15] So let's just say that post is ranking.
[9:17] If you were to gonna create a lead magnet, maybe
you'd create a 30-minute tutorial where Tim
[9:22] actually goes over the Ahrefs site and finds... or
goes over someone else's site and finds broken links.
[9:28] That's something I know 'cause I've been through
multiple courses on SEO, we're not great at SEO.
[9:32] And I always hear people write these posts and tell me
about it but no one ever does it and lets me watch it.
[9:36] And it's a pain in the butt to do broken link building
because you have to find them and that's like
[9:40] a needle in a haystack.
[9:41] So I know for that topic, that's a pain point of mine,
if I were to read that post and it said "Hey, download
[9:46] a 30-minute tutorial of me actually going out and finding three broken links; you can see how I do it; it's just ugly,
[9:52] it's not edited, you just watch me do it,"
- I would watch the entire thing!
[9:55] And if also in that pop-up where I enter my email
address you say, "And also we're gonna send you
[10:00] tips on how to continue your broken link building
and build an entire SEO strategy every week.
[10:05] So enter your email below and you get
both of those things."
[10:07] So you packaged your newsletter along with the
downloadable as the thing they're signing up for.
[10:12] If they don't know you're signing up for the newsletter,
[10:14] then you're tricking them into signing up
for your newsletter.
[10:16] When we do it, we do both.
[10:17] They get the downloadable and they get weekly tips on
how to continue doing the thing they're opting in for.
[10:22] So it's all about just framing it for the person
correctly and setting their expectations.
[10:26] And the second part of that would be what
do you do to keep people engaged.
[10:29] That's a... that's a list question in general,
it's not specific to content upgrades.
[10:34] People say...
[10:34] Yeah, but... we'll get to it later, yeah.
[10:37] I love the tip that you should actually set an expectation
that people are signing up for your email list and there...
[10:43] that they're about to get updates.
[10:46] So basically you're using content upgrade as the first
upgrade, the first cool thing that you send them and
[10:53] from there you continue, right?
[10:56] Yeah, and it's not just telling them.
[10:58] But here's the deal: every week we're spending
20-30-40 hours writing really good content.
[11:06] That's good stuff!
[11:08] It's a bonus it's a...
[11:09] Like, we look at our newsletter as a product that's free.
[11:12] It's a freemium price, that's not even freemium, it's just a free product, right.
[11:15] So it's like a $1,000 course or a $99 a month Ahrefs'
software service or whatever the price is but this is free.
[11:24] So this is a product you're actually getting.
[11:26] So I think positioning it as that to people
through your copy is really important.
[11:30] This isn't just some newsletter around, this is the Ahrefs'
exclusive newsletter where we share behind-the-scenes
[11:35] stuff of what we're doing and what's working.
[11:37] You get that plus you get a 30-minute tutorial video.
[11:39] Do you want in on that?
[11:40] Like, it's just... not just telling them but positioning
it correctly to them where they want to be on it after
[11:45] reading that one - sent us a copy.
[11:47] I love that advice, totally love it.
[11:49] And, like, you frame it super-awesome!
[11:51] Okay, so let's get to the off-site strategies.
[11:55] Tell us what you tried and what you
enjoyed and what you didn't enjoy.
[11:59] So the number one thing we'd like to do for
off-site is partnerships.
[12:03] And partnerships can look at a lot of different ways.
[12:05] A lot of people use Facebook Ads... but that hasn't
been something that's been successful for us.
[12:09] We've been trying for three years to get Facebook Ads to work, we've had moderate success,
[12:13] And other people would do great with it.
[12:15] But the thing that's worked well for us, and that's all I can speak to, it's what's worked well for us and consistently
[12:20] for clients of ours are partnerships.
[12:23] So there's several different type of partnerships, you've
mentioned partner webinars - we found that to be really
[12:26] effective in almost every industry, especially software.
