A Resource Library is guaranteed to explode your email list! But what they don’t tell you is how a Resource Library can cripple your business. In today’s post, I tackle why you should not have a resource library, and what you should do instead!
The moment I decided I wanted to create a “real” blog to empower and inspire women, I decided that I wanted to really build a readership around it, and I was going do it via an email list.
It didn’t take long before I learned how most people were growing their blog fast and furious, and it all pointed to this thing called a Resource Library.
A Resource Library is a password-protected page that you house all of your FREE downloadable goodies, and allow people to access it in exchange for their email address.
At first this seemed, GENIUS. Here was this massive treasure box that could convert browsers into email sign ups because who could refuse the ultimate goldmine? Definitely not I.
And it only made sense because it’s super simple and fast to set up for the newbie blogger. Instead of sending people your PDF downloads individually or having a premium email management service do it for you, just direct your people to one page. Revolutionary!
So upon launching the GirlCEO Universe website, I implemented our Resource Library and watched the numbers grow. It didn’t take long before 1 email sign up, turned to 3, turned to 7, and then 10+ per day.
Each morning, I would check, and dance with my cup of coffee or tea because OMG I had cracked the code!
But that’s not all I did of course. It wasn’t JUST the Resource Library that made things pop. I had read so much advice about creating a lead magnet for each and every blog post that you create to make sure that you never miss an opportunity to grab a new reader!
The Resource Library hack worked! The GirlCEO blog was exploding! And it wasn’t like we were blogging more than once every couple of weeks.
WHY I GOT RID OF OUR RESOURCE LIBRARY
While this may work great for bloggers, this ended up being HORRIBLE for business. If you’re a coach, online strategist or service-based Entrepreneur, you don’t want to skim or skip what I am about to tell you.
I HAD NO CLUE HOW TO COMMUNICATE WITH MY READERS
The first thing I noticed is that when it came to writing an email to my audience, I had no real clue on how to communicate with them. GirlCEO Universe initially started as a platform / blog for women looking to learn all about video marketing for their blog and biz. Because of course I’ve seen people with blogs about blogging, why couldn’t I create a blog about video?
As a result, there were blogs about YouTube, blogs about video in general, and blogs about Instagram stories. And because I crafted a lead magnet specific to each blog post, I ended up attracting a whole bunch of people with different interests into our email list.
How was I gonna manage communicating with three different audiences? Just because you care about growing your brand with Instagram stories, doesn’t mean you care about other areas of video marketing.
This made things difficult. Thankfully I segmented these audiences that signed up through the blog posts, but this was impossible to do for those who signed up via the Free Resource Library opt-in page. Essentially, these people were opting in because they wanted to access the library but I had no clue WHAT actually drew them in.
I ENDED UP ATTRACTING THE WRONG AUDIENCE
This became a huge problem when we wanted to sell a product or a program to our audience because we learned that only one of these interests groups was actually interested.
While this sucked, it did teach me a valuable lesson that GirlCEO Universe wasn’t ready to serve all of our audience’s video marketing needs and that we needed to scale back and pick one, and so I changed our focus to YouTube.
IT MADE EMAIL FEEL ICKY
The whole purpose of building an email list is so you can communicate with a large group of people that you share common interests with.
It feels really great when you offer a product or a program to an audience knowing that it could change their lives. But on the flip side, when you know that half the people on your email list are not truly interested in a product or program that you have to offer, it makes you feel really icky about emailing them because you know deep down inside that this is not what they signed up for, and then you can get that tingly, poopy guts feeling that you’re being salesy or spammy.
KILL THE RESOURCE LIBRARY. HERE IS WHAT TO DO INSTEAD.
It wasn’t until I had met with my business bestie and a couple of my other friends in the coaching industry that I found a common theme among all of our email list growth woes. We had a Resource Library and we all felt like it was attracting a variety of people we were struggling to resonate with.
After a ton of trial and error, here is what I recommend if you want to sell out your programs and products.
- Get really clear about what gifts and skills you have.
- Understand the ROI (the results your clients receive) of those gifts.
- Find a niche (aka the audience that would get the BEST RESULTS by working with you).
- Pick one really good lead magnet
When you have one lead magnet, you really get a chance to see the effectiveness of your brand’s marketing by getting LASER FOCUSED with your messaging.
No it’s not as flashy as a Resource Library but it tends to attract the most qualified buyers of your target audience.
And if you want to have a profitable business, 250 email subscribers that KNOW you are the Coach or Expert for them is much better than 2000 email subscribers that signed up because your offer appeared flashy.
Not only that, but the kind of lead magnet that will bring in customers requires strategy and more importantly, intuition.
You can’t just slap any ol’ opt-in onto your blog post, and that was one of the BIGGEST mistakes I made in my business.
Are you a Coach that thought all you needed was an email list and any ol’ lead magnet to build a successful business only to get let down when no one signed up to buy your high-end program? That’s because you’re missing the #1 secret to getting your dream clients.
Find out the real #1 money-making activity that you need to start doing in your biz RIGHT NOW in our FREE Training below!
