Jenna Warner (0:00)

Welcome to Shiny New Clients, the marketing podcast that helps you attract shiny new clients to your business. We'll talk about social media, what makes people buy, how to go viral, and marketing psychology all in 20 minutes or less. Whether you're a coach, a stylist or a wedding planner, if you've got a service based business to sell, this is the show you need to fill your calendar. I'm Jenna Warner, your new marketing coach and this is Shiny New New Clients. I woke up bleary eyed. That's a word you only ever see written. I woke up bleary eyed, looked at my phone and saw that 2, 000 people had commented on my Instagram post asking me for a link. I had a manychat trigger set up, which means when someone comments a keyword on my post, a link immediately gets sent to them. And when I saw that number 2000, I was like, oh my goodness, what have I done? So here's the story of how I have become the queen of list growth. How you can grow your email list too, using Instagram and a little bit of tea along the way, because I have some feelings about some misinformation that gets spread about email marketing and Instagram. So let's clear things up and grow your list. First things first, I am in no way disputing that email marketing is important. As long as I've been working on my Instagram, growing my Instagram, I've also been growing my email list. It's an incredibly valuable tool. Anybody trying to sell you on email marketing will tell you about how high conversions are, how you own your email list, and as long as you have it downloaded, if your provider were to disappear, say you would still have that list versus social media where you don't own your following. The other big one people like to talk about is how with email you can almost guarantee that people get your emails versus social media, where all of your posts are only going out to a portion of your audience when you do a good job. So all of those things remain true. But I get really frustrated when people try and tell new business owners, especially that email is more important than Instagram or social media, which is what I teach, right, and how I teach people to get clients because those same people are are using social media to grow their email lists. The names on your list have to come from somewhere. Remember in the early days of my business when I would get asked to come in and teach a class, so an organization, a company, would ask me to come in and teach their people how to grow on Social media. And when I would do these live presentations, I would put a piece of paper at the back of the room with a pencil with it and say, sign up to get your name on my list. And that is a way to grow your list for sure. But it's very slow because it relies on the number of people in the room and their interest in getting a pen and adding their name to the list. But that is totally a valid way to grow. Another way to grow would be to guest in people's communities. So to make relationships with other entrepreneurs who have a similar audience to you, guest in a community with them. Maybe you can even think of a few people right now whose community you could guest in and then give them some sort of an opportunity to sign up to get onto your list. Those things both move very slowly. And I remember feeling really inferior when my list was only. Well, I remember really clearly when it was only 16 names. But then, you know, 16 and then up to 50 and then up to 100 and a couple hundred, and then you're starting to feel pretty proud of yourself. And then you get invited to a summit and. And they say you must have 5,000 names on your list to participate in this summit. And you're like, okay, well, guess I am small potatoes then, because I only have a few hundred names on mine. You know, like, you start feeling really inferior, then you feel guilty because you're not using your list and everybody is telling you the importance of email marketing. It stinks. I want to get rid of all of that for you. I want to tell you the easiest, freest way to grow your email list using social media. And actually, this will help in some of those other situations too, like when you. You are in a group setting or when you are guesting in someone's community. These kind of all tie in together and it doesn't cost money and it's easy to set up. And I feel as though I have hacked the system because I've gotten so good at this. So I'm going to tell you more about it. You know what? Money is another thing. I sat down with an ads manager because I thought, you know, maybe it's time to start experimenting with ads. And I found out that a lot of entrepreneurs are using ads to grow their email list, and that's how they're doing it. And when you do it that way, it's costing them on average, like three to five dollars per lead on the high end of average. For 500 names on your list, you're looking at 2,500 bucks plus whoever's managing your ads, that's not fun. And then you're still, you're only paying for the person to be on your list. You still need your list to sell them in order to recoup that sal spend. So let me get into the nuts and bolts of how we're going to do this. We're going to grow our lists using a freebie funnel. You're going to use social media, and honestly, any place that you can get exposure, you're going to give away something valuable in exchange for people's names and emails that then go on your list. And it's all automated. These are called freebies, they're called lead magnets, they're called opt ins. And a lot of people do them wrong. If you know me, you know that I teach a program called Magic Marketing Machine where I help service based business owners get clients from Instagram. And so I see a lot of freebies. We actually have a template in the program called sell your freebie that's helped people get hundreds of names on their email list just from a single post on occasion. And so I see people's freebies and I'm seeing a lot of mistakes, mistakes that are sabotaging those freebies repeated again and again. One of the mistakes is trying to sell something right there in the freebie. You know, there's a strategy there, that's fine. But if your freebie actually just sells something, don't expect it to be a huge list growth driver. Because who wants to trade their name and email to be sold something? No, the most people who are going to trade their name and email for you want to get something out of it, not just a sales pitch. The best freebies are giving something away that your ideal client actually wants that doesn't cannibalize your offer. So we're not necessarily breaking up your offer and just giving away for free something you would normally pay for. It's not that, it's something