• “Who are you?”
• “What’s most important to you?”
• “What are your struggles?”

The answers to these questions unlock all the resources you need to take to transition your business from zero to MASSIVE. One of my mentors, Ryan Levesque, did exactly that. He created the ASK Method and went from zero to $25K per month in 18 months!!!

I found that there’s a path to making money online and that is to ask people what they’re struggling with in a market to understand their pains, their needs, their wants and desires. Then from there build your products and services based on that. – Ryan Levesque

Engage Your Audience on an Emotional Level

So, guys, there’s a clear difference between connecting with your audience’s heart and following trends, right? Yes, it seems like great money to be a part of the uptick. But, ask any surfer, you’ll completely wipeout if you paddle when the wave is right there. 

For Ryan, that was no different. He saw a trending market in Scrabble tile jewelry on Etsy. But what happened?

We took this business to making almost $8,000 a month in a tiny little niche market starting from scratch. Now the story doesn’t have like a super happy ending because like it, it turns out it was a fad. 

Finding Pain Points NOT Fads

Clearly fads, well they fade, don’t they? That’s not a dependable long-term marketing strategy.  

You want a business that’s going to stand the test of time. 

So true! We don’t want to repeat the build and launch over and over and over. That’s extremely exhausting! I don’t know any entrepreneur who sets a goal to create a cycle of insanity. Seriously, that’s the complete opposite of “working smarter not harder.”

When I first started beta testing Moolah, I had a handful of people participating. It was within this tight-knit group that I built the Page Strategies e-course you know and love today. 

I applied Ryan Levesque’s ASK Method during the beta launch. And well, you can see for yourself, that Moolah has grown by leaps and bounds. I listened to my audience’s pain points about Facebook as it relates to their business. Guys, at that point I knew I had the skill set to build pages from zero to a million. I had done multiple times. I wanted to share that with knowledge, but I needed to be clear in my messaging, course outline, and lessons so that it really solved my students’ pain points.

Ryan did the same thing with his orchid business. 

I learned my lesson. I said, all right, if we’re going to go into another market, we’re going to go into a market that is not a fad. And so I picked a market that’s the longest, a lasting oldest hobbies in America, which is a sub-niche in gardening. The gardening niche that we went into was specifically caring for (orchids). 

Ryan and I were both able to use our audience to identify pain points. But how did we get to the point where we had an audience to engage with?

The Audience to ASK

We’ve talked about that in our niches where we want to target not just anyone in the niche. We only want our pages to target the most active people who are responding, the ones that can’t help themselves. This ties right in. He picked orchids because it had that high engagement, high activity level inside that niche. So, I love that he reached out where people were already buzzin’.

We started asking these questions and I started identifying that in the market…that there were these pockets of what we call “hyper-responsives”. 

Did you catch this in the interview? You don’t need a website, friends. What you do need is a niche and you need people to start engaging with. Those are the key foundational pieces. It’s not the fancy designer built website or even the product itself. It’s the niche and audience!

Biggest mistake people make is they build something and then try to sell it.  The aspect of that the thing that’s come to be known as the aspect of the process that I’ve learned along the way is that you begin by asking questions to understand what it is that your audience wants and in response to those answers, you create something that you know they want to buy. 

The 3 Steps in the ASK Method that Will Help You Engage Your Audience

Pssst…you’ll definitely want to get on the waitlist to Ryan’s ASK Method program to really dive into all these steps.

Discovery: We’re not jumping right in and asking people what they want because that’s not always easy to answer for anyone. The goal is to reveal what they don’t want.

When you ask these types of questions, that’s one example, then you can start to understand what it is that your audience might actually want to buy.

Y’all I implemented this stage first too. I asked our non-buyers the question, “why didn’t you buy?” And it was mindblowing. 5% of them had the same answer. Well, guess what? I knew exactly what my next bonus was going to be. I thought this was a no-brainer. It’s so awesome the power of what happens when you interview your audience and you’re able to segment them. Now I know two things that I can easily create as bonuses or have somebody else create as a bonus for my program that will answer those issues.

