Ditch the Sales Pitch When Listbuilding

Successful marketing and listbuilding, ironically, doesn’t involve having a good sales pitch.  Many people in sales endorse using a hard sales pitch, leading you to believe that if you say “just the right thing,” the conversions will begin to happen.  Maybe they’re just keeping you from being a competitor since it never seems to work out.

Sell Yourself, Not the Product

If you really expect people to opt in to your list, you need to sell yourself, not the product.  The thing about mailing lists is that they’re not product specific; they’re marketer specific.  When you choose to stop affiliating or selling a particular product, guess what?  You get to keep your list.

This means that what’s important to your list isn’t your product; it’s you.  From the word go, you have to promote yourself.  Now you need to know what kind of persona you need to put out to make yourself attractive to viewers.

Start By Building Your Reputation

Building your reputation is the first step to get your listbuilding and affiliate marketing career going.  You have to spend some time in the trenches, in the forums and blogs, getting to know other marketers.  This has benefits beyond mere advice collecting and showing what you know.  The people you meet here could one day partner with you.

Partnerships are a great way to rapidly expand your list.  You could simply share your lists or you could exchange affiliate links with each other’s lists.  Either way, it works out as a win-win situation for both marketers.

Some Personal Branding Tips

With this in mind, you might wonder what should go into your personal branding.  Ultimately, your personality—that thing that colors everything you say and do—should be completely your own.  It’s too hard to maintain a false image, so why do it?  Be yourself, and people are more likely to respond.

Beyond that, there are certain elements that people look for in marketers.  First and foremost, you should be knowledgeable in your niche, and you should genuinely enjoy it.  Knowledge isn’t difficult, it takes just a little research to come up with enough fodder to feed a blog or social media account with material for a post or two, and you can learn as you go—as long as you’re careful not to put out junk information.

Enjoyment is a bit harder to portray if you don’t have it.  You can’t come across as the guy who says, “Are you as excited as I’m paid to be?”  You also can’t just do it half-heartedly.  Your love of the niche must be genuine and it should show.  People can often see right through faked enjoyment.

Lastly, you should be helpful.  The early days in the forum are a great way to develop that in your brand.  Once you start learning a few things, people less knowledgeable than you will come along.  However, don’t give away everything all at once since you’ll want to keep your reputation going.  If they use up all your information, they’ll move on.