The biggest lesson I (re-)learned this year is the importance of a relevant audience. Trivial and superficial as it may sound, my audience pulled me out of a really dark place a year and a half ago, through its sheer size.
Before we dig in, a quick announcement.
The fastest way to grow your revenue is to grow your audience. Early next year, I’ll be teaching a live workshop on audience building — the sustainable, monetizable way. Want in? Join the waitlist here and you’ll be the first to know when it goes live.
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In the summer of 2022, I was circling the drain. Burnt out after the insane amount of work my agency had during the pandemic, I was considering NOT launching this newsletter because I could no longer see a clear path to turning it into the kind of asset I had envisioned.
I was drained and ready to give up on everything. The nagging feeling that I’m not moving forward got to me. I knew I was good at what I did, but was I great? Probably not, I thought.
Then something completely unexpected happened. Semrush added me to their list of top 100 content marketing influencers. Semrush is a BIG deal in content marketing and I got to share the list with “big deals” like Ann Handley, Joe Pulizzi, Joanna Wiebe, and others.
I discovered this list by accident, I didn’t expect to see my face in there for a second. Circling the drain, remember?
When I saw it, everything changed in a split second. The “I won’t get anywhere” feeling turned into “hey, I’m great at what I do, I should do more of it”.
External validation matters!
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Wanna know how I got to be a top 100 content marketing influencer?
As per Semrush themselves: “we looked at followers, likes, replies, and the number of tweets about content marketing. We also examined the quality of content, frequency of posting, and presence on other platforms.” [emphases mine]
Audience size was the first criterion.
Hundreds of thousands of people were talking about content marketing but very few of them had my Twitter audience (20k at the time, lower now due to neglect), as well as multiple channels.
Yes, quality mattered too. But only if you got past the first selection criterion, audience size.
This was not a fluke or a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
The same thing happened on LinkedIn
I got serious about posting on LinkedIn roughly a year ago. The scales only tipped noticeably in the last six months, though.
- I spoke on 10+ podcasts, online conferences, and webinars
- I found new (potential) partners
- My sales went up (both for my digital products and my agency) by 300%.
- Subscribers went up
Let me cut this one short: everything went up and everything now takes much less effort (save for inbox management 🤯).
This is the power of a large audience. And this is why I said audience growth will be creators’ main concern in 2024.
Because I’m not the only one who noticed this. Everyone I know, clients and friends, did better on all counts when their audience grew.
Don’t get me wrong: you CAN sell your products/services to a smaller audience. But bigger is always better (provided you can maintain relevance as well).
What you get from a bigger audience:
You can charge more
Apple’s products are more expensive than Samsung’s because there’s a literal queue of people who want to buy the newest iPhone. Ultra-successful creators charge upwards of $1000 for an hour of their time.
It ultimately boils down to the first lesson of economics, supply and demand: when more people want what you’re selling (increased demand), the supply grows more limited, so you can charge more.
Clout, influence, a stronger voice
Call it what you will but people pay more attention to successful people. There’s a chasm between those who listen to Elon Musk and those who listen to John, who recently opened an X account and has 10 followers (mom included).
More sales
The more eyes you get on what you’re selling, the more you’re going to sell. Say you have a 1% conversion rate — if you can get 1,000 people to see your offer, you’re going to sell 10 products. When you’ve got 10,000 people in your audience, you’re going to sell 100 products (assuming you can maintain audience relevance).
New revenue streams
Affiliate marketing and low-cost products make sense in the grand scheme of things (I wrote about the value ladder here) but they won’t make you rich if you have a small audience. However, even a 1% affiliate commission can make a difference if you can get 10,000 people to convert instead of 10.
Faster iterations
Not sure if your pet idea for a new product/service holds water? You can test it faster and get more relevant data if you have a bigger audience to survey.
I surveyed my audience before launching The Guided Strategy Template and got insanely valuable insights because I had over 100 people weigh in on it. This wouldn’t have been possible 6 months prior because my audience was still too small.
