How to build an audience that will grow with you

Nowadays it feels like the numbers are only growing higher.

Social media business gurus will lead you to believe that you need a YouTube channel with a million subscribers, a hundred thousand people signed up for your newsletter, and thousands upon thousands of monthly visitors to your site to ever be TRULY successful.

It’s all rather overwhelming, isn’t it?

Especially if you are an independent business owner just starting out, scraping together a brand. It makes it daunting to even get off the ground when the ceiling is infinite.

I know how that feels, and I’m here to tell you all that’s NOT true.

You can choose to work towards those big numbers if you want to, but you don’t have to. No one will blame you for not wanting to – they are rather large.

It’s not the size of your audience that matters.

The quality of your connection to your audience and the value of what you offer is what will actually determine how financially successful your business is.

You don’t need a huge audience. You may even be better off with a small, loyal, invested audience that you have carefully curated to match your skills and overarching business goals. That way you can focus on actually creating valuable content for their more specific individual needs

It’s ok to start small!

Building an audience that buys from you: the M.A.P.P.I.N.G. approach

Here are 7 steps that will help you evaluate whether your audience has the qualities that can sustain a profitable, independent business, and cultivate a loyal following.

Before anything else: clearly define your business.

So who exactly is going to buy what you sell?

You can’t sell everything to everyone, so you’re going to have to narrow it down a little bit.

A simple formula for doing this is: “Broad + Narrow”.

Here’s an example of what I mean.

Make sure you don’t go too niche though: you still want a varied audience, not just a few individuals.

Now you’ve defined your audience, let’s start mapping it out to make sure it provides a viable path towards curating a small but dedicated crowd of advocates.

M.A.P.P.I.N.G. it out:  an audience-building strategy to find an audience that is true to YOU.

M is for Mitigate: Can your expertise mitigate this group’s problems and provide direct value to them?

This is an important one to start with.

Mitigate means to ease unpleasantness, and basically solve the problem.

If what you provide doesn’t cater to what your audience needs/solve their problems, it will be hard to supply any meaningful value to them.

Here’s an example of how we could provide for an audience of “overwhelmed creative professionals”.

Audience Need: They don’t have much time and are under a lot of pressure. They are looking for simple tools and resources to make their workflow more efficient and consistently advance their business.

Our Complementary Skill: We excellently explain difficult topics simply, and lay out the next steps clearly. We offer tools and services that aid independent solo creatives, allowing less effort on their part as we cover some of their bases.

This is an example of a great match! In this case, our skills would be of huge value to this audience, and would successfully mitigate their problems 😀
 

A is for Appreciate: Is this a group of people you appreciate, and don’t mind helping and interacting with?

What’s the point of creating a business that caters to a market you care nothing about and an audience you actually don’t want to help?

Your time is valuable, so spend it on something you care about. The more you care the more motivated you are.

We empathise with the struggle of being a creative professional and enjoy collaborating with other creatives. As a result, an audience made up of creative professionals is one we would want to work for.

If you don’t want to have to deal with certain facets of a group, don’t make them your target audience!

P is for Perspective: Is it easy to imagine yourself in your customer’s shoes?

The easier it is for you to relate to your customers (and vice versa), the easier it will be to interact with them.

Plus, if you can show you once were in the same situation they were, it makes your insights all the more trustworthy.

Show them you are just like them – that’s your biggest selling point. I know I’m more drawn to people who understand what I’m going through when I need a helping hand!

If you imagine them as only a few steps behind you, you can help them avoid the same mistakes you made when you were at their level.

Ensure you create content that you align with and could imagine being useful to your past self.

Lots of this stuff on outlining an audience is really essential for creating a prospering business of any kind. I really wish I had access to this information when I was just starting out!

P is for Prospering: Is this group of people prospering and is there potential for growth?

Ideally, your target audience/market has long-term potential for feasible growth. Plunging into an already crowded and unsaturated market that looks to be on the decline won’t do you any favours.

Before you set your sights on a target audience, look for any statistics or data to reinforce that your audience is growing and not declining.

Google Trends is a great place to start.
 
 

I is for Ideal – Is what you offer the ideal solution for your audience?

You want to ensure your product fits the demographic you’re providing it for.

You have to be careful that you cater to a group that can consistently support your financial security and realistically afford what you’re trying to sell.

Check if your price point matches what your audience is already paying for similar offers, or matches what they can afford.

If you feel just blog content isn’t the best vessel to fully cater to your audience, consider video and audio content creation, or find a medium that works for you, and your readers.

Example: We made sure that our resources for creative professionals were realistically priced and accessible to all creatives (with custom plans and consultations available so our services can work for everyone) while providing a viable/sustainable pathway for their growth in the future.

N is for Niche – Is your audience niche enough that you can provide the exact solution to their specific problems?

“Niching down” massively helps establish devoted customer relationships.

It allows you to successfully address the specific issues of an isolated segment of your broader audience, rather than trying to undertake the hit-and-miss that is catering to everyone.

Let’s return to the “broad + narrow” concept mentioned at the start of this article and niche down your audience even further.

• If we started with just “overwhelmed creative professionals” – it’s still pretty broad and we may have had a hard time standing out from the masses of other online resources.
• Instead, you can niche down and start focusing on “overwhelmed creative professionals who are determined to grow online, but are missing some of the business strategies needed to drive that.”

One group is really broad, and lacks direction, while one is much more targeted and speaks directly to a solution they’re actively looking for.

You may still want to consider conducting some keyword research (a vital part of search engine optimization), to make sure your more niche audience is still plausible online.

G is for Gather – Where can you go to gather an audience like this and how will they discover you?

Eventually, you will need to actually attract this audience and direct them to your email list, podcast, etc.

Knowing how and where (and if – some audiences just aren’t tangible) you can connect with them is wise to consider early on.

Your desired audience might go to YouTube videos or Skillshare for more instructional, course-based content. You may also find them on LinkedIn or similar social media platforms, searching for a certain type of written content.

Remember to keep your audience’s intent in mind when publishing different mediums of content on multiple platforms.

Research what different marketing strategies/channels you think are the best to invest time in based on your audience’s habits. How do you keep your audience interested over an extended period of time?

How’s it looking? Is the map of your audience clear and readable?

If your audience growth is aligned with the route you want to follow, they can fuel your business far into the future.

Remember, you don’t need a 100,000-strong audience on every social media platform to grow a profitable business.

You just need the RIGHT audience.

Find an audience willing to pay for what you offer by designing your business to match their needs.

If your audience doesn’t fit, revisit the 7 questions and adjust your outreach, marketing, copywriting, and content strategies until you find something that works. Diversify and pursue multiple monetization strategies!

• Mitigate: Can your skills ease their pain points?

• Appreciate: Do you enjoy assisting and interacting with this group?

• Perspective: Can you connect with an individual’s perspective?

• Prospering: Is this audience prospering or falling off?

• Ideal: Is what you offer an ideal solution that they can afford?

• Niche: Can you address their specific pain points?

• Gather: How will you gather this audience?