How To Build A List Of Potential Clients In 4 Easy Steps

Joie Thompson October 14, 2015 3 Comments

Knowing How To Build A List of Potential Clients that you can communicate with regularly about your products and services is vital for success in your business.

It allows you to act as an advisor to your clients, understanding and addressing their problems and recommending solutions. Imagine not having to chase down potential clients and begging them to buy your products and services. Instead, you act as a consultant who understands their problems and challenges and knows what solution is right for them.

The question is: How Do You Build This List?

In this blog post, I share with you 4 steps and principles you can follow to start building your list today.

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These are the same steps we used to build one list from 0 to 3,000 people in just ONE Month and you can do this too!

4 Steps To Build A List Of Potential Customers and Clients

Step 1: Determine Your Ideal Client
You need to know who your ideal client is because that’s who you are going to be primarily talking to and telling about what it is you have to offer.

When you know who it is that needs and wants your products and/or services, it allows you to know how to present it to them as the solution they have been looking for.

In addition, you must know where you can find them.

Are they on social media? news sites? forums?

To know who they are and where to find them, you have to do some Market Research. This may seem like a boring or even unnecessary step but know this: doing this first will save you a lot of time and a lot of money!

(Do You Use Facebook for your business? Discover how to find your ideal clients on Facebook)

Step 2: Create A Valuable Offer and Give It To Them FREE!
When I say “a valuable offer“, I really mean valuable.

Give them something that they will find valuable and even be willing to pay for. BUT, you give it to them FREE.

Yes, you read right.

Create or Offer something so valuable that your ideal client is willing to pay for it but then, you shock them and give it to them for FREE in exchange for their contact information.

This valuable offer is called a Lead Magnet.

Your Lead Magnet must be something that fills a particular need, solves a problem or fulfills a desire. It should be so irresistible that your ideal client can’t say NO.

How will you know it’s that good? Your first instinct needs to be “This is too good to be free. I should charge money for it.”

In fact, it should hurt you or even scare you to a little bit at first to give it away for free.

Why? Because it really isn’t free.

You may not be asking for money, but you are asking for their contact information in exchange for that. You’re asking them for permission to tell them more about what you have and how it is a solution to their problems.

What you give them should be connected to your product or service and it should be easy for them to use/implement.

Some examples of a good lead magnet are:

A Free Sample of your Product,
A Free or Discounted Trial of your software,
A FREE consultation,
A Checklist,
A Resource Sheet/Guide,
A Coupon/Discount, etc

Here are some great examples:

In this example from Jumia, there’s an upcoming Black Friday Festival. They give you an opportunity to be the first to know if you give your contact information. This is a very simple way for Jumia to get potential clients to give them their contact information.

In addition, they are able to catch an audience that might have otherwise, completely forgotten about the promo and become a customer.

In this example, JustFab, A clothing e-commerce store, offers new subscribers the ability to pay just $10 for their first style, regardless of the price. This allows them to not only get a list but also a paying customer.For Makeup Tutorials, they give a Free Luxury MakeUp Brush in exchange for visitors contact information.

What can you offer your potential customers for free?

Step 3: Create an Opt-in page

An Opt-in Page is a page that allows you collect these leads contact information and store it in an email autoresponder software. It is also called a landing page or a squeeze page.

Here are examples of opt-in pages:

This is an opt-in page from GetResponse embedded on their website, offering a Free 30-day trial of the software.

This example is from The iVEN Team offering our Ideal Client Worksheet for download completely FREE.

You can use any of the Email Autoresponder providers like Getresponse, MailChimp, Aweber, Active Campaign etc. Most of these providers have free trials so check them out and see what works for you.

On your opt-in page, the most important thing is your headline.

Your Headline should call out to your Ideal Client, highlight their problem and exactly what they get when they give you their contact information.

To create an opt-in page, you’ll need a landing page software like Leadpages, OptimisePress, or ThriveThemes.

Step 4: Drive traffic to the opt-in page

Now that you know who your ideal client is, you have a lead magnet and an opt-page to collect their contact information, the only thing left is to start building your list.

There are several ways to do this from having the link to your opt-in page your flyers and brochures, on your business cards to using social media.

In Conclusion, learning how to build a list of potential clients and actually building your list has the potential to double your business.

What are some of the ways you have used to build a list of potential clients in your business?

Share with us in the comment section below ??

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AboutJoie Thompson

The Content Marketing Executive at iVEN Digital. She helps brands develop effective marketing stories, to attract their ideal customers to their business, products, and services, engage with them and convert them to sales and also, repeat sales. She is responsible for digital content creation, curation, and editing on social media platforms and other digital platforms.