What if I told you that building an email list is one of the MOST POWERFUL things you can do for your business?

Because you know how it goes with trying to grab attention on social media. (You’re at the mercy of algorithms and desperately competing with funny cat videos and #livingmybestlife reels!)

 

But your email list is an asset that you own.

One that allows you to connect directly with your audience, nurture relationships, and ultimately, convert subscribers into paying clients. (Woo hoo!)

Though if you’ve ever tried growing your list and found it to be painfully slow, don’t worry – you’re not the first person to tell me that. 

 

Many business owners struggle to build their email list… 

And often it’s because they either don’t have the right strategy or they’re making critical mistakes with their lead magnets. 

And I want better for you!

 

So in this blog, I’m sharing exactly how to grow your email list quickly with the right subscribers (not just any subscribers!) 

AND I’ll divulge the biggest mistake I see my colleagues make when trying to attract new leads. (So that YOU can avoid it!)

 

By the end, you’ll be clued up on:

✔ HOW to get people onto your email list in the first place

✔ WHAT makes a high-converting lead magnet

✔ The biggest mistakes to AVOID (and how to fix them if you’re doing it already)

✔ The FASTEST ways to grow your list (both free and paid)

 

If you’ve ever thought, “I don’t have enough people on my list to make email marketing work,” this post is your place!

Let’s get going…

 

Your Content Should Be Designed to Build Your Email List

Let’s start with the bigger picture.

Your content – whether it’s social media, blog posts, YouTube videos, or podcast episodes – shouldn’t just be about providing value. 

 

It should have a clear goal:

To move people off those platforms and onto your email list!

Why? 

Because people don’t always buy the first time they hear about you!

 

Most people need time, trust, and multiple touchpoints before they’re ready to invest in YOU.

The great news is that your email list allows you to:

✔ Stay in front of them, even if they stop scrolling on social media

✔ Build a deeper relationship through consistent communication

✔ Introduce your offers in a structured way

 

Let’s think about it this way:

The purpose of social media is to get people off social media and onto your email list

The purpose of your blog is to get people off Google and onto your email list

The purpose of your podcast is to engage listeners and encourage them to join your list

 

I’m sure you spotted the common theme there, right?! It’s all pointing toward your email list.

 

Does your content include a call to action that leads to your email list?

Here’s my friendly reminder to MAKE SURE it does!

Otherwise, you’re missing out on potential leads…every single day.

 

Here’s Your Action Step:

Look at your content strategy.

• Are you actively guiding people to your email list?
• Does every blog post, podcast, or social media post give them a reason to subscribe?

 

If not, make this a priority! 

(And don’t forget – this is an act of service, you’re being helpful by guiding your ideal clients in the right direction so that you can keep in touch and start solving their burning problems!)

 

What Makes a High-Converting Lead Magnet?

So you’ve captured someone’s attention with your content. (Great work!)

Now the next step is to give them a compelling reason to join your email list.

 

This is where your lead magnet comes in.

A lead magnet is a free resource that people receive in exchange for their email address. It’s sometimes referred to as a freebie.

 

The key is to get it right – because the wrong lead magnet can leave you with:

🚨 Your email list growing at the pace of a snail (because no one wants it!)

🚨 Your list being full of freebie hunters who don’t buy (because you’ve attracted the wrong people!)

 

What you want to aim for is a great lead magnet, that makes people think:

"Wow, I can’t believe this is free! If this is what I get for free, imagine what their paid offer is like!"

 

But – and this is the important bit – a high-converting lead magnet must be strategically aligned with your paid offer. 

(Not just any old fantastic thing!)

 

So let’s explore those awkward mistakes (so that you can avoid them) …

 

The Biggest Lead Magnet Mistakes (And What to Do Instead!)

I’m going to be honest here.

I’ve made two huge mistakes with lead magnets in the past. 

Keep reading to discover exactly what happened and what I learned.

 

Mistake 1: Creating a Lead Magnet That Attracts the Wrong Audience

Back in 2017 when I first started email marketing, I knew my ideal clients inside and out. 

I had done market research and knew that parents in my niche were obsessed with feeding their babies the most nutritious food.

 

So I created a PDF download called "Baby Superfoods."

It was a hit!

People downloaded it every single day, and I was thrilled.

But then, when I launched my Baby Nutrition & Weaning Course, no one bought it.

Say what?!

 

Do you want to know why ALL of my hard work didn’t lead to HEAPS of glorious sales?

Because the people downloading my lead magnet were already weaning their babies. They had already done the research, and they didn’t need my course.

