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Why Growing Your Audience Is Important In Business

Growing your audience is key to growing your business and growing your revenue. And so if you are struggling to grow your audience or if you know it’s something that should take a higher priority inside your business, this episode is for you.

Inside this episode, we are breaking down what may not be working for your business. And how to correct those things in order to grow an audience of engaged followers.

You can have the coolest business on the planet. However, if it’s not being seen by the right people, that cool factor just won’t serve you. And I’ve seen too many entrepreneurs stop their business or let it fade away after opening doors, hearing crickets, and accepting no one wants their business. 

That’s simply not the case my friend. Let’s dive into how to grow an audience so you can grow a thriving side hustle or part-time business. Download my free Lead Magnet Workbook to use and follow along with this episode!

Who Is Your Audience

Your audience is anyone actively looking and engaging with your business. This can be on social media, on Pinterest, your podcast, your blog, and most importantly your email list. 

If you listen to Side Checks, you know how much I believe in an email list. And one of the main reasons is that it is a platform where you truly own your audience. You know your emails will land in someone’s inbox. But you can’t guarantee Instagram’s algorithm will put your posts in front of your ideal people. Or even all of your own followers. 

If you want to dive more into the power of email marketing, go back and listen to episode #16 of Side Checks where i talk about the 3 ways your side hustle can utilize it to grow your business. 

And so why is your audience so important? Well it’s simple. 

Without an audience, your business cannot grow or make a sale. You must have someone looking at your business with interest first before that sale happens. 

We cannot wait around for someone to find our paid offers in cyberspace organically. We must lead them there. So inside the world of entrepreneurship, building and growing our audience is VITAL.

Providing A Solution

And for your audience to grow, you’re gonna need this. And that is a solution!

This is the beginning of any audience growth and how you continue to grow your audience as your business evolves.

If you aren’t solving a problem and you’re focussing on an audience, you are on a path more towards becoming an influencer instead. This is someone who has a large following and influences buying decisions through their taste and opinions. 

So if YOU have a paid product and/or service to offer someone, you have a solution to something. 

You probably did know this at the beginning of creating your business, but you were solving a problem. Haven’t put together an official business plan yet? No worries, let me help! Download my Free Business Plan Template right here.

Your business doesn’t need to solve worldly problems like hunger or disease. Although if it does, that’s amazing. But it will solve a problem. 

A part of business development is refining what you do (aka your skillset). What problems your skillset solves? What transformation does this solution provide? And for who?

This can be applied to any and every business model. Some are more obvious than others but believe me, it’s there. And this is a crucial step when growing your audience. You must grow it by providing value. 

Growing Your Business Through Value

By creating value-added lead magnets or free offers, we are growing our audience in exchange for solutions that we can provide. And the best part is, we are growing an email list along the way.

Lead Magnet examples:

• Free Guides
• E-books
• Cheatsheets
• Checklists
• Challengeges
• Free Webinars or trainings
• Audio downloads

By creating free resources like this, we can begin to grow our email list by providing a solution and providing value. 

So how does this connect to revenue if we are talking free value?

In the world of entrepreneurship, we want an engaged audience that we can serve and familiarize with our business on a regular basis. This is so we can ultimately invite them to take part in our paid offers. 

So why not just skip to the paid? This has everything to do with warming an audience up before they buy. This means we want to continue educating them and getting to know them, so when we invite them to invest with us, it’s not just a no-brainer for this time. But it makes it more likely that they will continue investing with us if they are the right fit. 

Case Study One

Let’s walk through a few case studies of this.

The first example is a client of mine, Alexis. Alexis is a wedding photographer who recently moved to the DC area from Boston. In Boston, her business thrived and was based on referrals. She never needed to market her business as much because she continued to see new leads come in on a regular basis. 

After moving to the DC area, Alexis started working with me to grow her audience and start seeing more revenue inside her business like she used to. 

The first place we have started is with creating a new Lead Magnet specifically for her new audience.

We have put together a plan to create a Northern Virginia and DC Wedding Guide that will serve engaged couples looking for direction and guidance in their wedding planning journey. 

This guide will focus on general tips for wedding planning but also favorite local locations for engagement photos. And examples of those locations that link back to Alexis’s blog. 

This guide will also have an introduction that shares more about Alexis and her business. 

And at the very end, Alexis gives next steps if couples want to book a complimentary photography consultation with her or inquire about their date. 

A few things to point out here.

• Alexis has made this lead magnet specific for her new audience by including locations and titled it for local couples. 
• Alexis has also provided value that serves. This is a 10-page lead magnet that doesn’t serve up the whole enchilada but gives enough information to provide transformation and value. 
• Lastly, Alexis has tied this lead magnet to revenue. The lead magnet itself links back to her wedding photography services. And I am working with her in creating an automated sales sequence that sends out after someone downloads her lead magnet that continues to serve and invites them to take the next steps. 

Case Study Two

Okay, my next case study is through a client Stephanie. Stephanie has an online course teaching moms how to easy meal prep each week. She offers main meal prep courses and mini-courses that are diet and food-group-specific. 

When I started working with Stephanie, she had a lead magnet Titled 10 Day Meal Prep Challenge and she was seeing an average of 3 downloads a week. And of that, 1 or 2 would usually unsubscribe. Her audience wasn’t growing and she wasn’t hitting her revenue goals. 

However, she had this amazing course suite! And a ton of value to give. 

The first thing we worked on was diving into her audience. Since her audience was growing we decided to figure out more about them and if there was a reason they weren’t biting at the lead magnet. 

Well, Stephanie’s buyers would all be moms. She created a product specifically for moms. And one conclusion that we came to is if a mom was learning meal prep basics and bought her course, a first step before then likely wouldn’t be a 10-day challenge. And there are a few reasons.

Moms are busy. So maybe a 10 day challenge seemed overwhelming

And if they don’t already poses the skil of meal prepping, they aren’t going to want to challenge themselves in that skill. 

Stephanie and I tweaked her lead magnet and actually created two. We created a Free Beginners Guide To Meal Prepping and a Free 30-Minute Video Training For Moms Looking To Meal Prep. 

Within 60 days Stephanie was able to see 87 new subscribers. And $608 in revenue. How cool is that?!

Now a few things with this case study. There was some strategy behind Stephanie’s new lead magnets.

The first was a Free Beginners Guide To Meal Prepping. This was a generic yet specific free download that really paved the first steps to someone starting to learn how to meal prep. So when we put together her email sequence that automatically continued serving her audience, it was a very natural thing to present her courses as the next place to go. 

The same thing with the second lead magnet, her free video training. This lead magnet was specific to moms so we think the title helped increase conversation. But since her courses were in video format, this free video training was a great way to introduce her bubbly personality and leave people wanting more.

How To Start Growing Your Audience Today

If you’re ready to work on growing your audience, I want you to visit www.createmyfreebie.com. There you can download my free lead magnet workbook. It’s going to help you create your first lead magnet and understand how to make it a) simple b) valuable and c) transformative. 

Remember, we want our lead magnets to make a true transformation in order to grow our audience. Plus I am giving you my free Canva templates that I use for my own lead magnets!

I hope you enjoyed this episode and got excited about boosting your audience growth. If you did, shoot me a DM on Instagram @amysquares and let me know what you enjoyed most. 

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Ready to GROW your audience, get MORE leads, and make more SALES? It all starts with a beefy lead magnet. Download my Free Lead Magnet Workbook right here. I’m giving you a step-by-step process for building your best lead magnet yet and my personal Canva templates to get started.