[12:30] Cause they're very underused in the software industry, they're used a ton in the information marketing world
[12:36] but many other industries they're not at all.
[12:37] So when you think about this, this is another lesson Noah taught me, I'm just gonna reverb... just reiterate
[12:42] everything Noah taught me...
[12:44] But number one in trying to market a product
is have a really good product.
[12:49] Like, focus on that first.
[12:50] Second, when you go to try to market that product, find
audiences, find people who have audiences of your
[12:56] potential customer.
[12:57] And give them a reason to talk about you.
[13:00] Okay, so what is a reason I could get, like, would
Ahrefs' audience be potential customers for me? Absolutely!
[13:07] Would my audience be potential customers for you? Absolutely!
[13:09] So if it's me, and I'm thinking "Alright, I want to grow my list, Ahrefs has got a big audience a super popular blog.
[13:15] How can I get them to tell their audience about me?"
[13:17] Cause it, like... let's just dream for a minute, let's say
you guys tomorrow send an email out with a link to set
[13:23] "Click this link and join Bryan's newsletter it's amazing!"
[13:25] I would get two to three-four-five thousand
subscribers from that.
[13:29] Now, can I get y'all to send that email? Probably not.
[13:30] But how can I get y'all to do something that promoted
me in order for me to grow my list and get more leads
[13:36] so that I could sell people?
[13:37] So one way is by doing a partner webinar.
[13:40] Like, team-up and... just think about a partner webinar
is you just teaching someone else's audience.
[13:44] So obviously you guys that are watching this
video right now are interested in list building.
[13:48] I talk about list building - how about me and Ahrefs
have a webinar about list building, or how about this,
[13:52] how about I do an interview with Tim in a free
course that he's releasing and talk about list
[13:55] building which is what we're doing right now.
[13:57] So we'll pick up two or three hundred subscribers
from this interview and that was intentional.
[14:01] I'm gonna give a few call-to-actions throughout there
so it'll be natural that will lead you back to my stuff so
[14:06] that you can sign up for our newsletter
and be on our list and be a lead for us.
[14:09] So partner webinars are a good way to do that.
[14:12] Another partnership type that's really popular
- guest post.
[14:14] That is a partnership: you're partnering
with someone else to write on their site.
[14:19] I'll look at... because I come from a legion, 
list building world not SEO world,
[14:23] I look at the guest posting, if done correctly, that's
a great list building event that can then be optimized
[14:28] for SEO if you do that correctly with
a strategic link place.
[14:31] And a lot of people that do guest posting come from
the world of "I want to write a guest post on Ahrefs blog
[14:35] so I can get a link that points back to a post."
[14:37] I'm like: "Just do both!"
[14:38] Because if you do a guest post curricula, if you use something called "the expanded guest post" which
[14:42] is - just google "expand a guest post," it'll be a blog
post that comes up on our site, you can read about it, -
[14:47] you actually create a content upgrade in that post.
[14:49] So let's just paint a scenario real quick.
[14:51] Tim, you invite me to the Ahrefs blog to write a post
about list building, you guys want to rank for "list
[14:55] building," incredibly competitive keyword, you
want to buy someone in to write on that topic.
[15:00] I published the post on your site, I link back maybe to an
article on my site somewhere, I create a content upgrade
[15:06] on your site.
[15:07] It's like, "Hey, come and join this one-hour... and
watch this one-hour masterclass me and Tim did,
[15:12] just enter email to get it."
[15:14] And then... it's a partnership, it's two ways, it has to
benefit both of us, so I actually email my list about
[15:20] that post.
[15:21] So I emailed 200,000 people about
the post, send them back to Ahrefs site.
[15:25] They pick-up a couple on our signups for it,
they include my content upgrade on their post.
[15:29] So I pick up 400 or 500 subscribers from it and then
long-term they'll eventually rank for that keyword.
[15:34] So it'll be... A partnership has to be beneficial
on both sides.
