Find your audience and build a connection

It’s easy enough for us marketers to say that you need to grow your list and then walk away to let you figure out what that means, but I’m here to help you grow your list and attract a community of potential buyers. Once you have set up your email marketing platform you need to start attracting people to join that list, it’s time to start driving traffic to your landing page and I’m going to give you some ideas on how to do this. Then I’ll also talk more about connecting with your audience and to nurture your subscribers.

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Transcript

In this episode I’m going to talk about finding your audience and building a connection with them. Now, I’ve spoken about building a list and connecting with your audience before and today I want to go deeper into this topic because it’s one of the most important parts of your marketing strategy.

I’m going to split this podcast into two parts, because building a list and connecting with your audience are two different things and they both deserve to get lots of air time.

Let’s first focus on building a list. In episode 3 I spoke about the importance of building a list before launching and in that episode I give you lots of reasons for building your list and what you need to start building a list.

In this episode I want to focus more on what you can do to grow your list once you have your infrastructure in place.

It’s easy enough for us marketers to say that you need to grow your list and then walk away to let you figure out what that means, but I’m here to help you grow your list and attract a community of potential buyers.

Once you have set up your email marketing platform like Convertkit, ActiveCampaign or Mailchimp you need to start attracting people to join that list. In episode 2 I also spoke about the need for a freebie or lead magnet that solves a direct problem for your audience as well as setting up a landing page where people can opt-in by putting their name on your list to receive that freebie.

Now it’s time to start driving traffic to your landing page and I’m going to give you some ideas on how to do this.

The first way to get people to your landing page is to talk about it on social media. Use your voice on your platform of choice, whether that’s a Facebook page, your Instagram account, in Facebook groups or any other place where your ideal client spends their time.

You need to drive as much traffic to your landing page as possible, and don’t stop at one post, or one Instagram story.

You need to consistently talk about your freebie on your chosen platform. Tell your audience about your free offer at least a couple of times per week.

The next way to make people aware of your free offer is by putting a link, an image link or opt-in box to it in as many places as possible. Put it on your homepage, put it at the top or bottom of every blog that you write if you have a blog, put it on the blog sidebar, put it inside the blog post if it’s relevant, put it on your about page and any other page on your website where potential clients may see it.

Also add it to your social media profiles. For example, you can add a link to your instagram profile, or you can create a cover image for your Facebook page that shows a visual representation of your freebie and then add a link to it via the copy section of the image.

Share it everywhere you’re invited to speak or teach. Plus, when you do things such as podcast interviews you can offer your freebie to the podcast listeners if your host is happy for you to do this.

Sharing your landing page URL with as many of your potential audience as possible helps you grow your list and your community, which you can then start to create a relationship with.

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So, now that we’ve looked at how you can grow your list, I’d like to dive deeper into the next part of this episode which is to build a connection with your audience.

You may have heard me, or other marketing coaches, say the words ‘know like trust factor’ and these words are at the heart of turning your audience from followers into buyers.

Let’s dissect these words a little bit to get a clearer idea of what we’re talking about.

First up, the KNOW factor.
If we think about a marketing funnel and the stages someone goes through from being unaware of your business and you being the solution to their problem to becoming a customer, the KNOW factor sits at the top of the funnel right after someone has found your brand.

Picture a marketing funnel, like an upside down triangle and the wide section is at the top. The first stage in a potential buyer’s process is the awareness stage. It’s the stage where someone has acknowledged that they have a problem and they are looking for a solution. So they’ve searched for someone who can solve their problem and they found you.

Now that they’ve found you, they need to get to know you.
This is the stage where people learn more about who you are, about what you do and why they should care to invest time in finding out more about you.

The next stage is the LIKE factor.

This is where people spend a bit more time learning about you and decide whether they actually like you and can relate to you. It’s totally fine if they don’t but they need to be given the opportunity to get to know you and decide if they want to invest in working with you.

This is the stage where you want to attract your absolute ideal client and repel those who aren’t good fit, so don’t play safe and be someone you’re not because it won’t serve you well.

Be you and do you to attract the right people into your community.

Crafting the right message and communicating what you do and who for, together with being you and showing up in an authentic way will help you establish a connection with your audience.

Which then leads into the next stage which is the trust factor.

By this stage those who don’t resonate with you will have dropped off and those who do now need to be shown that you’re the right person to help them solve their problem.

This is the stage where you establish your authority and really communicate your expertise.

Your audience will want to know how you can help them and how you’ve helped others achieve certain outcomes.

That’s the know – like – trust factor explained. Now you might think, hang on, where does the buying stage come in?

The next stage is the TRY stage where someone might attend a webinar or purchase one of your lower priced offers to determine whether you’re the right fit for them.

Or they might skip the TRY stage and jump straight to the BUY stage. Once someone knows that you’re the right person for them, because they KNOW – LIKE & TRUST you, they move to the buy stage.

People buy from people, especially when it comes to service based businesses and investing a larger amount of money. We need to be able to resonate with who we work with and really know that that person can solve our problems.

That’s why it’s so important to build and grow a community that you connect with. Once you have found your audience or created a way for your audience to find you, you need to spend time connecting with them and nurturing them so they come to know, like and trust you.

There are many ways to connect and strengthen that connection. I often speak about nurturing and list building and that’s one way to connect with your audience, through a series of emails that are carefully crafted to take your audience on a journey and help them get to know you, like you and trust you.

Another way, or even a complimentary way would be to create videos, host Facebook lives, do IGTVs or host webinars. Getting live on video or even a pre-recorded video helps your audience connect with you on a more personal level.

Social media and Facebook groups are another way to connect and build relationships with your audience.

A blog or a podcast is a way to connect and build authority so that your audience gets a feel for what you do and your expertise.

There are so many ways to do this and it’s important that you think about YOUR audience and your business in terms of what would work best for you.

It’s important that you select a platform that works for both you and your audience.

Your mission for the next few weeks is to think about who your audience is, where they spend their time and how you can best connect with them and nurture a relationship.

That marks the end of this episode on finding your audience and building a connection.