Segmentation: Because there’s no one size fits all way to engage with people, we need to communicate with our audience in different ways. In order to understand that “groups” in our audience, we need to start segmenting them into buckets. 

So, here’s the thing with Moolah, up until just recently, we still sent people to the same sales page. However, they had the perceived customization because they came in telling me a little bit about their needs. So there was a perceived feeling like I’m getting something that’s just for me, even though I didn’t have time, make another sales page.

In every market there are three to five hyper-responsive buckets of people that you want to focus. 

Launch: Finally the last piece to the puzzle, maybe? Well, now that you know your audience and how to talk to them, it’s definitely time to launch. You can put all that information your audience shared with you to work.

Using the ASK Method, I was able to grow Moolah Marketing by…

• finding people in a specific stage of their business growth
• listening to their needs and pain points
• and creating the solutions to sell. 

BUT, here’s the kicker…I know, I know, I can’t just give you all of Ryan’s secrets right??? These steps are just a birdseye view of the ASK Method. Ryan’s program may not be open for enrollment right now, so grab these goodies while you wait.

• The Ultimate Audience Growth Pack – Jump right ahead to the full pack of worksheets to get your business to the next level.
• 23 Conversation starters to jumpstart engagement on your page.

The post 3 Steps to Engage Your Audience and EARN in Any Niche appeared first on Rachel Miller.

E-Mail Marketing Strategy Step #1: Building the Community

Before we jump head first into e-mail list building. Let’s set the foundation.

We need to transition potential followers from strangers to community members. We need eyeballs, friends! If you’ve already equip yourself with the Pageview Strategies e-course, you already have all the resources you need to do exactly that. If you haven’t enrolled yet, try these 25 Conversation Starters to get your page growing.

Building a community of die-hard fans is HUGE, right? But having an engaged page or group isn’t the ultimate goal, is it? Noooo! 

You want to take them to the next level, build relationships, and really connect so they become “influencers” in their own way! The power of word of mouth advertising is priceless. 

Top 3 E-Mail Marketing Mistakes

So what does Sarah say about the biggest mistakes when it comes to e-mail marketing?

Mistake #1 People just don’t e-mail.

It’s so much work and it’s just so much trouble and you know, and then they start to be afraid or don’t want to bother my readers. You know, I hate getting lots of emails or you know, they make it too big of a deal.  

Mistake #2 Overcomplicating the e-mail process, turning it into a big production.

People often try to cram too much into their emails. They’re like, hey, I wrote this blog post and then there’s this great pin on Pinterest and then here’s 14 other blog posts, this email that just goes on and on and on.

Simplify your e-mails, PLEASE! I have a hard enough time deciding what’s for dinner. I don’t have time to walk through a novel of an e-mail.  Make your e-mails direct and to the point. Tell your subscriber exactly what you need them to do. Like Sarah says, “Train them to take an action.”

Keeping it simple kind of removes those friction points that just paralyzes us from getting that one to-do completed. So I love, LOVE the tip of keeping it simple!

Mistake #3 Being too formal.

You don’t need a fancy template. You don’t have to proofread it 14 times. The way that I approach e-mail and the way that I teach people to do it is, treat it like you’re emailing a friend.

Now, let that sink in for a minute. Doesn’t that make complete sense? In order to turn your fans into hot buyers, you need to build that relationship up. So why wouldn’t you e-mail them as if you’re having a regular conversation?

E-Mail Marketing Strategy Step #2: Gaining Leads

In the Facebook LIVE with Sarah Mueller, from Early Bird Mom, we discussed generating leads. If you’ve already signed up for some our Moolah worksheets you’ll see we absolutely agree with Sarah’s suggestion. 

Create something that’s super, super valuable but also like really, really easy to implement.