[15:36] So guest poster a great way, partner
webinars are another way.
[15:39] One thing that that's not used a ton is
a lead magnet swap.
[15:43] This is something we found to be very effective.
[15:45] And a lead magnet swap is win like this...
[15:48] Let's just take the guest post example: instead
of writing the guest post for Ahrefs, what if they
[15:52] handed us one of their most popular lead magnets?
[15:54] Maybe one yells lead magnet is a free trial,
maybe typically do a 30-day free trial.
[15:58] I don't know if you do trials or not, there's as an example.
[16:00] But let's say you decided to give us a 90-day free
trial, and we took one of our premium products
[16:06] And turned like we have an entry-level course on
list building that's 300 dollars and we gave that
[16:10] to your audience.
[16:11] And we both emailed each other's lists about it.
[16:13] If we promoted that well to our list and just sent one to
two emails to our list we would both pick up hundreds
[16:18] and hundreds of customers from that.
[16:19] So taking one of your most popular lead magnet or
maybe even an entry-level product turning it free and
[16:24] exchanging it with someone that has an audience that's relative to you.
[16:28] The whole game of partnerships is find people
who have audiences that you want to get in front of
[16:33] and give them a reason to talk about you.
[16:36] You have to keep the partners best interest in place.
[16:38] So another variation we've done of this are our partner tools.
[16:42] This is something that's much more advanced,
you need an engineering team to be able to do it.
[16:45] But we create every month... we create a new
free tool and get a partner to sponsor that
[16:52] and then launch the tool.
[16:54] So as an example, we created a tool called List Goal.
[16:56] If you're interested in building your list or want to
make sure your list is being helped that you go to
[16:59] ListGoal.com and sign up for - it's free forever.
[17:02] We partnered up with ConvertKit to build the tool
and launch the tool with ConvertKit and we've had...
[17:07] I don't know the number right of the second...
[17:08] We've had about 12,000 people sign up for it
in the first 45 days of the tool.
[17:12] So we built the tool, we partnered with another company, they put their name on it we share the leads and we both
[17:17] just promote the crap out of it.
[17:19] We promote it in a big event in the first 30 days
and we... we put it in all over popular blog posts
[17:24] and email sequences, and onboarding
sequences of whatnot.
[17:26] And we get a thousand or so new subscribers
every month from that.
[17:29] So we've created I think seven different tools that we
partnered with people on and we do that every month.
[17:34] So that's our... that's the partnership we're completely
focused on, don't wanna do any other type of
[17:38] partnerships right now, it's just partner
tools because they work really well.
[17:41] It's actually kind of hard to do, there's not a lot of competition on them.
[17:44] So I would encourage you to experiment with a few
things.
[17:46] I'm giving you four ideas.
[17:47] So your tools will be the most difficult; lead magnet
swap would be one of the easier ones; guest post and
[17:53] partner webinars - that'll be four partnership
strategies and there's lots of other variations as well.
[17:57] That's something for us we have found to be
cheap to almost free to do, extremely effective.
[18:05] You get an immediate result from it and it's
something you can do over and over again.
[18:09] Last example I'll leave you with is ConvertKit,
our partner with ListGoal.
[18:12] Convertkit in, let's see... I think it was 2016, Nathan
started the year right around, I think it was, like,
[18:19] $10,000 to $20,000 MRR.
[18:21] Over the course of 2016 they did 142 partner
webinars. 142!
[18:27] That's one, basically, every other day or a little
faster than that I guess, or no...
[18:31] Yeah, one every two days to three days, I did a partner webinar.
[18:35] And they went from $10,000 MMR to now they
just passed 1 million dollar a month MMR.
[18:41] So 1 million dollars recurring revenue every month.
[18:43] And what they did to get there was a partner
webinar, 142 partner webinars in one year.
[18:49] The guy that led that was Darrell Vesterfelt and just
did it over and over and over and over and over again.
[18:53] Made a system out of it and just kept doing what works.