More voice amplifiers
I nearly killed my referral program a couple of months after its launch because it didn’t work. As my audience grew, I started waking up to notifications about new referrals and unlocked rewards.
If you haven’t used it yet, see the rewards you have access to at the bottom of this email. ⤵️
A virtuous circle that keeps on giving: the growth loop
Growth begets growth.
People flock to popular profiles and email lists but hold off on clicking follow/subscribe if they don’t see a crowd there.
Think back to the last time you saw a physical queue somewhere. It piqued your interest, didn’t it? You were wondering what all those people were waiting for, didn’t you?
This summer, I waited 25 minutes in line for a gelato. There were 4 ice cream shops on the same street but the one I bought from was the only one that had a queue in front.
Audience size is social proof in itself. You’re more likely to listen to a popular voice than to a newbie. You’re also more likely to click on their links, subscribe to their channels, or buy from them.
It’s terribly unfair, I know.
Remember what I said above about me being a guest speaker on more and more podcasts and conferences? I’m not (much) smarter than I was a year ago when almost no one invited me to speak.
I get more invitations now because podcast hosts and conference organizers:
- Think my voice is more relevant because more people are listening to it
- Know that I’ll be sharing my podcast episode/conference promo with my increasing audience. It’s a different, less entitled version of trickledown economics: some of my clout trickles down on them and vice versa.
How to use this for your own business
Before you kill your product or service because it didn’t sell, ask yourself this: did enough people get exposed to your message?
You might have an audience problem, not a business problem.
If you have a community of less than 10,000 people, the bulk of your effort should go to increasing that number.
Grunt work is the name of the game and there are very few shortcuts that will take you there. You need to:
- Follow/send connect requests as often as possible. Pro tip: try to connect with people who have a similarly-sized community to yours or even lower. Your chances of being followed back increase.
- Don’t follow/connect with just anyone. We’re building for the future here, not for vanity metrics. Ideally, 50% of your audience should be made of your peers (algorithms reward conversations between peers) and 50% of your ICP.
- Spend some time building real relationships in the DMs — this will save you when social media reach is low.
- Experiment with multiple channels, don’t get hung up on a single one.
- Treat your business like a media business.
I’ve written an in-depth piece about building an audience here, so I won’t dwell on it.
Limitations ✋ 🛑
I can’t stress this enough: a bigger audience doesn’t give you a license to put out crappy products and services.
Will it help you sell them?
Yes, at least a couple of times, until people catch on.
But if you plan to half-assed sell consulting services and assume you can turn them into VIP meet-and-greet sessions, where people are happy just to see your face and enjoy your presence, you’re dead wrong.
We all know a company or a popular creator who got too high on their own supply and started half-assing their products just because people would buy anything from them. They stopped thriving in a couple of months, as soon as people caught on.
More importantly, don’t buy an audience: don’t buy random email lists, social media followers, and so on. Don’t join automated engagement pods — fake popularity is obvious.
Relevance matters. Remember, you’re not building an audience to flex about it to your friends. You’re building an audience that will ultimately wave their card at you and scream “shut up and take my money”.
This is exactly what I’ll be teaching in my live workshop early next year. NOT how to get to 100k irrelevant followers but how to build an audience you can serve through paid products and services. The seats will be limited because I want this to be as interactive as possible. Join the waitlist to be the first in line!
Adriana’s Picks
- I was on the It’s Marketing’s Fault podcast recently, where I spoke to Eric Rutherford about the importance of building a marketing strategy on a solid foundation, not hacks. If you want to learn about real growth levers, listen to the episode here.
- Harvard has a course on Taylor Swift. It’s not about Swiftonomics as I had expected, but about the Swift universe, music, lyrics, and all. William Wordsworth will be mentioned too.
- The New York Times created a new newsroom position this week — editorial director of artificial intelligence initiatives.
That’s all from me today!
See you next week in your inbox.
Here to make you think,
Adriana
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