 

The lesson here?

✅ Make sure your lead magnet is strategically aligned with your paid offer

It should attract people at the exact stage where they need your help (not people who have already solved their problem!)

 

Mistake 2: Giving Away Too Much for Free

But it didn't stop there…

To get help with this I started working with a marketing coach. Now, let me tell you this: Not all marketing gurus are as good as their own marketing says they are!

Because the second mistake I made was following the advice of my guru who said:

"Make your lead magnet better than your competitor’s paid offer."

 

Perhaps the problem was, I misinterpreted that as "Better also meant bigger."

 

So I created a five-module mini-course called "Get Ready for Weaning."

It was completely free.

It was so successful that everyone wanted it! I even ran paid ads to it, and my lead cost was incredibly low – about 23p per lead (for context my current lead cost is around £12).

 

But when I launched my paid course?

People said: “No thanks – we’re still working through your free stuff.”

GAH!

I had given them way too much. They didn’t feel they needed anything else.

 

The lesson here?

✅ Make sure your lead magnet gives people a quick win – but NOT an epic solution!

Your freebie should create more questions, making your ideal clients realise they want and need more of you (which is where your paid offer comes in!)

 

How to Build Your List Quickly

So we’re clear on how you can create the RIGHT kind of lead magnet.

Now our next step is to get it in front of people!

 

Let me share THE FASTEST WAYS to grow your email list:

 

1. Embed it in Your Blog

If you write blog posts, your lead magnet should be embedded within the content.

TOP TIP – Add it after a few paragraphs – not right at the top and not at the very end. That way people get a bit of value up front before you ask them to opt in, and it avoids missing them if they don’t read to the end.

 

People search Google with intent, so when they land on your blog, they’re already engaged. 

That makes it the perfect place to invite people to grab your freebie and stay in your world.

 

2. Promote it on Social Media

Your social media content should regularly flaunt your lead magnet!

Now this isn't a blog about social media but you need to know that the best-performing posts aren’t generic tips – they’re ones that reflect your ideal client’s pain points and desires.

 

So instead of:

❌ “Here are three tips for fussy eaters.”

 

Try:

✅ “Are mealtimes a battle? Here’s why most ‘picky eating’ advice doesn’t work – and what to do instead.”

 

Do you see how version one is a bit ‘meh’ – but version two would get the right people nodding ‘Yes, that’s us! Tell me more…’?

Then within the post or caption, make sure you include a clear call to action to download your lead magnet.

 

3. Run Collaborations

Why not ask business friends, colleagues, or podcast hosts to share your lead magnet?

 

You could:

• Do a joint Instagram Live with a friendly supporter where you offer a free resource at the end
  
  
• Write a guest blog post for someone who has a similar ideal client demographic with a call to action to download your lead magnet
  
  
• Have a colleague share it in their email list if it aligns with their audience

 

4. Use Paid Ads

If you want fast list growth, Facebook and Instagram ads are incredibly effective.

Paid ads speed up the process for you. Instead of waiting months to build your list organically (yawn!) you can gain new leads every single day.

 

You DO need to know what you are doing though, because ads can be complex, costly and I don't want you wasting your money if you're trying the ‘suck it and see approach’. 

 

But don’t panic! I’ve written more about ads that you can dive into right here.

 

If you have at least £1000 per month available to invest, ads can help you build an audience faster than organic strategies alone. A smaller budget however probably wont be very effective for you.

 

Final Thoughts: Build the Right List, Not Just Any List!

Congratulations! Because now you know you can:

1. Create a high-converting lead magnet (whoop!)
   
   
2. Avoid those awkward common mistakes that slow down your list growth (phew)
   
   
3. Embrace organic and paid strategies to grow quickly

 

If your lead magnet isn’t attracting enough of the right people or leading to sales, I encourage you to take what you’ve learned today and reassess it.

 

 

Episode transcription:

 

[00:00:00] Sarah Almond Bushell: Welcome back, my friends. Welcome along to part two of my email marketing mini series. And this week, we are going to go through how do you even get people onto your list in the first place? So my goal is to give you strategies on how to grow your list remarkably quickly with the right subscribers and not just any subscribers.

[00:00:25] Sarah Almond Bushell: And I also want to let you in on a couple of the big mistakes that I see my colleagues making with their lead magnets. And these are mistakes that I have made too. So this episode, it follows on from last week where I taught you the overarching strategy of email marketing. And it was in response of that question, what do I write about in my newsletters to my email list?