[18:56] So I would encourage you to experiment with a
couple partnerships find the one that works for you
[19:00] and just keep doing it.
[19:02] Wow, 100 webinars! Let me just one
follow-up question on that.
[19:07] Because I think I tried to offer, like, a few people that have some audience to do a webinar about Ahrefs.
[19:15] And I think I was turned down.
[19:17] So probably I was doing something wrong and
probably that something wrong was about
[19:22] being a win-win for everyone.
[19:24] So like, for example, if I do a webinar about Ahrefs for your list, what would make you want to do it?
[19:31] Like, what's your win there?
[19:34] Well, one thing I'll say off the bat a lot of software
companies really suck at partnerships.
[19:38] They're like... I had someone, I won't name
names, at a software company come to me
[19:43] and say they would give me a free year of their software,
the premium software, to do a partner webinar
[19:48] and to promote it with their audience.
[19:49] But I'll need to get 1,500 people to register for it.
[19:52] And I started doing the math and that was $600.
[19:55] $600 for the full year of the program, like, why
would I ever do that, that makes no sense at all.
[20:01] Why I don't know just do a webinar to my own list
for my own product and make $20,000 versus making
[20:05] $600 to promote your product?!
[20:06] Like, a little it just makes no sense at all.
[20:08] So I would look at... The first thing I would do for
you, Tim, this one thing I would encourage anyone
[20:13] the first time they're doing something, is go
talk to someone who's done that before.
[20:17] So, I would say, go talk to Daryl, go talk to Nathan,
[20:20] and talk them about partner webinars for
software companies, that'd be step number one.
[20:23] And always do that, try to find a coach that is
the ultimate fast-forward button on any business.
[20:27] It's find someone who's done it pay them money
or get really close to them so they'll tell you,
[20:31] give you advice on how to do it.
[20:32] That just speeds up everything. So it'll be number one.
[20:36] Number two would be, yeah, you have to make it
a win for them.
[20:38] So like your perfect partner is Brian Dean, it's like
SEO-SEO, or Matthew Barby, or some of these, like
[20:43] Tommy Griffith, any of these SEO guys that are
teaching the infospace, probably other software
[20:47] companies as well but those guys are prime.
[20:49] Because they don't have a competing product
at all but they have, like, your perfect audience.
[20:53] So the question is not how you pitch to me, 
it's how you pitch to Brian.
[20:56] How you pitch to Brian is what does Brian want?
[20:59] First of all, I would say partner webinars is one of
the bigger ask that you can make of someone.
[21:04] So if the first time you ever talk to someone, you're
asking them for something, you've gone wrong.
[21:10] So you have to have an existing relationship with
someone to do especially an advanced partnership.
[21:15] So I look at... Let's actually rewind all the way to
the beginning of the partnership conversation.
[21:21] I would make a list of 100 people.
[21:23] So we talked about what audiences do you
want to get in front of, like, you have a reason
[21:26] to talk about you.
[21:27] First, you need to start with who are
100 people you want to work with?
[21:29] Like in a dream world you could click... you
could wave your magic wand, you could have
[21:33] 100 people doing webinars or guest post or
whatever variation the partnership you want to do.
[21:37] Who would they be? Who would those people be?
[21:39] Spend three hours writing them down.
[21:41] It's probably... your gonna get through that number
thirty or forty pretty easily but by the time you get
[21:44] to, like, number sixty, you're really scratching your head.
[21:47] But spend the time to figure out who they are
and then divide that list into three sections:
[21:51] People you know - so who are people you've had
a conversation with, at least webcam or in person,
[21:57] ideally in person, who have you talked to before.
[22:00] Who do you kind of know - so I put us probably
in the kind-of-know category, like, we've talked,
[22:04] we emailed, like, this probably brings our relationship
a little further but would probably still be
[22:08] in the kind-of-know category.