I’m a fast action thinker, so e-books and workbooks as opt-ins don’t capture me. The reality is, it doesn’t attract a ton of people because it takes too much effort. We want to give our subscribers quick results because that’s the fastest method for building our credibility. They are celebrating their wins and loving you for it!

Promoting your lead magnets or opt-ins should be a duplicatable process. I personally use landing pages that I can easily replicate and update for the latest opt-in.

I then link those pages organically in blog posts or share them across all my social media platforms. 

E-Mail Marketing Strategy Step #3: Engaging Your List and Keeping Them Warm

So, now you have a list growing through lead generation, what next? There’s no need to recreate the wheel. I’m sure you have content whether it’s a great Facebook post you want to expand on, a story you want to share, or a blog post that’s creating a ton of discussion.  Use those to keep your list engaged. 

When you start to see the replies it’s amazing, right? Questions, comments, and all that good stuff just creates more content and e-mail topics for later. 

…if one person has that question, then 100 others do.

Guys and gals, you need to keep your list warm. You can accomplish that by asking your readers questions, answering them using social media posts. You can do that all while using your list to engage in other places. Keep the conversations going!

AND… Remember, your email list is only one part of the “leads puzzle” – those same people you should create a custom list on Facebook – and you should be targeting them with your content.  They should be on your messenger lists and getting subscription broadcasts over Facebook messenger chats, and if you have a group they should be in there – as your leads, engaging with you.

Keeping your leads warm is a wholistic endeavor.  Our readers are everywhere and we need our marketing to be there with them too.

P.S. This Means You’ll Need More Than Just E-Mail Marketing, Friends!

So this is another thing you need to know about leads. You don’t want them in just one place. If you just have them in e-mail you’re not getting the full picture of that person’s life. If you just have them in a group, well, you can’t retarget them the same way. They don’t buy as much as if you have them in your e-mail as well. And if you don’t have them on a page, well the ads, I mean we all want ads and we want cheap ads, we don’t want to spend money for every eyeball, right?

So we kind of need all three to work together. And I love how, how well Sarah was able to unite the three. 

Here are my suggested resources to start your marketing journey to increasing all three of these major areas. 

• Inbox Invitation (e-book) – This one’s packed with actionable content from our Facebook LIVE guest Sarah Mueller. You thought the information in the replay was good. There’s so much more she shares in this e-book.
• Facebook LIVE video topics – Keep the conversations going with these live topic ideas.
• The Ultimate Audience Growth Pack – Jump right ahead to the full pack of worksheets to get your business to the next level.

If you haven’t enrolled in my Page Strategies e-course yet, make sure you get on the waiting list!

This post may contain affiliate links, please review the disclosure policy for more information.

The post 3 Major Mistakes in Your E-Mail Marketing Strategy and the 3 Steps to Fixing It appeared first on Rachel Miller.

And the sad part is, the larger your page gets, the harder it is to get excited about “meh” traffic. Y’all it’s about as exciting as watching paint dry – you know the eyeballs will come and read your content, but it’s not happening quickly.

1 Million Pageviews a Month – What’s the Secret Sauce?

Jon Morrow’s Freedom Machine course reminded me how something was missing…that magic touch. Somewhere along the line, our content creation workflow shifted. We pumped out content like a machine because we thought that’s what our audience wanted. Tons and tons of new content.

With just one tweak from the very first module of his e-course, we got back on track. 

The content production workflow transitioned to a model similar to the one pictured below. I forgot that our readers should be driving our content. We were stuck in that blogging perspective that Morrow talks about.

You see, we thought of blogging as something separate from everything else we had going on. And that’s exactly what Jon talks about in his course.

Challenge your blogging brand and flip the perspective a bit. Find your audience, listen to your audience, and let them tell you exactly what they are looking for. The funny thing is, it’s not so different than my Moolah strategy is it? 