[00:00:52] Sarah Almond Bushell: Because what you write depends on what you're trying to achieve. And there are.. Three types of emails that you need to be sending out to your list in order to be strategic and in order to be purposeful. So if you haven't listened to that one yet, I highly recommend that you do I chose list building for today's episode off the back of that question that I asked in my Beyond the Clinic Business Facebook group where I asked, who he is.

[00:01:20] Sarah Almond Bushell: email marketing, because after some back and forth conversations, I discovered that most of my colleagues, not all of them, but most of them actually had very small email lists. Now when I say small, I mean less than a thousand subscribers. And actually, you know what? It's very hard to market your business in the online space when you With such small numbers and that is because the conversion rates are actually quite small.

[00:01:50] Sarah Almond Bushell: So today I want to give you a bit of a boost so that you can kickstart your email list growth because email marketing honestly is the foundation for having an online business and it runs alongside everything else you do like social media or SEO and blogging and it's what buys you that time freedom because once it's all set up And it's working.

[00:02:14] Sarah Almond Bushell: There's actually very little additional work for you to do. Whether you're brand new and starting from scratch or whether you've been using email marketing for a little while, I know that there's something in this episode for you. With that said, let us dive in. So let's start with a bird's eye view.

[00:02:36] Sarah Almond Bushell: Your content, which could be your social media content or your blogs or your videos or your podcast episodes, whatever you choose to create, that is the mechanism that attracts people towards you and your business. And once they're there and they're consuming your stuff, you need something to help them take that next step and become an email subscriber.

[00:03:02] Sarah Almond Bushell: And so your lead magnet is how you do that. So the purpose of social media is to actually get people off social media and onto your email list. And the purpose of your blog is to get people off Google and onto your email list. And it's the same if you've got a podcast or you have a YouTube show. Your job is to attract people with this content and then guide them to taking that next level of commitment by joining your list.

[00:03:36] Sarah Almond Bushell: So your lead magnet, it's pretty special, isn't it? It's got a very important job to do. And actually when you get this wrong, one of two things happen. So number one, your list growth is very slow. Or number two, your list is full of people who do not want to buy from you. So a good lead magnet leaves people thinking, My goodness, they could charge for this.

[00:04:04] Sarah Almond Bushell: Or gosh, if this is what I get for free, just imagine what their paid stuff is like. But a good lead magnet needs to be strategically aligned with your paid product or your service. And this is where most people make their mistake. So I'm going to share with you two stories. Both are mistakes that I have made in my business and I'm sharing these with you so that you don't make them as well.

[00:04:31] Sarah Almond Bushell: So when I first learned about digital marketing, I did everything by the book. I knew my ideal customer inside and out. I'd done a ton of market research. I was in the baby weaning space and I knew that these mums and dads wanted to know what the very best, Most nutritious food was for their babies. And so my lead magnet was exactly that.

[00:04:54] Sarah Almond Bushell: It was a PDF download called Baby Superfoods. And you know what? It went down a storm. People were signing up to get it every single day. I was absolutely delighted. But then, when I went to sell them my first course, which was called Baby Nutrition and Weaning, No one bought it. And that was because they were already weaning their babies.

[00:05:19] Sarah Almond Bushell: They didn't need my course because they'd already done their research. They'd already bought the books and learned from someone else. So can you see here that the lead magnet seemed relevant to me, but actually it wasn't strategically aligned with my paid offer. But my mistakes didn't stop there.

[00:05:39] Sarah Almond Bushell: Another lead magnet that I created and a mistake that I made was following the advice of quite a famous online marketing guru who said, make your lead magnet better than your competitor's paid offer.

[00:05:58] Sarah Almond Bushell: Now, I misinterpreted better for bigger. So what I did was I created a course. I created a get ready for weaning course because I'd made my mistake and I knew I needed to target these people before they started weaning. So this free course was going to be it. It was five modules. It was free of charge.

[00:06:21] Sarah Almond Bushell: And again, everyone loved it. It was so successful that I even ran ads to it and my lead cost was so low. It was costing me about 23 pence per lead, which for anybody who knows about paid advertising is unheard of. And of course my competitor was charging money for something very similar in the form of a live masterclass.

[00:06:46] Sarah Almond Bushell: And so you'd think that later on, when I went to present my weaning course as my paid offer, people would be lining up to buy it. They'd received so much free value from me, they were definitely thinking, gosh, you should charge for this. But guess what happened? When I offered my course, they said, oh, no, thank you, Sarah.