[22:09] And then people you don't know - people you kind
of know but maybe you never talked to before,
[22:13] you just kind of follow from a distance.
[22:15] And for the log, just throw out the first two sections, get rid of the don't-know people, get rid of the kind-of-know
[22:19] people and just focus on the people you know.
[22:22] For me, I have about nine close friends, probably
say, five really close friends in this industry like,
[22:28] they kind of do similar stuff to me.
[22:30] I'm going blurry here, I don'n know...
[22:32] So, anytime I go to pitch something like the
ListGoal, a tool we created, like, I know Nathan,
[22:37] he slept at my house before.
[22:40] So, like, I know him, we text probably once a month
or every other week or something to kind of keep in
[22:44] touch with each other, a few other friends
that are in the same boat.
[22:46] Like, when I'm going to do a partnership,
I start with them.
[22:49] That is easy. So I start with people I know
and have a really close relationship with.
[22:53] That lets you kind of figure out your pitch a little bit and figure out what works.
[22:58] Cause you're not gonna... they're not gonna really
say no to you if you just make it be a half way.
[23:02] They'll do it because they like you.
[23:03] And that's what you want to start with,
start with that easy low-hanging fruit.
[23:07] For people that are maybe in a little earlier on or
don't have quite the brand recognition of you guys,
[23:12] Tim, start with people that are in the same demographic of you.
[23:15] So if you have 500 subscribers on your list, don't
pitch someone with 100,000 subscribers unless
[23:20] you know them well.
[23:22] Stick with people that are at your level or
maybe one rung above you.
[23:27] If you don't have anyone you know at all, start with
people you kind of know, maybe you're in a course
[23:30] of someone, maybe you're in the drip
community for the ESP that you have.
[23:35] You're like... you kind of see them around a little
bit but you never really talked to them before.
[23:37] Find somebody that's in that same category.
[23:39] So first start with people you know and
make it be a win for them.
[23:42] And then have a long-term plan for the people you
kind of know and people that you don't know at all.
[23:46] So people I don't know at all, I'll literally start by
sharing a success I've had from using their product.
[23:52] So for you guys, Tim, if I were trying to work,
like, to form a tool partnership with you guys,
[23:56] I kind of know you, so I probably start with talking
with you, just start a conversation if we haven't
[24:00] talked in a year.
[24:01] And I'd probably share some win I've had from your tool,
I'm a subscriber of Ahrefs, and I found this really cool
[24:06] technique recently that I'm sure every SEOer
knows that I've never known and I was kind of
[24:10] stumbled upon.
[24:11] I would just start by sharing that with you
and what it's done for me.
[24:14] Like, I found - every SEOer watching this is gonna laugh
at me - but I found when I run my site through Ahrefs
[24:20] and I just go... I think it's called Best by Links, on the
left sidebar, you know this is, like, every SEOer should
[24:27] be pitching that.
[24:29] Cause every site I've ever been to outside
of one has massive issues with this.
[24:33] Their number one post that has the most
links ranks for nothing.
[24:37] Go track, go to the biggest site you know and go
plug their thing in Ahrefs and look for Best by links.
[24:42] Like, I found one, I'll mention his name because we're
friends with, Michael Hyatt, they have like 2,500 links
[24:50] to michaelhyatt.com/platform, I think it is and
somebody can fact-check me by going to Ahrefs
[24:54] but in that ballpark.
[24:55] 2,500 links to that page, everybody knows how hard it is.
[24:59] I think it's, 2,500 unique domains, I could be wrong
on that, is a lot, and they rank for nothing.
[25:05] So literally, if you're trying to optimize that site, you
could write new content, you don't need to build links,
[25:10] you don't even need to write stuff.
[25:11] You just need to go find a post you have for
"platform," probably, I'm guessing, 301 redirect,
[25:15] or just take that information and copy and 
paste it and put it on the "platform" page.
[25:19] And you will rank for "platform" pretty quickly
as long as it's halfway-related content.
