There is nothing new about the concept of list building. For years, big shot executives have looked to their trusty card holders to bring in new business, find work, and share resources.

For business owners, like you and me, this is excellent news. We no longer have to go around and do cold call prospecting grunt work (which I hate the most) or pay lakhs of rupees for mud on the wall kind of advertising (means if it sticks, it sticks). But not anymore, now within seconds we can reach an audience with the simple click of a button.

But that also has a problem now. EVERYONE can reach people with the simple click of a button. The market has become saturated; the pond has become overfished. Today, our challenge as business owners is to leverage virtual communication in a smart way that brings in new business, builds trust, and quality relationships.

Yes of course you have to build a list because that’s where all the big-money lies. To answer your second question yes it does work only if you know:

All of these questions and especially the answers to them are critically important. If you build the wrong list for your product or your purchase, you will not be able to make it profitable.

For example, let’s say you are selling John’s umbrellas [not promoting the brand]. You want to build your list fast and so you launch a big marketing campaign to a everyone in India offering free information about John’s umbrella.

You attracted a lot of people who enjoyed reading your well-written free information, but they don’t have money to spend the umbrella. And now you have wasted your entire marketing efforts. Well in this case it would be better to have a very small list of people who are already spending buying good quality umbrellas.

1. Decide what you are going to sell (or promote)
2. Then market to that audience

Now, if you are selling John’s umbrellas, you need to create an informational guide on “how to get more life out of your existing umbrella”. Now, you will attract people in your list who already have an umbrella which is going to break and are using it. Now you see the difference.

This will attract people who are not generally interested in umbrella but in fact it will attract a person who owns an umbrella and will get on your list by downloading your guide because of “how to” information and “a specific trick” that you are giving in your guide.

Now let’s say if you are marketing a new kind of diet, you would want to target people who are overweight and have a reason to spend on your new diet instructions. If you give away a free cheat-sheet on eating healthier, you may attract people who are not overweight, but simply wish to eat healthier, which is fine.

But if you give away a free checklist that specifically teaches overweight people how to change their meal selections so that they can lose weight, you will be specifically targeting people who need to lose weight and who are more likely to spend money on losing that weight. So that’s the reason.

This doesn’t happen by accident. And putting up with a dead list is like deliberate sinking your business faster than a very short time. I have not left any stone unturned and no tactics was kept back. This is where you are REALLY going to be able to build value in your business when you take action right now and invest in:

While everyone else including your competition struggles to keep customers and prospects for 3-4 years, You will keep your list members for decades. And there is a certain formula I use to control the relationship with my prospects so they will keep buying from us again and again.