The best indicator of what people want is to analyze the content they are already clicking, reading and sharing. – Jon Morrow, Freedom Machine

1 Hour of Research = 3 Months of Content Ideas!

Jon suggests using research-based tools like Buzzsumo to identify popular posts on similar sites. However, just to start the ball rolling we used our social media audiences to review what they engaged with the most. If you don’t have an audience yet, don’t worry! Review comparable sites that have a reader-base of 1 million or more.

Take an hour and review what posts are getting the most engagement:

1. Is there a pattern of topic ideas within your niche?
2. How many likes, comments, shares, pins are they generating?
3. Write out trending topics.
4. Bullet point blog post ideas based on each trending topic.

It’s through this exercise that you’ll be able to find the “pattern of popularity” that Jon talks about. Research the patterns for not only topic ideas but headlines as well! You could have a whole quarter of content mapped out in just one session. See how we did it below!

For example:

TOPIC: Cleaning Hacks 

• Bathroom Cleaning Hacks
  • Skip the Elbow Grease with These Powerful Natural Homemade Shower/Bath Cleaners
  • Bathroom Cleaning Tools That Actually Work We Put Them to the Test (affiliate)
• Kitchen Cleaning Hacks
  • Clean Your Microwave in 2 Steps Without Scrubbing!
  • Never Lose A Storage Container Lid Again With This Organization Hack

Building your audience is the key to unlocking a million pageviews!

The Smart Blogger course dives deep into shifting your blogging perspective and really mastering content. And how you view your blog. So what happens when you start to shift your production focus?

You can see the tide start to shift in this monthly view. We increased pageviews by nearly 50%. That’s almost a 500,000 increase in pageviews, friends! I started listening to our tribe. What do they want to read? What type of medium do they prefer to consume? 

My readers LOVE video content and super long lists of ideas! So we shifted. Check out some of my blog’s latest posts from reader led content! Some of my readers even submitted photos that we could use across our social media platforms. You know what that means? They were more likely re-share the heck out of it because they were featured on the blog!

Why are reader-driven pageviews more profitable?

The goal of the Smart Blogger e-course is to create your “Freedom Machine” or 6-figure blog! Most of us know by now, that it doesn’t happen without pageviews.

Pageviews, in general, are stinkin’ cool, right? But, reader-driven pageviews builds trust and loyalty. Your fans or followers feel empowered because they finally feel heard. Their voice finally matters. 

What does that mean for you? That means they will turn into die-hard fans, the raving ones that we love in our social media pages. They will share the heck out your new posts because it resonates with them. Hmmm…where have we heard that before? 

They will be more likely to click on that affiliate link and sit on your site generating higher ad revenue!

Look, the reality is pageviews matter…PERIOD! But, if your goal is a 6-figure blog with multiple income streams, you’re going to want the right readers paired with the right content.

Can’t give away the farm, right?

Jon’s strategy packed course contains so much actionable content that we could only give you a nugget of what we learned. Obviously, to make 6-figures there’s a lot more to it than shifting our content creation workflow. 

The Freedom Machine team shares their advanced strategies on crafting captivating headlines to building stunning blog posts and tons and I mean TONS more! Even the assignments are so well thought out, with actionable steps after every lesson. 

Want to learn more?

When it comes to blogging, there’s none better than Jon’s Smart Blogger e-course. There’s a natural flow between our blogs and Facebook pages that just fits perfectly! 

Page Strategies will help you grow the audience needed to smash through Jon’s e-course. Our blogging team applies the Smart Blogger strategies to all 3 of our blogs because it’s that phenomenal.

And because we want you to succeed in serving your audience we’re throwing in a few bonuses for everyone that registers for Jons course through our link.

Bonus #1: 49 Conversation starters to jumpstart engagement on your page.

Bonus #2: The big list of Facebook Banned words

Serve your audience, listen to them, and give them what they want and you’ll have the magic touch we talked about earlier.

This post may contain affiliate links, please review the disclosure policy for more information.

The post How We Topped 1 Million Pageviews a Month and the Strategy That Lets Us Keep The Clicks Coming appeared first on Rachel Miller.