[25:23] We started doing that on our site.
[25:24] Well, I meant we're gonna stop writing
new blog post let's just go back and...
[25:27] We've got... we got post with hundreds of links to
it that rank for nothing so let's go back and just
[25:31] make those rank.
[25:32] So if I were trying to pitch you, I would just share that.
[25:34] Like, "Tim, dude, I use y'all's tool I think this is the
best feature in the entire tool for established websites,
[25:40] 'cuz none of them know what their most the link to
pages are and almost none of the pages rank for stuff."
[25:46] Easiest thing to ever do for SEO.
[25:49] So I would start with just sharing and
then start the conversation.
[25:51] You're gonna ask what I'm not to, I'm gonna ask what you're up to.
[25:54] And then through that I'll share in some natural form
like we just did that we're doing tool partnerships.
[25:58] And I found with that kind of ask for a tool partnership,
people to usually just ask, some king of...
[26:03] So what they're doing is like, "Man, I'd love to do one of those with you." - "Cool let's go do it."
[26:06] For a partner webinar you have to know what the win is for your partner.
[26:11] So for Brian, for instance, money probably not
gonna be the pitch for him, like, it probably isn't.
[26:16] But what he does do, is he does every year, Brian...
[26:20] I'm talking about Brian Dean of Backlinko.com, if
anybody that's listening doesn't know I'm talking about.
[26:24] What Brian does once a year, he does this exhaustive...
[26:27] Moz does this but there's isn't as exhaustive as Brian's.
[26:31] He does, like, he analyzes - I think that last
year it was a million or ten million pages -
[26:35] and has the ranking factor study on it.
[26:37] Moz did one with, like, 10,000.
[26:39] Brian did one with a million, I think last year maybe
went to ten million, I could be wrong with that.
[26:43] But I know he teams up with SEMrush on that.
[26:44] I don't know if he teams up with y'all on that.
[26:46] Yeah, he teams up with us as well.
[26:49] Alright, good.
[26:50] So, like, I would go and be like how can we give
you more data, how can we make your stuff better?
[26:55] That's what he wants, he wants really good content.
[26:57] How could we give you...
[26:58] Could we give every customer that buys your
course a year of our product or something?
[27:02] I would find a way, to find some unique way
to give Brian what he wants which is...
[27:06] He wants more customers but it is
a number one driver.
[27:08] And that's gonna be... that's gonna come out
of conversations with them you have to talk
[27:12] to humans and have conversations with them.
[27:14] Another just category for a more established
business is your all your customers.
[27:18] Like, people in the people-you-know category - you
might not know their names but they know you, and
[27:21] they pay you $100 to $200 or $300 a month
for your service.
[27:24] Like, who are your existing customers?
[27:26] Go talk to them, be like, "Hey, you use Ahrefs, you have an audience that's related to ours,
[27:31] we'd love to team up into a partnership with you.
[27:33] We'll give you money and we'll give you free Ahrefs
for life if you get certain benchmarks or something.
[27:36] And activate total wins for them - you get bunch of new customers.
[27:39] So it comes down to you have conversations with
people, figure out what they want and give them that.
[27:44] A lot of great advice!
[27:45] I'm glad I don't have to take notes
because we're recording this.
[27:49] You even shared an SEO tip in a video
about list building so it's all...
[27:55] I would want to ask you, like, 20 more
questions on all this...
[28:00] Yeah it's a good topic but we're
running out of time.
[28:03] So we have one last question to cover and this is
the question that we started discussing before
[28:08] about keeping your list engaged.
[28:10] Because you did the upside-down homepage, you did
the content upgrades, you swept the the audience,
[28:17] you swept the lead magnets, you did all that stuff.
[28:20] Like, how do... Again, the issue is that you're using
all these different methods to put people on your list.
[28:27] Some downloaded your freebie, some saw your
upside-down welcome page, some came from
[28:33] a joint webinar with someone.