else. A tasty delight, an answer to a question they have on their mind. Your freebie gives this away to them. They give you their name and email. Another mistake that I'm seeing, this one is akin to sneakily trying to sell something. People are creating documents, trainings, free resources that give away so much information with the intention of overwhelming the consumer so that theoretically the consumer goes, oh no, this is too much work, I'm just gonna pay them. And man, I don't know the stats on it. Sure, maybe that works for some people, but that to me has, has Kind of negative energy, right? Do we really want to overwhelm someone so they feel desperate into working with us? No. My whole thing and the sales strategies that I teach in Magic Marketing Machine are all about empowering someone into a purchase, not like pushing them into a purchase or overwhelming them into it. Another mistake, the third mistake that I'm seeing is you're just choosing your topic wrong. You're choosing a topic that you think is very valuable, but there's a misalignment there. It is not what the ideal client thinks is valuable. And I get it. It can be tricky to get into the shoes of your ideal client and figure out what they need. A lot of times that means the freebies content is going to be a little bit simpler than what maybe interests you, because that's what's in line with what your idle target needs and what they're going to opt into. And so of course my new list growth method takes that into account and I'm going to walk you through how to come up with an idea that really inspires your lead into joining your list. All of this is happening, by the way, at a live event this summer. Freebie in a weekend. That's why I'm like up on my lead magnet list Growth freebie horse. Right now we're running a two day event, June 21st and 22nd, 2025. It's live, it's virtual. You're going to create a freebie set, set up all the technology and make three posts to promote it all in one weekend, in 48 hours. That first freebie I made that I was telling you about so long ago, it took me weeks. It took me weeks and I never thought it was good enough. And I was graphic designing without knowing how to graphic design. And in the time it took me to make that one freebie using my list growth method, I could have created 10, tested what works on people, got them out there, given away so much more nurturing content, had people fall in love with me faster. Like there's just a better way of doing it. We're even going to make the tech part of it, the tech setup, super, super simple. So what we have, I'm calling it no tears tech because that's cute, right? So there's going to be a super manual, very simple tech version, a intermediate level of technology and automation and then a full, fully automated the system that I use a little bit more advanced version. And you're going to be able to choose which one works best for you and also get access to the other Options. I remember when I set my first one up, the tech was so scary for me. I was like, what do you mean? Like, how. How do you get the little box to come up where people put their name in emails? How do you find that? Where are people doing this? Do I need to code that? Where did it come from? Like, it was so overwhelming. And my favorite thing is spelling stuff like that out for people, not gatekeeping how it works and making it really, really simple to get more names on your list so that you can sell to them from email. I want to zone in on one thing that I said about what makes a freebie actually work. And we're going to talk a lot about this at Freebie in a Weekend. But let me give you an example. Here's an example to illustrate what people are doing with their freeb. Have you ever received a birthday gift from someone and the someone is a lovely person, they're your friend, you know, they're kind and they want the best for you, and it's really sweet that they brought a present. But as you unwrapped that present and you pulled back the tissue paper and you looked inside it, you thought, this is something you like. Friend, this isn't something that I like. Or maybe you pull back the tissue paper, you look inside and you go, oh, this is something you think I should have, you think would be good for me, but it's not what I want on my birthday. I don't want a vacuum, thank you. That's what service providers are doing with their freebies. You're giving people something that you know that they need or that is, you know, like, deep down is going to be really helpful for them. But. But that's not what generates thousands of people racing to opt into your freebie. You need to meet them where they're at and give them something they already know that they want. And then on the other side of it and in your email marketing and in your paid offers, then you can give them all the stuff that you know is going to get them to the result that they want. But in order for them to sell their data to the Internet, you need to give them something that is worth it and that they easily can tell right the second they look at it, that it is worth it. I am so excited for Freebie in the weekend because I'm gonna take all of that and spell it out for you, then work with you to figure out the best freebie that you can put out there into the world. We're also gonna host office hours so outside of the main two days of the event, there's gonna be time where my team and I are just gonna hang out on Zoom, and if anybody gets stuck setting up their tech or coming up with a topic or anything, we can help you with it. We're going to be super hands on. Oh, and then you'll get to meet, like, some of the people on my team that the public don't normally get to see. Like my operations manager, Jenna. Yes, her name is Jenna. We're both named Jenna. It's a whole thing. If growing your email list is one of your goals this summer, let's get the humans on Instagram over to your email list. Even if your Instagram following is small right now, you gotta start somewhere, right? And for me, I want to start the place that's the freest. So creating a lead magnet, spreading it through Instagram, through Facebook. Anytime you do a public speaking gig, anytime you're doing a joint venture with a friend or guesting in somebody's community, you're going to be able to use this asset to collect people onto your email list without even touching paid ads. Of course, all the info for Freebie in a Weekend is down below this episode. I'm gonna go make another freebie this afternoon. That's how quickly you're gonna be able to create them, too. Now that I have this process set up, I can crank them out so quickly. And you will too. That's all for me. I'll see you in the next one.