[00:07:10] Sarah Almond Bushell: We're still working through your free stuff. What I'd done is I'd given away too much for free. I wasn't strategically aligned again. So the key really is finding the sweet spot with your lead magnet. You want to give them a win, but not too much. You want to make it relevant. So it complements what you plan to sell later.

[00:07:33] Sarah Almond Bushell: And actually what it needs to do is get them thinking so that They have more questions, which ultimately leads towards your paid offer being the solution that they need. I want you to think about what you know about your ideal client and that's a really good place where you can start the conversation with them, where you can Give them an easy win.

[00:07:59] Sarah Almond Bushell: You do need to know their pain points. You need to know their frustrations, their fears and anxieties. You also need to know their hopes and their dreams and their desires and their goals as it relates to their problem and how you can help them. Have a think about what you offer that would help ease their pain or fulfill a desire.

[00:08:21] Sarah Almond Bushell: But remember, It's just a quick win that you give them that leaves them wanting more and not giving them the whole solution. So my lead magnet that works really well now taps into my client's anxieties around their child. I work in the fussy eating space and they are unsure if their child's fussy eating is typical or not.

[00:08:45] Sarah Almond Bushell: or just a phase, or actually, is it something a little bit more worrying that they need professional support for? It's a quiz. It asks a series of questions that are weighted, and it guides them to a result. Your lead magnet can be as simple as a PDF download, or it could be as complex as a quiz, and believe me, quizzes are very complicated to make.

[00:09:09] Sarah Almond Bushell: But, if you can use your face, and your voice in your lead magnet, that connection between you and your potential customer will be a lot stronger. And so on my quiz results pages, I have videos for that. Other ideas for lead magnets that do extremely well are things like masterclasses and short video series that build Day by day, one on top of another.

[00:09:35] Sarah Almond Bushell: And I've got those in my business as well. So it's this strategic alignment that will make sure that you've got the right people on your list and not just a list of freebie hunters. Okay, so moving on, now you know what makes an awesome lead magnet, I want to talk you through how you build your list.

[00:09:57] Sarah Almond Bushell: I wish that phrase of build it and they will come was true, because if that was the case, we wouldn't need to do very much in the way of marketing, but unfortunately that isn't the case. And so as business owners, we need to work hard to capture the attention of our ideal customer so that we can present our amazing lead magnets to them.

[00:10:21] Sarah Almond Bushell: So here's some of the ways that you can do that. So the first one I think is Pretty obvious, really, and that is putting your lead magnet on your website. If you write blogs, and your lead magnet complements the content of your blog, it makes sense to embed an opt in form within the text. You want to have it after a few paragraphs, but not right at the top and not too far down, because when someone has popped a question into Google, they expect to be able to get their question answered.

[00:10:53] Sarah Almond Bushell: But they often don't read all the way to the bottom. So you can add your lead magnet opt in to as many blogs that it happens to be relevant for. And if you think about it, most people are using their phones to access the internet. And so having an embed form or a button within the text is a really good idea.

[00:11:14] Sarah Almond Bushell: But also, just in case people are using computers, you can have an opt in for your lead magnet on the sidebar as well. And I actually put my most popular ones in my footer, so it's available there on every page. Next up is social media. Again, fairly obvious, but if you use social media as part of your marketing strategy, then you definitely want to be promoting your lead magnet there.

[00:11:40] Sarah Almond Bushell: The key with social media content is to create stuff that stops the scroll. Contrary to popular belief, tips and advice don't do this. And as a side note, this is how you end up with an audience full of other healthcare professionals following you. So instead, what you want to be doing is reflecting back you.

[00:12:03] Sarah Almond Bushell: your ideal customer's pain points, their worries, their frustrations, their goals, their desires, their dreams, the things that we've just talked about. And you do this in a very specific and tangible way so that they can relate to your posts. So around about 70 percent of your posts should reflect this and should provide Value or help.

[00:12:28] Sarah Almond Bushell: And at the end of these, you can have a subtle call to action in the form of a PS. For example, in my business, in the Children's Nutritionist, I might share a story about a child who was a picky eater and all the different tricks and tactics that mum did to try and get them to eat. Then I might give a tip or a piece of advice and then share the results of what happened when Mum implemented that piece of advice.

[00:12:55] Sarah Almond Bushell: And then at the very end, I might have P. S. Not sure whether your child's fussy eating is just a phase or something more worrying? Why not try my free quiz and find out? And then I can set up an automation with a tool like ManyChat so that when people comment the word quiz, I can send them directly a link to it as a DM.