[28:35] How do you, like, make your list engaged
while not putting a lot of your time there?
[28:42] Because, like, if you start segmenting every person who came from it can take ages.
[28:50] Like what is your advice here?
[28:52] So think about the entire, I guess the almost the entirety of your business,
[28:58] like, your customer acquisition channels
in three phases.
[29:00] You attract leads, that's what we've been talking about
list building, that's what this entire sections about.
[29:06] Then you have to teach and build
a relationship with them.
[29:09] You're never gonna get some... I won't say
never because this does happen.
[29:11] But the conversion percentages are really low.
[29:13] If a random dude walks up off the street and says,
"Hey, what do you do?" - it's like,
[29:16] "Oh, I help people get more customers."
[29:18] "Okay, cool, have a good day."
[29:19] Like, it very rarely goes from "I just met you for the first
time ever I'm gonna give you seven dollars a month."
[29:25] Which is what's on y'all's home page.
[29:27] That practically never happens the first visit.
[29:31] So first you have to attract them and
you have to capture them as a lead.
[29:34] So you can actually have a conversation with them
because someone comes to your side meet you in
[29:37] person whatever.
[29:39] And you don't have a way to talk to them anymore?
[29:40] They're not coming back, they're gonna forget you exist.
[29:42] You are the center of your world and in your
business, like, you think about it all day.
[29:47] I think about it when we're talking and then I kind of
forget you exist and then randomly remember you,
[29:51] like, maybe once a month. Maybe, if you're lucky.
[29:54] But everybody else, like, encounters you and then leave.
[29:57] So you have to attract them and capture them.
[29:59] Second thing you have to do is teach them
and primarily build a relationship with them.
[30:03] That's what y'all do really well with... on your
blog is you build a relationship about teaching.
[30:09] And then the third piece is monetizing.
[30:10] Then you can actually make money from someone.
[30:12] Once you've attracted them, you have a relationship
with them, you can solve a problem for them.
[30:17] They're obviously on your list, so they want their
problem solved giving more traffic via SEO.
[30:21] And now you can actually monetize them.
[30:23] So what we're talking about specifically is how do
you teach them to a relationship with someone.
[30:28] So just in life how do you do it?
[30:30] Like, I have friends that I keep up with
and friends that I don't keep up with.
[30:34] Like, I have a friend Amy Collins, she was the
best... one of the groomsmen in my wedding.
[30:39] She was a friend I grew up with for a long time, so
she's standing on my side in our wedding or whatever.
[30:42] And I wish our relationship was still the strong
as it was but it's not.
[30:47] Like, I moved away, we live seven hours away
but I text her probably once a month.
[30:51] If I wanted that relationship to be stronger you
know what I would do?
[30:54] I would text her more often. I would
pick up the phone and talk to her.
[30:57] So how do you build a relationship with anyone?
How do you have a better marriage?
[31:00] You talk to your wife more, you talk to your
husband more, you share more stuff.
[31:04] Like, if you want your relationship with anyone
to go away, just stop talking to him - it'll go away.
[31:08] And then you'll see me year from now, and you
try to pick up but it will never be the same if you
[31:11] don't talk to them.
[31:12] Like, we have some friends we went to church
with forever and they've moved away.
[31:16] They were one of our closest friends for the last
eight years and that relationships just over.
[31:20] I mean not completely over but it's
never gonna be like it was.
[31:23] We're not gonna see each other two or
three times a week, we just won't.
[31:25] Like, it's just not happening anymore
and you have to be fine with that.
[31:27] So, on the business side, how do you build
a relationship with someone is the question.
[31:31] They've joined the list, they've had enough interest
and this is where you have to be psychologically.
[31:36] Someone had enough interest to say, "Please, email me more."
[31:40] Think about that: who wants more email? No one!
[31:43] But this person at least for that one point
in time wanted you to email them.
[31:48] So they have a lot of interest in what you're doing.
[31:50] Now, what you have to do is just continue to build
the relationship with them by teaching them and
[31:55] by helping them.
[31:56] So what we do, we used to do what most
people do which is...
[31:59] We would just write kind of one-off blog post so we'd publish every week.
[32:02] We'd pick a new whatever topic, honestly whatever
topic I was interested in I would write about it and
[32:07] I would publish it.
[32:08] And there was not a lot of rhyme or reason to it
[32:10] but if it sounded cool and it sounded
topical I just wrote and published it.
[32:13] I think there's a lot of merit in that at different stages of business.
[32:16] However, what we do now is, and you asked about this and our prep questions, we tell a story.
[32:20] We don't tell our story, no one cares about your story.
[32:23] What people care about is their story.
[32:25] They care about themselves, what the problem is
and how you can fix it and make their life better,
[32:30] that's what they care about.
[32:31] So what we do is we divide up... we used to do
every month, now we do two months at a time.
[32:35] So eight weeks we do a series.
[32:38] And we'll pick a topic that people are interested
in right now for this month, this being filmed.
[32:43] We're doing email... oh no, we're doing sales funnels.
[32:46] So we're picking the aim of the track teach and
monetize we're doing the aim section right now.
[32:50] We usually pick one of the topics, one of those
big topics, and then pick one subtopic of that
[32:54] and just talk about that for eight weeks.
[32:56] So we have, like, week one we always do this, week two
we always do this, and all the way through week eight.
[33:01] We have a specific plan where we
produce content for those people.
[33:04] And the only thing that goes up publicly on the
blog for that is week eight we publish a blog post.
[33:09] But the other seven weeks is all private stuff on the email list.
[33:11] You only get it if you own an email list.
[33:13] And we launched a tool in that section, we write
a blog post about it, we do some email series,
[33:17] we do a live challenge.
[33:18] So if like for this month, I think it's week
six, we do our live challenges.
[33:22] And our live challenge is just like, "Hey, we've been
talking about sales funnels for the last month.
[33:27] And I know everybody just liking that, it's
been fun, you may be sick of the topic
[33:30] Well, I'm not going to talk about it anymore.
[33:32] We're going to do a webinar tomorrow, we're not going
to be selling anything but on the webinar tomorrow
[33:36] I'm gonna make a sales funnel from
scratch while you watch.
[33:39] So for Ahrefs, "Tomorrow I'm gonna show you how to
get those posts on your site that have a bunch of links
[33:44] to them, I'm gonna show you how to
get them to actually rank for stuff.
[33:46] Cause they are the easiest thing ever
to rank, no one even tracks that."
[33:50] I've literally never seen an SEO person talk about
that but I don't camp out on the SEO blog, so
[33:53] someone probably has.
[33:54] But in my layman research, I've never
seen one talked about that.
[33:57] So tomorrow we're gonna do that I'm gonna
break down our own blog tell you where we suck,
[34:02] where we have totally missed the boat,
and we're going to fix it while you watch it.
[34:05] People love that, it's awesome and it's
great content to include in the blog post
[34:08] so to publish in a few weeks.
[34:10] So we just have an eight-week schedule, each
week is kind of... templated out, we know the type
[34:15] of content to produce, and we just write it.
[34:17] So we do series on a topic that ends in an epic
blog post that we can rank for SEO and have traffic
[34:22] long term.
[34:23] So we just have a content plan that serves the list
and teaches them to build a relationship with them.
[34:27] That's what you get to focus on.
[34:28] Amazing! Thank you, Bryan that was super-
awesome I'm sure people are now overwhelmed
[34:34] with the amount of knowledge
[34:34] And I'm sure many people will watch it two times.
[34:37] At least, I think I am going to watch this again
to actually make notes of the things I could do
[34:43] to grow our email list and make it better.
[34:46] So thank you, it was awesome,thanks.
[34:50] Thanks Tim.

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