[00:13:18] Sarah Almond Bushell: So that's around 70 percent of my posts. The other 30 percent are actually promotional. So this might be something a little bit more direct, like picky eater or problem feeder. If you're concerned that your child's fussy eating might be more than just a phrase, the quickest way to find out is by doing my free quiz.

[00:13:38] Sarah Almond Bushell: Text quiz below and I'll DM you the link. So I'll have a combination of those story, value based posts for them. Quite a soft call to action and then some more direct ones as well. Okay, moving on. Number three. Another way to get your lead magnet out in front of lots of people is through collaborations.

[00:14:02] Sarah Almond Bushell: So this is where I might be asking my friends, my colleagues, my business associates, people I might have met at events even my family members actually. to share my league magnet for me. So if it's a friend or a family member, they likely will, and they'll probably do it via social media or texting their friends, or even they might send a link via an email.

[00:14:25] Sarah Almond Bushell: But with colleagues or business associates or people who I might have met at a networking event, or What we might do is a collaborative event together. So this could be something like a podcast interview where I might be sharing lots of value to their audience or an Instagram live together where we can chat about the topic and entertain and educate their audience about the subject that, whatever it is that your lead magnet is about.

[00:14:52] Sarah Almond Bushell: And then you mention your lead magnet. And they will often share that link directly for you as well. These are really effective because when somebody else's audience trusts that person already and you come in as a guest, that automatic trust extends to you as well. So these are really effective.

[00:15:15] Sarah Almond Bushell: Now, my fourth and final Strategy for you is paid advertising. And actually it would be remiss of me not to mention paid ads because all of the strategies that we've spoken about so far are free, but they cost you in terms of your time and they cost you in terms of your energy. So if you're someone who doesn't have the time or energy, or actually you'd prefer to use that time and energy on something else, you can exchange it for a fee by using paid ads.

[00:15:48] Sarah Almond Bushell: So a few years ago, I trained with the amazing Salome Shalak in running Facebook and Instagram ads. And I still work with her now, actually. She's one of my mentors, but she is a phenomenal marketer with an amazing brain. And one of the things that. I learned and have applied consistently in actually both of my businesses is the power of Facebook and Instagram ads.

[00:16:16] Sarah Almond Bushell: So you can run ads that ask the algorithm to go and find your ideal client online. And get them to opt in to your lead magnet. And when you do that, you can grow your email list very quickly. And of course, the quicker you grow your list, the quicker you can begin to run sales campaigns and the more clients and more money that you're going to make.

[00:16:42] Sarah Almond Bushell: And unfortunately, All of those organic or free strategies take time, years even. And so I always advise my client to take advantage of paid ads as soon as they can afford it in their business. And you don't need a lot of money. Around 35 a week is what you need to spend to get started with paid advertising.

[00:17:07] Sarah Almond Bushell: All right. So I think this brings us to the end of this video. It's been quite another meaty, strategic episode, and now you know how to build your list quickly and effectively with the right people who are lined up to buy your services. And you also know the mistakes to avoid, and you've heard my story, so you can avoid those mistakes too.

[00:17:30] Sarah Almond Bushell: And if you've listened to this and think, gosh, I need a bit of help with my email marketing strategy, then I'd love for you to drop me a line and let's chat. My DMs are always open on Instagram. So come and find me there at dietitians in business. So my action step for you at the end of these two episodes about email marketing is to have a look at what your lead magnet is and evaluate it.

[00:17:56] Sarah Almond Bushell: Is it the right lead magnet for your ideal client? And I'd also love for you to critically appraise what you're doing on a day to day basis to grow your email list and decide, is it enough? Join me next week for a behind the scenes episode where I'm going to tell you about an experiment that I've been running on my social media, which has proven to me the real reason why most of us struggle.

[00:18:23] Sarah Almond Bushell: to grow on Instagram and Facebook. So that's it for another week. I hope you've loved this week's episode of the Beyond the Clinic podcast. If you have, I would love for you to leave me a review on whichever podcast player that you use, as it's this that helps us get pushed out to more and more listeners, and then I can help more health professionals.

[00:18:45] Sarah Almond Bushell: with their businesses as well. And if you like what I've been teaching so far, you'd like a little bit more help from me in building your business, then my diary is open to you for discovery calls. I want to help as many dietitians and healthcare professionals as I can to love their work, to appreciate the joy of being their own boss, and to help more people at the same time.

[00:19:11] Sarah Almond Bushell: If you want to chat through how I can support you, head over to sarahalmondbuttle. com and you can book a free Zoom call with me there. Bye for now.